I wanted to share this experience with you, even though it is a very personal one, because it irrevocably changed the way I felt about myself and others. I have never forgotten that feeling of total acceptance, and I believe with all my heart that each and every one of us is being loved completely and unconditionally. I don’t always find it easy to see myself with that same pure vision as those beings saw me, but even when I can’t, I know they are still there on some plane of existence, peering down on me with great excitement and compassion, saying, “Ooooh, look what she’s going through now! How brave she is! What an important lesson she has chosen to learn!”
You are not making mistakes. We do not see mistakes, only lessons learned, or lessons not yet learned.
This is such a beautiful and important message for us to remember! It eliminates the concept that when we make mistakes, we have somehow lost our goodness, that we have failed. A mistake is a lesson learned. And if we make the same mistake again, it is a lesson not quite learned, but one we can be sure we will be given the opportunity to learn over and over again until we get it right!
Often when I am interviewed by a reporter during a book tour, or on a television appearance, he or she will get around to the subject of my personal life. Invariably, I get a question like, “Why do you feel qualified to teach others about love and relationships when you seem to have made so many mistakes yourself?” Whenever I am asked this, I use the moment as an opportunity to, shall we say, clear up the person’s “misunderstanding” about the concept of mistakes.
“What mistakes?” I respond with a smile. “I haven’t made mistakes. But I have learned A LOT of lessons! And I’ve grown from every single one of them. I guess since I’m growing so much, I must be doing really well!”
At the end of one such TV interview, a cameraman approached me as I was getting ready to leave the studio. “I loved what you told the host,” he said with a grin. “And I want to share something with you that my grandmother always told me when I was growing up: ‘Just because I make a mistake doesn’t mean I AM a mistake!’”
“I love it!” I replied. “May I pass it on to others?”
He grinned even wider. “My grandma would be happy to know you did.”
Isn’t this a wonderful phrase to remember? Just because I make a mistake doesn’t mean I AM a mistake. And we can take it one step further and remind ourselves that what we think is a mistake is just a lesson in disguise, waiting to be learned.
If Growth Is So Good for Me, Why Does It Feel So Bad?
Even when we believe that all we’ve been discussing is true, that the purpose of life is to grow, that we are here to learn lessons, still, it’s not always easy to love ourselves in the midst of a period of “growth.” Why is this? Because growth is usually not a comfortable experience. It can be scary. It can be painful. One reason for this is that in order to grow, you need to change from who and what you were to something new. And change involves letting go. You can’t grow without letting go of where you were.
Imagine you are holding really tightly onto something in your hand. Suddenly, you see something else that you want more than what you have. What do you do? You don’t even think about it—you open your hand, and you pick up the new item. But in the process, what else have you done? You’ve let go of what was originally in your hand.
Growth always costs us something. We see this truth in Nature all the time. The bud of a rose starts out covered in tight leaves, but when the bud begins to grow and open, the green coverings get ripped to pieces. When a flower is ready to shoot forth from the ground, the dirt that was in that place gets thrown to the side as the shoot comes up.
Moving forward in life always costs us the past. Everything that we gain always costs us what we must let go of.
Letting go is never easy, and almost always makes us uncomfortable, as we will discuss in the next few chapters. And because it makes us uncomfortable, we often erroneously conclude that something bad is happening to us when we are being forced to let go and to grow, because it doesn’t feel good.
This is such an important point to understand, and one of the most essential secrets about life:
There is a difference between what is pleasant and what is beneficial.
Just because something is unpleasant, or makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it is not beneficial or not good for you. In fact, often it is what makes us most uncomfortable that serves us the most. If you go to the doctor and he says, “I am going to have to perform some procedures that will be painful, but they will be good for you,” you wouldn’t question him and respond, “How can they be good for me if they are unpleasant?” Your common sense tells you that in the science of medicine, many procedures that are beneficial in helping your body remain healthy or heal may, indeed, not be very pleasant. However, we often forget to translate this same understanding to other parts of our lives.
Have you ever gone through a very challenging, uncomfortable time that you can now look back on and say, “I grew so much—it was the best thing that ever happened to me”? At the time, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to you. Why? Because it didn’t feel good. Because it made you so uncomfortable. It was impossible for you to imagine how something beneficial could be happening when you felt so miserable.
This is how we often mistake times of tremendous growth as “bad times”: We misinterpret the discomfort for something that isn’t beneficial. We conclude that we must be doing something wrong. How could something good be happening when everything looks like a mess? But actually, discomfort usually means that you are in the midst of great growth. And the opposite can be true, as well—when you are feeling really comfortable for long periods of time, it may be that you aren’t growing much at all.
Secret Number Two says: The purpose of life is for you to grow into the best human being you can be. We need to remind ourselves of this principle again and again, so that we can recognize our growth, honor ourselves for our growth, and find the courage to keep growing. And we need to remind each other—our partners, our friends, our children—so that when we see them growing and learning lessons, we can say, “I’m so proud of you. You are so courageous. You’re doing so well,” rather than buying into the old illusions that because things don’t look perfect, there must be something wrong.
No matter how much I teach these principles to others, I still need those same reminders myself. Recently I was experiencing one of those “growth spurts,” when many areas of my life suddenly decided to teach me lessons all at the same time. Even though I have spent the past few years lecturing on these ten secrets, my first reaction to my plates wobbling was, “Oh no! Not again!”
Fortunately, I know that when I feel like I’m not seeing things the way they really are, it’s time for me to talk to one of my close friends so he or she can straighten me out. And so I called a friend of mine named Ron Scolastico, who is a great teacher, author, and a great channeler of wisdom.
“Ron,” I began, “I can’t believe my life is in a state of upheaval again. I thought I finally had everything under control, and that things would calm down for a while. But so much is changing, for the hundredth time! And I feel so unsettled and uncomfortable. What am I doing wrong?”
“Barbara,” Ron said, “don’t forget that when you came into this life, on the form you filled out about what you wanted, you didn’t check the box next to Stability, you checked the box next to Growth.”
Instantly, I started to laugh. Because I knew in my heart that what he was saying was true.