There were 23 fresh baked muffins sitting in my garbage can. I made them.
In the middle of making the recipe, I was interrupted by someone at my door. 20 minutes later when I returned to the bowl of ingredients, I finished mixing them up and put them in the oven to bake.
My children and I excitedly took them out of the oven when the timer went off. But it was obvious that something had gone wrong. They didn’t look right, and they tasted terrible! No one was interested in eating these muffins.
I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong, until I realized I had left out 3 very important ingredients from the recipe.
I initially had two “solutions” come to my mind. First, I wanted to go back in time and somehow fix the problem. “If only I could ‘un-cook’ the muffins and remember to put all the ingredients in.” Impossible! Or, I considered making myself slowly eat these muffins over the next few days so the ingredients and time I took to make them didn’t “go to waste.” Ridiculous!
The muffins were not edible. I could not go back in time to fix the problem, and eating muffins was not anywhere in line with my health or happiness…so I let them go (in this case, into the garbage can).
Sometimes, we will make mistakes, and we will not like the results of those mistakes. We may spend our precious time wishing we could somehow change what happened (like wishing I could go back in time and un-bake the muffins), or punishing ourselves to pay the “right price” for making the mistake in the first place (like eating gross muffins). But no matter what the mistake is, neither one of these solutions are going to help you fix the problem. The best thing to do is to learn, and let go.
I have learned that what is (mistake or not) is just what is. When I “let it go” (trash the muffins) and learn from the mistake (in this case it was not reading completely through the recipe), I have way more peace in my life.
There will always be opportunities to hang on to, or punish ourselves for our mistakes. But doing so is like eating garbage muffins. There is no benefit for you now or in your future.
You can JUST BE someone who lets go and learns from their mistakes.
