Still Blaming Yourself For That? A Fairer Way To Look Back

There is probably one you go back to. A decision, or something you said, or a year you stayed somewhere too long. It surfaces at odd hours, and it lands the same way every time.

This talk is not going to tell you that there are no failures, only lessons, or that one day you will be grateful for it. That version is not much use when you are actually inside it.

Instead, we look at why the same conclusion comes back every single time you revisit it, and at a specific unfairness in how you have been reviewing it that is very hard to see from the inside.

There is one practice at the end. It takes a piece of paper and about ten minutes, and it asks you a narrower question than the one you have been asking yourself. There is also a clear note on when not to do it.

Transcript

There is one you go back to. Not the small ones. The specific one. A decision you made or did not make. A thing you said. A year you spend somewhere. You know you should have left much earlier. And you do not think about it constantly. But its surfaces in the shower. At 3 in the morning, In the pause after someone asks you an ordinary question about life. And every time it does, It lands the same way it always has. Here is what I want you to notice about this. You're not remembering it. A memory you have finished with behaves-like information. You can pick it up, Look at it, Put it down. It has a shape. And it stays that shape. This pun does not do that. Every time it comes up, You argue it again. You go through what you did. What you should have done. What a more sensible person would have done. And you arrive. Every single time. At the same wording. This is not remembering. This is a trial you keep reopening. And you are only ever the defendant. So let us look at how the trial is actually being run because it is not being run fairly. When you review that decision now. You review it knowing how it turned out. You know which way it went. You know what that person did next. You know what the market did. What the diagnosis was, What the other person felt, What the other person said, What the other option would have been worth. And past you. The one in the dark had none of that. Past you made a decision in fog. But you are judging it in the daylight now. And because the daylight is so complete, The fog becomes invisible. It genuinely looks from here. As though the answer was obvious. And you simply fail to see it. That is not a memory of stupidity. That is a structural feature of looking backwards. And it happens to everyone. And it is why the verdict comes back guilty every single time. You are not being hard on yourself. You are running an unfair trial. And then believing the result. There is a version of this conversation that is useless and you have heard it. The version that says there are no failures, Only lessons. That everything happens for a reason. That one day you will be grateful. When you are actually inside it. That is not comforting. It is a bit insulting. " It asks you to feel something you do not feel about something that genuinely hurt. So I'm not asking you to be grateful for the experiences you had in the past. Here is what I will say instead. And it is the only thing about this I hold with any certainty. What happened is fixed. What it means is not. The events cannot be edited. You cannot go back. But the meaning you have attached to them. The sentences you carry about what that episode in your life says about who you are. That was not delivered to you with the event. You decided that. Afterwards. Usually quite quickly. Usually while you were still hurt and probably without much care. And the meaning is the part that is still doing the damage, Not the event. The event finished. Yours back. The sentence is the thing that wakes you up at three in the morning. You do not have to make it beautiful. You do not have to call it a blessing. You only have to check. Whether the sentence you wrote is accurate. Because it was written by someone in pain. In a hurry. With a hindsight problem. And it has never once been reviewed fairly. So here is one thing I would like to suggest. Give past you the file. Take that decision and write down, Actually write. Only what you knew at the time. Only what was available to you back then, Not what became obvious later. Only what was in your hands on that day. And you will find out. It is a short list. It is always shorter than you expect. And that is the point. Then ask one question. Given only that. Was the decision unreasonable? Not, Was it right? You already know it was not right. That is not in dispute. Was it unreasonable for a person holding only those facts? Almost always the answer is going to be a resounding no. It was a reasonable decision made with the information you had back then. And one caution, Because this matters. If that episode is still raw. If reading it back makes your chest tight, If it is grief rather than regret. Leave this one for now. This practice asks you to look at something with a bit of a distance. And you cannot manufacture distance you do not have yet. There is no schedule for that. And skipping this is not avoidance, It is timing. But if it is old enough to be sore rather than open. Give past you the file. They may have been convicted for years on evidence they never had. You did not fail at the thing that you think you did. You decided and fought. And you have been reviewing it today, In daylight, Ever since. And you have never once let yourself notice the difference. What happened is fixed. What it means is for you to define. So take the one you go back to. Write down what you actually knew back then. And see if the verdict survives it. Be gentler. On your current version. When you're looking back. On your past.