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When our children hurt someone by mistake, we instruct them to appologize, by saying ‘sorry’. We expect or hope that the ‘hurt’ person will forgive. Then we shall feel ‘relief’. Obviously it involves GUILT. Thus the forgiving person is in a ‘superior’ position over the ‘wrong’ person.

We know that we never know the result before we take the action. Mistakes are human. The concept of ‘No-Mistakes’ destroys willingness to dare and contradict humanness. But, the emotional relief of being forgiven – what about this? The answer is in the following questions:

• Will the forgiveness solve the mistake?
• Will the request for forgiveness bring the reality back to the reality that took place before the mistake?
• Did we have a bad intention? (Because in this case that it is not a mistake).
• Will the forgiveness and the emotional relief support our growth, or maybe this emotional relief will prevent future self-development?

Self- forgiveness is even worse, as underneath we claim without self-awareness, that we should not have made this ‘silly-mistake’. Meaning – even between ourselves we take a position of superiority – ‘such a mistake I should not have done. I should have known it.’ This is a highly arrogant statement, because if we would have known – we would not have done that mistake.

The answer to such a situation is by verifying that we grow out of our mistakes by the following steps:

• What are the results that I call mistakes?
• What was my intention? (By values and results)
• What were the actions that I took?
• What did I miss?
• What are the opportunities evolving from these results?
• What do I need to correct? (if there is a correction needed)
• If the consequences of the mistake involve other people, what and how need to be done to create partnership in the correction.

Unfortunately there is a huge culture around us that make ‘forgiveness’ – proper. Forgiveness contradict self-loyalty and excellence. We need to train our mind to love our mistakes and not to make them a source of guilt.

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