Are We Paranoia Over our Mistakes and Errors?

[icy]

It makes no sense to brood anxiously on the harmful actions we have committed in the past to the point where we become paralyzed. They are done, it is over. If the person is a believer in God, the appropriate action is to find some means of reconciliation with Him. So far as Buddhist practice is concerned, there are various rites and practices for purification. When the individual has no religious beliefs, however, it is surely a matter of acknowledging and accepting any negative feelings we may have in relation to our misdeeds and developing a sense of sorrow and regret for them. But then, rather than stopping at mere sorrow and regret, it is important to use this as the basis for resolve, for a deep-seated commitment never again to harm others and to direct our actions all the more determinedly to the benefit of others. The act of disclosure, or confession, of our negative actions to another--especially to someone we really respect and trust--will be found to be very helpful in this. We are quite wrong if we merely acknowledge the gravity of our actions inwardly and then, instead of confronting our feelings, give up all hope and do nothing. This only compounds the error. Above all, we should remember that as long as we retain the capacity of concern for others, the potential for transformation remains.

This is quoted from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

[fruven]

Habits and behaviors are hard to change if we don't regret what we have done either because we don't feel the harm done to other people or the harm is not visible. It can even be we justified our habits and behaviors in such a way that we think the harm is just a negative reaction of someone while our habits and behaviors is positive. In other words we may think our intention is good when it is not the case. Therefore sincerity and empathy play very important role in doing something for others and getting the feedback whether our action has caused a positive or negative effect on the person.

If the effect has been negative effect perhaps we need to look deeper in ourselves, check our intention is sincere, if it is check whether our action has been skillful. Unskillful means may lead to negative effects. If there is the case we should not be depressed and give up of being sincere and the wish to help others. Instead we should try to understand the person better, his or her situations. Perhaps just being a helpful person or a listening friends or colleagues for the time being. People will appreciate it and will open heart and take your advise, if you have.

Letting go and moving on are much better than rehashing whatever negativity which had happened. Admitting our mistake and set a motivation to making changes in our lives will build confidence which is necessary for overcoming paranoia. The past is a memory, a history of what doesn't work therefore why not try something else. 

[Tenzin K]

Many people look to Siddhartha Gautama as an example of someone who attained nirvana, a buddha. Every other week in this column we look at what it might be like if Siddhartha were on his spiritual journey today. How would he combine Buddhism and dating? How would he handle stress in the workplace? "What Would Sid Do?" is devoted to taking an honest look at what we as meditators face in the modern world.

Every other week I'll take on a new question and give some advice based on what I think Sid, a fictional Siddhartha, would do. Here Sid is not yet a buddha; he's just someone struggling to maintain an open heart on a spiritual path while facing numerous distractions along the way. Because let's face it: you and I are Sid.

This week's question comes from A.L.: "How would Sid deal with lack of skillfulness when he blunders or makes a mistake? I often experience chagrin and shame, disappointment. I must have a harsh inner critic that is tenacious or something. Thanks."

We all make mistakes. Even the historical Buddha had a period when he made the mistake of over-compensating for his luxurious upbringing by becoming an ascetic and starving himself. He tortured himself under the name of spirituality. That's a big mistake. However, he would not have been able to find the middle way between the extremes of luxury and asceticism if he had not experienced both as something other than his cup of tea. In other words, mistakes are not a bad thing; they are the fodder for our spiritual journey.

We each have our go-to emotion when we make a mistake. It could be yours, that of shame or disappointment. Other people may get defensive. Other people try to place blame on anyone but themselves.

I imagine the first thing Sid would recommend is to take a long, honest look at your mistake. What factors brought you to the point where you made it? Were you speedy? Arrogant? What emotional and mental path took you to the point where you made such a blunder? Once you have figured that out, you can resolve to not make such an error again. Making the same mistake after resolving not to would be like walking backward down the spiritual path. It is also a sign that your regret was likely not genuine.

Sometimes when you make a mistake, you might feel like there are many other people to blame. For example, someone from work sees you acting the fool over the weekend with some friends, blows the whole story out of proportion, spreads it around, and the next thing you know, the boss is looking at you funny come Monday morning. You could blame your co-worker (and heck, that's easy to do) but you also have to realize that if you weren't acting foolish in the first place, then there would be no story.

The 11th-century meditation master and teacher Atisha is known for composing a series of pithy lojong, or mind-training, slogans. One of these slogans is "Drive all blames into one." Quite simply put, this slogan refers to the fact that instead of looking to external factors as the source of our mistakes, we need to own up to our experience. As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote in Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness:

We could blame the organization; we could blame the government; we could blame the police force; we could blame the weather; we could blame the food; we could blame the highways; we could blame our own motorcars, our own clothes; we could blame an infinite variety of things. But it is we who are not letting go, not developing enough warmth and sympathy -- which makes us problematic. So we cannot blame anybody.
When we make mistakes, we often develop a sense of rigidity about ourselves. We either come down hard on ourselves or hard on others. We start blaming an amorphous "they" who ruin everything all the time. This is not helpful.

Instead, if you can look to your role in your mistakes, you can honestly see how to avoid them in the future. You can apply a gentle attitude to your exploration, suspending judgment about what a jerk you are. You can develop warmth and have some sympathy for yourself. Then you can acknowledge what you did and resolve not to do it again.

Furthermore, you can offset the negative actions you have done in the past by producing positive ones now. It may not be a one-to-one equation where you take your office out for pizza so that they think you're a swell gal. In fact, it may not be related to your mistake at all. However, you can use the knowledge that you have caused some form of harm as fuel for trying to cause some good in this world.

Over time, mistakes fade and people mature. Because we all have made mistakes, we all know that at some point we must forgive those of others. If you genuinely acknowledge your errors and work to produce positive actions, people will pick up on that. No one remembers the historical Buddha as someone who made mistakes; they only remember his incredible kindness and wisdom. Even though we make mistakes today, if we endeavor to learn from them, then we, too, will be remembered in the same light.

[ratanasutra]

Thank you icy for sharing a wonderful quote from H.H. Dalai Lama

The environment, the culture, what we had been seeing, the experience in life since we were young lead us to have habitual like us today. But there is an impermanent so our habitual can be changed if we really work onto it towards a small goal such like to be a better person, make themselves and people around them happy or a bigger goal like to benefit others until the ultimate goal of gain enlighten.

Buddha has showed us the path and there is no limit for anyone even come from different backgrounds as we can study , practice, apply into it, hence our habitual changes along the way we are practice.

When we have wisdom we won't paranoia over our mistakes and errors as we know that it can be 'resolve' but that does not mean that we always make mistakes and errors.

   

[Aurore]

Everybody makes mistakes and has committed some kind of negativity if not this life perhaps in some past life. Without doubt, it is difficult to forgive ourselves live in regret and fear.

A story best to remember during times like this is the story of Milarepa, a story of redemption and spiritual mastery. Milarepa has committed murder of 33 lives and is doomed for hell until he met his salvation in his spiritual teacher, Marpa. His spiritual journey where he attained enlightenment within one lifetime was possible even with his dark karma.

This is a beautiful quote to share and contemplate:-

“In my youth I committed black deeds. In maturity I practiced innocence. Now, released from both good and evil, I have destroyed the root of karmic action and shall have no reason for action in the future. To say more than this would only cause weeping and laughter. What good would it do to tell you? I am an old man. Leave me in peace.” – Milarepa

[Rihanna]

We all have done actions that we felt horrible after doing, may it be due to moments of desperation, greed or uncontrollable temper. Everyone of us has aspects of ourselves that we do not like and wish to change. But...there is hope yet....

Within Buddhist tenets, there are purification practices to remove emotional burdens such as guilt, as well as to pacify the obstacles to our happiness and self-improvement created by the imprints of our destructive actions. Guilt over past actions is useless, only leaving us feeling helpless and hopeless to the point of paranoia. On the other hand, acting to purify negative imprints and afflictions is very productive. It helps us to change our bad habits and subdues obstacles to long life and success in our spiritual practice.

Four Opponent Powers
 
1. The power of regret for having done the negative action. One begins by reflecting on regret; the awareness that actions we have committed bring suffering to ourselves and others.

2. The power of reliance: taking refuge, which restores our relationship with holy objects, and generating the altruistic intention, which restores our relationship with other sentient beings. We further identify the reliance (or refuge) of one such as the Buddha, who inspires us with his example.

3. The power of the remedial action, e.g. prostration, offering, reciting the names of the Buddha, reading or contemplating the Dharma, etc. With the power of remedy we commit ourselves to a practice which alleviates the results of the actions we have done.

4. The power of the promise not to repeat the action. We complete with the power of resolve resolving not to repeat those actions which bring suffering to ourselves and others.

So stop your paranoia and apply these 4 great steps now!

[buddhalovely]

Whenever we are preoccupied with moving towards some ideal future, we don’t relate to things as they actually are now. This creates a mind that is complicated and dissatisfied. Better for us to have the attitude that failure is an option. What would it be like to make room for that? What if we understood from the beginning that failure and mistakes were inevitable and were likely going to occur and we prepared to deal with these things in the most sane, wise way possible should they arise. Of course we could do whatever we could to avoid failure and mistakes, but when they arose, instead of being tangled up in knee jerk reactions, we could simply relate to the issues at hand and deal with them as best we could from a place of openness, wisdom; from Buddha-mind. Perhaps that is a more accurate definition of the enlightenment that the Buddhist teachings really lead us toward. No more rigidly controlling the outcomes of everything, no more paranoia about errors, no more struggle to keep oneself locked away in a cozy world, no more hiding imperfections or straining to not show awkwardness, instead a mind that is willing to relate to reality as it actually is - a relaxed, open, natural mind. Buddhist teachings and methods train us to be able to communicate with our life as it is whole-heartedly, to relate with our own mind, as it actually is, as it already is, to relate to it sanely.

[Tenzin K]

I believe we are here to grow, to expand—to learn and experience and understand. Growth and discovery are the purpose of life.

I also believe we tend to get in our own way.

Our experiences, our cultures, and even our families can create fears and limitations that can hold us back, or hold us down. They don’t do this intentionally. It’s just that we’re all doing the best we can in this beautiful, messy, complicated world.

There are so many circumstances or experiences that can get in the way of our growth and stifle our creativity and our lives.

I’ve discovered that there are three mistakes we often make in our endeavors to grow, create, or experience something new:

MISTAKE #1: NOT TAKING YOUR INSTINCTS SERIOUSLY

Have you ever said “I’m fine” when inside you were hurt or afraid? Or said “It’s not a big deal” when, in fact, it was consuming your every waking thought (and likely your dreams)?

Or maybe you even rolled your eyes at yourself; told yourself that you were overreacting, or that a comment, dream, or feeling didn’t matter.

Yeah, don’t do that.

It—whatever “it” is for you—does matter. It matters that you have a dream to start a business. It matters that you want more than what everyone else is settling for. It matters that you are upset or unsettled or craving expansion in your life.

It matters because those things are signs that you are not on the right track, signs that something is out there calling your name, signs that you’re ready to discover and devour it.

And those signs should always be taken seriously. Listen to where your inner voice. It’s there for a reason.

MISTAKE #2: NOT CREATING SPACE FOR GROWTH

Growth requires space—actual physical space, as well as space in your schedule.

I tend to see two reasons people don’t create this space:

They think it’s selfish. They have kids, work, chores, and obligations. It would be selfish to put those off just for themselves.
Or they don’t think it’s possible. They have kids, work, chores, and obligations. Who has time or energy to undertake anything else?
While both of those are really symptoms of not taking it seriously, there is more to it.

If you think it’s selfish to create time for you—to chase a dream, to process an emotion, to rest and reconnect—you’re not seeing one very important fact:

You can’t give to others what you don’t have, and you don’t have what you don’t take the time to give to yourself.

Growth requires self-compassion, patience, and generosity. If you ignore it, it will nag you, deplete you, and bury you in stress.

But when you give yourself the things you need, you soon begin to overflow those same things—the compassion, patience, and generosity – back into your world.

When your soul is filled up to overflowing, the feeling of impossibility takes care of itself.

Make the things that matter—such as self-care, compassion, and authenticity—priorities, and you’ll find you have the time and energy to create the life you visualize.

MISTAKE #3: LABELING YOUR EFFORTS

Any time you start something big or life-changing with labels like “not good enough” or “stupid,” you shut down your growth before you’ve even begun.

Because how can someone who is stupid or not good enough possibly do anything worthwhile?

But you’re not stupid, and you efforts are good enough. You have to let go of the labels and approach your experience with an open mind and heart. This is what allows you to create possibilities that are more and better than what you know.

If you’re struggling with this one, hold on to one truth: Each and every person was born pure, whole, and open to growth and learning.

The struggle doesn’t come from who you are inherently, but rather the messages you’ve heard about who you are.