How do/did you learn to live with the mistakes you've made?

I accept them. And I move on.

I live with my mistakes because I don’t have a choice not to.

No learning neccessary, you either accept them or you don’t. Nothing can change the past.

The learning is in the mistakes.

If you dwell on them you will only make yourself and those around you miserable. Take what you learned from your past mistakes and tell yourself that you have the ability to do better. Live in the moment, not the past.

it’s hard!!! but living with it is better than hanging oneself sooo. make the future better than the past

No easy answers. I beat myself up for three years for a car accident. It seems to me that some people find it far too easy to forgive themselves and some of us (the ones who go for therapy) find it too hard. As time goes on, you learn to acknowledge your mistakes and then move on. Sometimes.

It is hard!!! But it’s best to learn from your mistakes. It’s especially hard when you have people ratting on you about your mistakes.

Hopefully I learn from them and realize that they are a part of the complicated fabric of who I am today.
If it were not for the mistakes I have made, and the consequences I have suffered because of them I would probably be a pretty shallow person.

“I can’t go back, but I don’t want to; all my mistakes, brought me to you”

^^sums up how I feel about the past. I am who I am thanks to those mistakes.

oh, that’s easy, i just pretend it never happened, pretty much like hiding the dirt beneath the carpet or in other cases i just say that getting things right was my own tour de force :s

I can forgive all but one of my mistakes from about a decade ago. It was big enough to change the course of my life. Although I’ve forgiven myself for it for the most part, it comes up again when I’m going through a bad time. I start dwelling on how I wouldn’t be in the current bad situation if I had done things differently back then.

It’s something I struggle with from time to time, but I’m working hard on creating new successes so I can forget that one failure.

What @jonsblond said.

It’s so true that dwelling on past mistakes only makes you and those around you misserable.

My wife has been prone to do that and it has been a challenge.

Lots and lots of therapy. :)

I’ll let you all know when I finally get around to making one.

I’ve learned I still have mistakes to make even after I learned great lessons from old ones. Here are my favorites though:

* Speak an insult one time too many and your partner will believe it, hurt they may have previously forgiven or excused will turn to anger and bitterness. At that point you’ve just killed romance leaving only love for the past.

* Ask for what you want from a partner instead of seething for what they don’t do. If you speak it and they still don’t step up then go ahead and seeth while you let go.

* Don’t assume because your partner loves you that you can go all out in venting, fighting, confessing, etc. Some things said or shared can’t contribute to the relationship, they might not have anything to do with the present partner but now that person has to carry the words, your voice, the images of your deeds in their head.

I am just awful about not forgiving myself for my mistakes.
I still find myself agonizing over a mistake I made at work 32 years ago, that NO ONE REMEMBERS BUT ME!

I think you have to get over your mistakes and move on but most important is learning from them and not repeating them…everyone makes mistakes…its part of life…..

I tend to dwell too much. I always give this example: many people I know feel relief after taking a test, they feel it is over, onto the next thing. I think about the difficult questions afterwards, wonder if I answered correctly, or if I could have done a better job.

I chose to accept that my judgement was impaired in the first four decades of my life because I was told how ugly, stupid, and fat I am from before I knew what the words meant.

I had to also forgive myself for not putting myself first, and allowing myself to do things that on some level I knew were wrong, but didn’t have the integrity to take the high road back then.

Then I took accountability for my actions in the here and now, and am more careful to consider the long-term implications of my choices and to consider which path will leave me with the fewest regrets down the road. Now I willingly choose the road less travelled most of the time, because although the challenges are greater, so are the rewards.

For me it starts with a pledge to be happy every day for the rest of my life. To make this happen, I set aside a certain amount of “down” time to mull over all the things that could bother me during the day if I were to allow it. If I need to get mad at myself, I let that happen, if I need to cry, this is the time to do it. When my “down” time is over, I go back to my real life and enjoy it while I can.

personally, I’ve come to an understanding that the mistakes I’ve made were necessary in order for me to become exactly who I am today. if i missed any of them, i would be a totally different person today.

I have learned just to deal with it. If I don’t deal with it, I don’t learn, and if I don’t learn, it could repeat itself, and I don’t like that whole concept.

Never look back. Be proud of what you have accomplished today and be happy that you have a chance to be yet a better person tomorrow.

Find the positive aspects in them. Like the opportunities to have learned something.