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Today, I want you to cut yourself and others some slack. If you feel like you might have messed up whether at work, home or life in general, start by forgiving yourself for the mistake. If you feel like you've been wronged by someone, forgive their mistake. We can only move on and create a fresh start if we forgive and forget. And even if you can't really totally forget, if you have reached forgiveness you will be able to move ahead. When we hang on to anger or regret (towards ourselves or others), we carry a negative energy that blocks us from tapping into our full potential and from moving ahead.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of the wisdom we acquire in our lives, and the personal growth that we experience, generally doesn't come from the times in our lives when we were successful and we made the right choices. Wisdom and personal growth comes from the episodes in our lives where we made mistakes and we learned from them. When we make mistakes and bad choices in the course of our lives, we obviously don't know or realize at the time that it is a mistake.

Often times an individual will reflect back on mistakes that they have made in the past and be so discouraged and afraid of repeated failures, that they will place themselves into a self-imposed prison of fear and insecurity. The consequences that a person encounters because of mistakes that they have made sometimes cause a person to be fearful of stepping out and taking a chance again.

Sometimes when a person places trust in a person who was not trustworthy and ends up getting burned, it makes the person afraid to ever trust anyone again. One of the worst things we can ever do is get so busy dwelling on our past mistakes and failures, that we fail to look toward the future in confidence.

We can only move on and create a fresh start if we forgive and forget. And even if you can't really totally forget, if you have reached forgiveness you will be able to move ahead. When we hang on to anger or regret (towards ourselves or others), we carry a negative energy that blocks us from tapping into our full potential and from moving ahead. When we focus on the mistake rather than the lesson, we are stuck in the past rather than advancing towards our future. When we focus on the lesson rather than the mistake we change that negative energy into something positive that allows us to grow and live in a compassionate manner.

If we allow ourselves to, and are not careful, we can spend so much time focusing on our past failures and past mistakes that it paralyzes us and we begin to accept living in the "prison" and we get busy dying. I don't know about you, but I choose to look ahead positively and say in faith that my best days are ahead. I choose to do as Andy said and "Get busy living'." If you are just dragging through life with regrets of past mistakes and you are not happy, you are not really living. Forget your mistakes, just remember the lessons. You do have a choice in the matter. You do not have to remain an inmate in the prison of past regrets.