“I made some mistakes earlier in my life that I know are holding me back from feeling good about myself. A few people have forgiven me, but the others I lost track of. Even given a ‘pass’ from the ones that I’m still close with and who don’t show any scarring, the past is still hard to think about.”

G: That’s the rub about having the capacity to remember. Our memories are there for learning and growing, and the emotions they are built on are the scaffolding of a life. What will help determine the strength or weakness of that core structure depends on how many positive memories you have.

One way to jeopardize the uprightness, the integrity, of our character is by persistently dwelling on the errors and miscalculations we make. Holding thoughts of the past for too long is like overexercising a muscle to the point of fatigue failure. You may think you are doing yourself a good deed by that level of exertion, but in truth you are sabotaging the effort, and may even do more harm by injuring yourself.

Conversely, not holding thoughts of the past, long enough to do the deep analysis of your behaviors and coming to understand root causes, also creates a systemic failure.

Think of it like the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” fable about the beds that are either too hard, too soft, or just right. Being too hard or too soft on yourself is not the way to end up being able to sleep at all, or sleep well enough for it to be restorative.

What’s called for is a method for reaching a state of self-forgiveness. That will begin with a full acknowledgment that the mistakes that are made, however shameful they may be, are actually effective tools for creating a whole and wholesome life. Without making mistakes that we recognize as such, we essentially deny reality by deluding ourselves regarding our humanity and our accountability. The inherent value in mistakes, missteps, miscalculations – call it what you will – comes once we are able to accept the innate difficulty of simply being human.

We’ll make a bazillion mistakes – some we’ll see right away while others we’ll never realize we ever made – across the vast distance from toddler to toddling seniors. That’s not an easy lesson to come to terms with, but to truly live life on life’s terms, we have to extricate ourselves from the fantasy about how we think this planet should operate.

To progress with strengthening and heightening our capacity for peace, and peaceful sleep, requires we see mistakes as essential to one’s spiritual development. I’m not implying that we are all to go out every day and make mistakes intentionally so that we speed up that development. What this reply is about is accepting that every day we’ll possibly step in it, by saying or doing something unknowingly that is bothersome to others, or that in truth we do because we actually want to screw with other people. Either way, what we’ll end up doing is having to work through having botched our chances for either a great day, week, or even a life if we mess up that badly.

Fix your mistakes as you go and you’ll be alright, my father advised me just a few hours before he died. He knew that I strove for excellence in my work, that others sometimes misunderstood as perfectionism. He knew I was like him in many ways, that he too had to learn self-forgiveness for some of his ignorant and naïve moves through life. He was hoping for me to grasp that sooner than he did.

Self-forgiveness includes the mistake many will make from flaying themselves repeatedly as if they were members of the Opus Dei sect, who take self-whipping to a whole ’nuther realm of torture.

Looking back over any mistake for too long can also be a form of self-torture. The navel gazing on most errors is a quick sand, like a false step on the ladder of spiritual knowledge. To stand on that level and stay there will only suck your energy further and further down and away from the fullness of the good that you are at your core.

Giselle was a journalist with The Denver Post and is the author of “We are Here for a Purpose: HOW TO FIND YOURS” and the novel “Just Dance the Steps.” Her new romantacy “WYNTER’S DREAM” is now available.  Email Giselle with your question at [email protected]  To read more columns go to  www.gisellemassi.com