Hi Rewa,

I’m going to get straight to the point here. We all do stupid things throughout our lives. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or in denial. We can’t possibly know what our choices will bring us down the road, we just make the best decisions that we can at any given time, with our limited knowledge at that time. It’s never perfect and yet we do the best we can. The future is always uncertain and we can’t change the past. Because of this, we are going to make mistakes. Even when we learn from previous mistakes, we’re going to make new ones. Again, anyone who tells you that they know everything and walk the path perfectly is a fool. Accept that you, along with everyone else, have done stupid things, and will do more stupid things in the future. It is normal. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can get past the guilt. For example, I’ve been in relationships just because I was attracted to the girl. I wasn’t even interested in their personalities. I’ve learned quite a bit from those experiences. But I was stupid for doing it. I even wanted to like their personalities. I lied to myself, convincing myself that I was in it for the right reasons. But they were just lies, so I didn’t have to face the painful truth. We do things like this all the time, and for many different reasons. Now when I talk about the experiences, I can laugh about how stupid I was in those relationships. It’s taken time to get to this point, but it’s also helped me go easy on myself when I catch myself doing more stupid things. When I talk about those things with others, they tend to share their own stories of doing stupid things, and we laugh about it. Making a promise is another opportunity to do something stupid. I say this because when we make promises, we are claiming that we are going to do something in the future. We are making a guarantee that it will happen. But we also know that the future is uncertain. You see the problem here? By making a promise, we are guaranteeing a future event which is uncertain. It doesn’t really make sense. But we do it anyway, mainly because it makes sense when we’re making the promise. We picture the promise simply unfolding according to a nicely laid out plan. However, we don’t see the unknown forces which end up guiding us in other directions. We don’t see them because we can’t see into the future. The best we can hope to do is make educated guesses on what might happen. But even that doesn’t really tell us anything for certain.

Begin to accept that we all do stupid things, which include making a promise which we no longer wish to keep.

I hope this helps!