Listen to good advice
A friend of mine gave me this advice this morning and I realized that I could learn a thing or two about revisiting your past and not punishing yourself for your faults, missed opportunities, etc. It feels like there’s a magical balance between “stop repeating your mistakes” and “give yourself permission to learn from them.” I haven’t achieved that balance – I go back-and-forth on a weekly basis, sometimes daily.
The real lesson here is being gentle is not an optional exercise. You need to actively reconcile and forgive your past while simultaneously evolving from it and not letting it define you. If you achieve anything like this, you’re growing, you’re adulting. This is what I shared in Glowing Up Gay:
In many ways my eventual coming out process was about embracing and fully loving all parts of me and most importantly, forgiving young Peter…My coming out metamorphosis was as much shredding, eliminating and ‘un-learning’ the old me while simultaneously creating a new me. That’s why it’s such a curious journey of discovery.
If you’re not being gentle with yourself, you should probably ask “why” or chime in with a snarky “how’s that working for you?” If you continue to punish yourself and/or dwell on the past, then it still has a hold on you, it’s still controlling or defining you.
Peter Leahy
A self-proclaimed “ideas guy,” I’ve worked in marketing for over twenty-five years. After years of sadness, emptiness and self-loathing, I finally came out of the closet in 2013 and reinvented myself. Now happily married to my husband for over two years, we live in California with our Chihuahua Felicia, the queen of our household.
