Nobody in the world today seems to like themselves enough.

We’re all so concerned with belting ourselves over the head with our failures and shortcomings that we don’t have any time to reflect on the good we do.

Compare yourself and your activities today to the activities of the persons on your evening news bulletin tonight. Chances are you didn’t shoot up a bunch of people ‘cause the store ran out of your favourite snack.

It’s unlikely that you mugged a little old lady, or stole anything at all, regardless of your need.

I’d also be willing to bet that you didn’t stab someone who looked at you the wrong way, and I’m pretty sure that you didn’t become suddenly compelled to flash your genitalia at random passerby.

In fact, I bet you behaved better and more responsibly than any number of world leaders did today.

(Okay, so you didn’t go leaping into any burning buildings to save a life, and we won’t be reading about you in the papers anytime soon, and I guess you maybe didn’t even go out of your way to be a good person).

But you probably still are.

That we humans give so much mental airplay to our failures was possibly once a helpful device designed for ponderance of, and learning from, our mistakes. Yet we choose instead to use it as a mental dressing-down for ourselves, thereby providing the excuse to lack the courage to try again.

If you made a mistake today, let it be what it is supposed to be: part of a unique plan to make you all of the person you can become, and not another reason to hate yourself and your ‘failures’. What happens to you doesn’t matter – it’s how you use the experience that counts.

Lessons or lamentations – which do you have ?