One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn about adulting is how to let things go. I’m a perfectionist. Always have been, always will be. As a kid, I was always on top of things. I got straight As. I rarely got in trouble. I was called a goody-two-shoes, and I liked it. I never really had to deal with failure or consequences until I was much older.

Life gets more complicated as you get older. Time gets harder to manage. Friends drift away. Assignments get longer and harder. Free time becomes a commodity you can’t afford. And mistakes are abound. Each time I make a mistake, or screw something up, it feels like I’ve let myself and everyone else around me down. At first, I try to fix it. I try to think up who I can apologize to, what work I can do, what words I can say to make things right. But sometimes, there’s just no fixing your mistakes. Then regret sets in, and regret likes to nest. I’ll start beating myself up, thinking hurtful things about myself because I think I deserve it. I messed up. I’m imperfect. Therefore, I suck. But doing this doesn’t really achieve anything. It only makes you feel worse about an already bad situation.

Instead, you’ve just got to let it go. And I don’t mean let it go and forget it ever happened. I mean, accept your situation and learn from it. Let go of all the bad feelings, the stress, the anxiety, the worry. Accept the fault and the consequences. Like Hannah Montana said, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes. If you’ve ever read a novel or comic book, the protagonists always mess something up at some point in the plot line. Someone much smarter than me once said, “to err is human.” It’s important to cut yourself some slack because berating yourself isn’t going to help you do better next time. It’ll just make you feel terrible. You’ve already made the mistake. You can’t go back in time and change what happened. It’s the past. You’ve got enough to think about with the present and the future.

Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.

I like to think of that quote as my mantra whenever I start feeling the weight of my mistakes bearing down on my shoulders. There’s only so much you can do once you’ve made you mistake, only so much you can make up for, only so much you have control over. You can’t know for sure how people will react or what consequence you’ll have to face. So, let life happen and live the best way you know how to. There will be screw-ups along the way. There will be plenty of mistakes and accidents. Just remember that you’re human and you’re better than the mistakes you’ve made.