How to erase the embarressment of a failed life?

Think carefully about one of the mistakes you made when you were very young.

How much life experience had you had then? What insights had you gained? How much did you have left to learn from life?

Did you do it again? Would you behave that way now? If not, why not?

Life seems to me to be about making a silk purse from a sow's ear. But perhaps some of us have a little more work to do than others.

We might think we started off as mightily bad people, but we can end up as better people if we put the work in.

Take some time with Squeaky - s/he'll appreciate it and doesn't need to know s/he's benefitting from extra attention because you feel guilty about something

a reply to: droid56

What makes yours a failed life?

I very much doubt that you have failed at life in totality. You can access the data net, and have some form of device which connects to it. That does not shout failure to me. We are all up one metaphorical creek or another, without a paddle, or even a canoe in some circumstances. Give yourself a break!

a reply to: droid56

I could've written your post.

I'm in my mid-thirties now. I had major problems starting when I was roughly 15 mostly involving alcohol. I left home at 16 and it's been a long, crooked trail. It's depressing and exhausting. I'm amazed that anyone can accomplish anything at all. Lots of people seem to be able to not only maintain, but advance. I feel like all the energy I have goes toward simply trying to be ok, and falling short of that. I could go and on. I don't anymore, because of the cliched refrains from the "bootstraps" crowd and the "love & light" crowd.

You're still standing and I am too, at least for now. Let's keep walking, shall we?

a reply to: droid56

I feel the same, I'm in my 40's and have blown many chances to succeed in life.
Your post however gave me hope, it's time to stop wanting to change and to actually 'be' the change.

Thanks OP
Here's to looking forward

a reply to: MiddleInitial

I can relate to a lot of what you say.

Many times I realised that I was 'surviving' rather than 'living'.

I wanted to start living and, for a few years, I did. I'm pretty much back to surviving now, but I understand the terrain and have coping mechanisms.

Yeah - keep walking. Just put one foot in front of the other

a reply to: droid56

tommarow is a new day, make it better.

a reply to: droid56

You certainly aren't alone on this one.I've been a first-class **** to so many wonderful ladies that I shake my head even now.

It's already happened.No turning the clock back.Take mental notes and don't do it again.

We are HUMAN and we all make mistakes,sometimes terrible ones-just don't repeat them and you'll be fine.

Chin up,chest out and look forward.

Stay strong.

You are on the right side of the daisies...you have won.
Cheeers

You've done nothing wrong that many of us haven't done. Truth to tell, from early teens to mid 20s, I was basically a man whore. Any pretty girl that quirked an eyebrow and I was her's.
That you see that you have made mistakes and are sorry for them, means you are growing as a person and aware that, like the rest of us, all too human. Don't beat yourself up. We can all look at things in our past and say " I wish I hadn't done that " but, it's the past. Use it to make yourself and your future better.

a reply to: droid56

Porn ruins lives. While there is still breath in you turn to Jesus. Read the RED letters. God Bless.

a reply to: droid56

To realize that you have "wronged" yourself and others is a sign of, if belatedly, maturity. Accept satisfaction in that regard. Regardless of your position with your personal self or outside relationships, you have found a truth within yourself that has value. Most of us have done many bad things from the smallest curl of the lip toward another to physical and emotional damage that will never go away. The best you can do is to forgive yourself knowing that you were wrong and such things will never happen again.

Be advised, this is not to resort to that old saying "I never look back," because that implies not looking at the trail of damage, slight and major, you may have wrought on the way to the present. Accept what you have done and find a method of establishing peace within yourself without resorting to material aids such as drink, drugs, withdrawal or outlandish displays. If you are religious, you may try prayer. If simply spiritually minded, I suggest meditation as one very effective strategy. (Enabling a decent meditative practice becomes more difficult as one ages, nonetheless, it can work wonders.)

Life is a day to day operation, made up of moment to moment decisions.

You can never step into the same stream twice. Trying to do so will only leave you mired in the mud.

We can only learn from the decisions we make, and hopefully the lessons we learn will help us navigate this labyrinth we call life.

Past life experiences are like beggar's lice. Good or bad. They stick to you like glue. Sometimes you aren't even aware you are carrying them. They will jab you when you least expect it, sometimes you will feel the discomfort, and not realize what is causing the pain.

The only solution is to remove them when you find them, and discard them. Just take care that you dont just move them to a place where you are likely to pick them back up again.

Life is fluid. It is in constant motion. It won't stand still even if you do. Even if we all are given the same cup, what we drink from it will never be the same.

a reply to: MiddleInitial

Damn man....that post right there hit me right in the gut. Sounds like something I wrote, except the alcohol part. For me, it was drugs.

OP....hang in there bro. Seems a lot of us are walking the same path along with you. You aren't alone, however little solace that may bring (I know it doesn't do much for me when people tell me that, but hey...it is what it is)
There seems to be a lot here with similar feelings/issues. HA, I've often wondered how I come to find this place. We never "found" this place....we were drawn here, and there are reasons.

Take care.

Your still breathing.

For 2/3 of the world living in poverty that is in itself a achievement.

Sympathy is found in the dictionary between # and syphilis....
At least that's what they tell me....
I laughed when I read some of your ages....
IM 70 now, and still screwing up....
But guilt is self inflicted
Regret is a tool for the future,
And no life is wasted if one has learned something....
Youll be back again and again to screw up a few more lives yet.....
carry on....life is like a beanstalk isn't it.....

droid56

Stupid means what to you? Uninformed? Being informed can be just as dysfunctional as not being informed. Then there's choices to make, and there are so many variables involved with choices. Making right choices and then something bad happens in that said right choice, can make the choice a regret, and then it's now seen as a bad choice. With that in mind, realize you didn't sit there afraid to act. You made a move. And, you get another chance now to pursue what you believe you failed at again, making different choices or the same ones, or pursue something else. Due to the keeping of records on just about every person alive, which is fairly recent, making little secret about one's personal life due to the vast network, with most, if not all of it, available to the public, makes it difficult to start over. Records kept involve finances, criminal and civil judgements to name a few. 100 years ago, a person could start a new life by simply moving away. Age is also a factor.

Let's just say you are looking back at your life at something that happened to you when you were 23 years old & you were at a crossroads contemplating an action you should take. Let's say you had a girlfriend advising you on what to do, a middle aged co-worker advising you on what to do and you had gathered additional advice on what to do through your own research online. Then you mull all the free advice over in your head. Still not ready to make a move, you then go see a "professional" & pay money for advice. Then you again analyse all the choices. Even so, you're still not ready to make a move, so then you pay more money to attend a class that you think will help you by giving you more advice relevant to the move you will make next. At the end of the class you now have a certificate to frame and hang on your wall. That certificate shows, in writing, you have "information," and are now certified being informed in xxxx. (What ever it is.). Finally, let's say a year later, after careful analysis and study, you make your move.

Now, at 24, after making your move, you exist in that move and have even more experiences. Fast forward to where you are now. Let's say you're now 48. Now with the example I gave above, stupid becomes subjective because what ever choice that was that you made, was carefully analyzed. Carefully thought out. But then something bad happened anyway. What does that mean when that happens?

What about choices that are made that are not carefully thought out? And something good happens? What does that mean? Now ask youself how many people stereo type activities they say are the root causes of misery and lack of success? Millions. What are those usual activities? We can name a few. Alcohol, drugs, promiscuous sex. Ok. Well, now that we named a few, why do people who refrain from those behaviors never once indulging, still have bad things happen to them caused by someone who didn't engage in those behaviors either? Why do some who engage in them feel they are successful & other people validate their success? Why do some who DO engage blame their ffailure on that & why do other people agree it's true?

Life & fail do not go hand in hand. Life is life. Fail is information gathering. When you percieve yourself as failing, you have reviewed data/information and THEN attached emotional feeling to it such as embarassment. Emotion is an energy, emotional feelings have a positive and a negative. Feelings are information based. Proud/embarrassed. Emotion/energy manipulated by information-based feelings is attached to factual information. Feelings change information. Feelings can trigger energy release. Sexuality is not an emotion, it is a feeling, that is information based designed to become factual information. It becomes factual information upon conception.

You were created by sexual feelings which released factual information that created your tiny life emotion. Your parents also projected their own emotion/energy manipulated by feeling onto you at your conception. 2 emotion/energies is powerful. What was emotionally felt by either parents when you were conceived has an effect on you. There's negative emotion energy projected onto you if your mother concieved you when she didn't want to have sex at your conception, from either feeling too tired but did it anyway, to force on the extreme side. Or if you were unplanned and not thought of with emotion/force at conception and then the emotion/force projected at you in the womb for 9 months being fear based, resentful based, greed based or happy based, excited based, peaceful based or God based, trusting God to pull mom through or dad through with dialogue and energy sharing between God and that parent. Then there's conception with emotion/energy based on pure lust. All kinds. Most parents aren't consciously aware of how it effects conceiving a life. At birth, your own emotion/energy has been effected by your biological parents. Born under a misdirected force. Leads to misdirected lives.

Your life emotion energy can be misdirected by your own sexual feeling or someone else's sexual feeling which the feeling is really only seeking to be factual imformation that is usually not found because of contraceptives, abstinence and environmental issues that effect the sperm/egg, or it is found, but miscarried or aborted before birth. More and more people are preventing factual information by having sex for just feeling as the feeling is positive. What could be factual information has been purposefully and accidentally misdirected for ages and is reaching it's tipping point now. Now that factual information has been misdirected for so long, being witheld or emotionally energetically abused in innocence or on purpose, (Sick people out there,) we are living in it. Relationships on every level misdirected. Too many good choices made have misdirection in them. The matrix is misdirected in the fabric of Adam from the N, E, S, and W. This took generations to manifest. Not being conceived in real emotional love does a lot of damage. Everyone should have got the memo about this right? Which many did, but it was presented in generations that had already developed mistrust of esch other due to trauma.

Basically, most of us were not wanted during our exact conception and were happy surprises later or fear based suprises, which those in fear may or may not have had a relationship with God who gives the mother comfort, advice and security which provides the emotion/energy the baby growing inside needs to help develop their own. The cards are not dealt fairly at conception with so many in the dark on how important it is to concieve in love. The cards not being dealt fairly means factual information is extremely limited and changing outcomes on every right.

a reply to: droid56

As far as we know, this is the only sphere of life for hundreds of light years. Surrounding us is nothing but stars and space dust for as far as we can see. Life's been but a moment on this planet and our own lives barely a blink in the eyes of time.

Turn your perspective around and you might just feel thankful that you've lived to see those stars and experienced being alive.

More bluntly, there's a saying that 'the sun shines even on a dog's ass.' It's kinda Zen if you think about it.

Keep your head up

I don't think we are in a position to really know if we have lived a "failed" life, no matter what it looks like on the outside. We simply do not have the knowledge to make that judgment. I believe that what we call ourselves isn't the total picture, i.e.: Our personalities are just a part of out "Total Self" that has been carved out for convenience. And when we get back to our Total Self we'll be able to look back and say, "Oh, so that happened for a reason!" It wasn't "wasted" as much as it was a learning experience that we likely chose to endure.

For example, something Really Bad happened to me a number of years ago, something that I was responsible for setting in motion. In some respects I can't believe I made it through. But that very same Bad Thing has led to the happiest time of my life, encompassing a third of it. Without that Bad Thing happening I don't see how I could have gotten to where I am now, so I'm thinking, "How could that have been bad?" It turned out to be one of those "darkest before the dawn" moments.

In other words, our personalities amount to artificial and temporary clothing that we will eventually shed. Another way of looking at it is that we are avatars being made to do what we do for purposes we don't fully understand. So have faith that you will eventually understand the entire game.Meanwhile don't beat yourself up about it. Try to find an enjoyable space where you can wait it all out.

I feel ya. Ive done some stupid things too. Im in a place some days when moving forward is impossible but i have come to terms with my short comings and do nice things for others so i can move forward
Do that. Cut the neighbors grass but tell em youre trying to lose a few pounds when they try to pay you.
Smile at anyone and wave.
Those good deeds will count and in a year you will forget you were such a screw up.
Cheers!
a reply to: droid56

a reply to: droid56

You haven't failed until you quit.