let people make their mistakes

and focus on learning from your own

Female Nude Seated in Water by Ichijô Narumi, 1906

I had a dream last night that I dove into what looked like a clear, swimmable lake. I swam around for a little while and got out. Then, as I was walking along the dock at the center of the lake, I fell back in. This time, though, it was dirty, full of muck and unpleasant textures, smells, and materials. I was stuck swimming through these unpleasant waters and struggling to get out. Upon finally emerging onto shore, I still tasted, felt and smelled what I had experienced in the dirty water.

I didn’t think much of this dream until I spent some time fleshing out my thoughts this morning and recognized some symbolism around something I have been working through in my own world. I realized that this dream felt like it symbolized what happens when I try to get involved in solving the problems of someone else’s inner world instead of allowing them to be the conscious creators of their own experience by making choices (and sometimes mistakes!) that guide them to a better place within themselves. In short: this lake-scenario is what happens when I try to do something good (help those I love solve their problems, or: swim in a clean lake) but fail to recognize what is really under the surface (a dependency on me/others to solve their problems on their part, and an unwillingness to let them make their own mistakes on my part, or: murky waters!).

The urge to help others comes from a place of love, like most things do. We don’t want the people we love to hurt, so we try to help them, lessen their pain, solve their problems. But this isn’t necessarily the choice that is best for them. Sometimes, you need to let others make their own mistakes, or they might have to make them more painfully later on, with higher stakes and greater costs. This is what maturing is all about: figuring out the lessons you didn’t learn in childhood as quickly, efficiently, and playfully as possible in low-stakes environments where you can quickly learn from your mistakes and integrate that knowledge into wisdom (embodied knowledge).

We rob others of this opportunity to wisen their intuition through experimentation when we intervene and make decisions for them or strongly influence them towards what we think is Right. The result is that what seems like a harmless act of service can translate into a much more painful lesson for them to learn later on, when they pay the price for depending on someone else’s intuition when the stakes were lower.

I learned this lesson the hard way by advising a friend away from a decision I thought would cause her regret and humiliation in the future. I expressed as much, and in the end, that choice was not made. But in lieu of that decision, a resentment (perhaps in part towards herself for not making the decision she wanted and in part towards the other person in the situation) grew, and she made a decision later on that was much more damaging. She, too, eventually realized that this was an unwise decision to make, but I still felt somewhat responsible for the pain caused by this decision, because I was swayed her away from making the initial decision that she felt inclined towards. In short: I interfered with her ability to make her own mistakes, and in the process (sort of?) caused her to make a bigger one later on.

It has taken me a while to come around to this idea that: yes, trying to save people from their own pain can actually cause them more pain down the line. This is also not the only effect of such a choice. It simultaneously robs us of our own ability to learn from the curriculum of *our* life because we are so focused on theirs. It is easy to see how hard it must be to be a parent by simply reflecting on the desire we have to protect those we love (that are not even our offspring!) as an adult. We want to save them from pain, keep them safe, secure, whole.

This is all love, of course. It’s always love. But sometimes the things we do to protect others come at a cost—both to self and others. By interfering with someone else’s process of living and learning (even when requested), we rob them of their ability to feel their way forward; to develop their own sense of self-trust and wisen to the curriculum of their lives. And the cost to self: by getting too comfortable regulating to others, we sacrifice the ability to dwell deeply in our bodies, sensing what urgently requires our attention. Over time, this can easily lead to an unwillingness to pay attention to our own mistakes and learn from them. Or said differently: by over-indexing our attention towards others, we become blind to the curriculum of our lives.

pay attention to your own curriculum

By prioritizing protecting others from their potential mistakes over self-embodiment, we unconsciously corrupt the natural order of the universe. We steal our power by placing it at the helm of another being. And in doing so, we suspend that being’s need to think, act, and learn for themselves.

Once we get the basic wisdom of survival from childhood, stuff like: don’t touch the hot stoves and look both ways before you cross the street, there are plenty of lessons that we still need to learn for ourselves as adults, because they are self-specific! Things like figuring out what you like, don’t like, what gives you energy or drains you, what provokes guilt vs. fulfillment, disappointment vs. joy. These are not the same for everyone. We learn these lessons by making decisions and living with them. Oftentimes, there is no objective right or wrong, and what seems right to you may be wrong for someone else. Only they can know what is right by making a choice and experiencing the consequences of it in their own life (and hopefully learning from that experience).

The same goes for us: we need to make our choices and live them out. We need to be present in our lives and study the effects of the choices we make. We need to put our power into our own self-discovery and transmute what we learn into wise, conscious, intentional service of others, instead of the reactive service we offer when we don’t feel a deep sense of fulfillment, ease or rootedness in our own inner world.

We need to let others be the rudder for their lives, and grant ourselves permission to do the same. This is how we build self-trust: we make choices and we take responsibility for them. And when we do this, we realize that we are all much more powerful (and wise!) than we think, and we all have the capacity to direct our lives thoughtfully if we simply trust ourselves, and give ourselves permission to be in our power.

The world needs you in your power; and the only way to get there is to not be constantly fragmenting that power across everyone else’s world. This is what I would call shadow-service, inspired by Steven Pressfield’s idea from Turning Pro that a shadow career is what feels pseudo-fulfilling to your creative urge but not quite “it”—the profession that isn’t a full bet on yourself, but gets close to the true yearning:

“Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar; its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.”

Your true form of service can only appear when you begin nurturing yourself with the power you have been giving away to others. Dislodging yourself from others’ decision-making centers can be painful—or it can be smooth. You might find that you aren’t as critical as you thought you were; or you might find that you were just as dependent on them needing you as they were dependent on you for being there. Most importantly: you’ll never know how it will go until you actually make a shift in your life. You’ll never know what needs to be done or how it will feel to be back at your own center until you start to tweak how you show up. Nothing changes until you take full ownership for your life and release the ownership you are clinging to over anyone else’s.

In other words: nothing changes until you let others make their own mistakes and start learning from your own. From there, the best path forward for you will start to emerge, and you can only hope (but not take responsibility for!) the same happening for those you love. Because in the end, we are the only ones we are stuck with for life, and until we sort out our relationship to self, we can’t be of full service to anyone.

recalibrating to self

Shifting away from this pattern won’t necessarily be easy—especially if others are used to leaning on you for their decision-making. There typically needs to be a conscious shift (at least internally) away from being an endless resource for those around you. This might be painful at first, because you are used to protecting others from their pain—and perhaps in part, learned to treat that pain as your own—but on the other side of this recalibration to self, you learn to regulate to your own energy. And in that energy, you can drive towards what feels true to you, without the distraction of trying to navigate the best path forward for everyone around you.

Choosing to prioritize yourself also illuminates the aspects of your life that have needed more attention than you were giving them. You will start to see the places where you were shrugging off responsibility in response to picking up responsibility that was not yours, creating an imbalance that was likely implicating someone else to tend to parts of your world, because you were busy cleaning up someone else’s.

This pattern of choosing other-over-self creates a ripple of imbalances, where you diverging your attention away from your responsibilities to someone else’s, demands that someone does the same for you—and then who is going to do the same for them? Do you see? When we de-prioritize ourselves under the guise of serving others, a ripple of disorder is created that makes it impossible for the collective to be in balance—on the micro-scale of your nuclear circle, to the macro-scale of society as a whole.

Conversely, when you take care of yourself, you take care of the world. Because when your inner world is in order, you can serve from the heart. You can tap into your true form of service because you will have tended to your own inner flame. And when that inner flame is well-nurtured, it burns brightly and leads you exactly where you are meant to go, towards the lessons that you need to learn to help others in the way that you are meant to. And while it might be uncomfortable at first to go inwards, fan your flames, clean up your inner world, and be mindful of the ways you are slipping into someone else’s realm, making this shift is one of the most generous acts you can do.

The world is a better place when each of us embody our own sovereignty. Because when we view ourselves as kings and queens of our worlds, we invite others to do the same. When we choose to no longer hide from our power and instead take stock of what is ours to protect, govern, take care of and bear responsibility for—we clear the space for us to reclaim our throne, rein wisely and be of true service to others.

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related essays you might enjoy: you might disappoint people (and that’s okay), stop hiding from your power, on self-trust, life as a classroom, unblock your mind

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