Nothing is wrong in making mistakes! Why make so much fuss?

I’m always kicking myself for doing things wrong, and that I’ve always done. I’m always really tense and I can’t relax at all.

Stop kicking yourself. And don’t start kicking yourself because you are kicking yourself, otherwise you will think, ‘Now I have to stop’ and if you kick yourself, you kick yourself more.

Mistakes are perfectly okay, nothing is wrong in mistakes. Everybody makes them and everybody has to make them. Don’t ask for perfection. Mistakes are good, they keep you human. Otherwise you will either become inhuman or superhuman, and both are not good. To be human is very beautiful but to remain human one has to err. And nothing is wrong in making mistakes! Why make so much fuss about it?

But you have some idea that you should not commit mistakes; then you torture yourself and feel guilty and condemn yourself. There is no need; everybody commits mistakes. Just remember one thing: not to commit the same mistake again. I’m not saying that you have to feel guilty for it; make some new mistakes! That is how one grows. Get fed up with the old and find out some new ways to commit new mistakes. Every day commit at least one new mistake. Try: find at least one thing to do wrong every day, and enjoy it!

Be human and don’t keep inhuman ideals in your mind. That’s the space we want to create here, a very human space where everybody is accepted as he is. Not that growth will not happen; growth will happen only then – when acceptance is there for oneself as one is.

If you have made a mistake there are two ways to treat it: one is to feel guilty. If you feel guilty, you will commit the same mistake again. Guilt is the way to help the mistake come back. You are trapped, because when you make the mistake you start feeling guilty; this is a way of looking at something else. You forget the mistake and you start focusing on the guilt. The mistake will be repeated again.

The second alternative is the right alternative: when you commit a mistake, see why you committed it, how you committed it, how it goes on happening; go into the mechanism of it. Repeat it deliberately, see why it happens, go into the very process of it. And there is no need for any guilt. Be scientific about it, go into it: ‘Why do I commit this again and again?’ And I am not saying that you should not commit it; just find out why, how it happens, what is the mechanism, how it takes hold of you, how it arises from the unconscious. Just go and watch the whole process… and joyously. There is no need to feel guilty at all, then you will never commit it again, because you have looked into it and you are finished with it.

Guilt never gets rid of any mistakes; it perpetuates them. Feel guilty and you will commit the same mistake again and again and again. And you will feel very righteous too, because you feel guilty – what else can you do?

You write two plus two is five and then you feel guilty. You beat yourself, you don’t take food, you fast; now this is foolish! How is a fast going to correct your mathematics? How is beating yourself or keeping yourself in a torture chamber going to help your arithmetic? It is useless, and you have changed the whole problem! You have to look into it, into why two plus two becomes five again and again. There must be some wrong association in the mind; somewhere it has become very deep-rooted. Go into it, search for it, for the cause of it, and once you have found the cause it will disappear. To know a thing totally is to be free of it.

This is not the way; kicking yourself is not going to help. Whenever you commit a mistake again, go into the process of it, see why, how, it happens. And if you enjoy committing mistakes then there is no need to change. I am not saying that you have to change it. If you enjoy committing mistakes then it is perfectly okay, because there are a few mistakes that people enjoy. Then there is nothing wrong; they are innocent. Everybody has the right to enjoy a little. But if you don’t enjoy it then the very understanding of its cause will help. You will get rid of it, and without being torturous. For one month, don’t kick yourself; rather go into the process.

Osho, The Sun Behind the Sun Behind the Sun, Ch 1