Do you ever berate yourself for making the same silly mistake again? I certainly do, and a few days ago I did two silly things that resulted in me tripping over and hurting myself (not too drastically).

I was telling myself what a fool I was – I knew I had overstretched myself, and I knew I should have cleared up the stuff piling up in my yard. Then I remembered the angel Emmanuel talking to me years ago, when I asked him if I would ever learn to stop repeating the same mistakes. He said that what matters is that you notice you’ve done it again, because that means you’re learning to avoid it more often in the future.

He pointed out that it is part of the deal of being human, and rather than being cross with ourselves, we should celebrate the fact that we’ve realised that we did it – that’s progress. In fact, he suggested we should buy ourselves flowers – but this time my ‘reward’ was a large glass of wine!

And all this reminded me that in our lives, we rarely get the most useful behaviours and beliefs totally embedded, but every time we dust ourselves off and have another go, we are increasing our stock of being able to remember more often. I know that over my lifetime I have got better at some things, even if I haven’t reached perfection yet!

So I’m having another go at remembering to stop when I know I’ve done enough for now, and to clear up a bit after myself instead of laying unintentional booby traps everywhere.

Next time you get cross with yourself for making that silly mistake, for goodness’’ sake celebrate that you realised in your own inimitable way, and then have another go.