48 | When One Mistake Feels Like It Defines You

 What do you do when you made a choice you cannot take back?
 Why do some mistakes sit in your chest and replay at night?
 Are you waiting for someone else to forgive you so you can stop feeling guilty? 

Some choices do not feel like a moment, they feel like a label. You replay it, you feel sick, and you start wondering what it says about you as a person.

In this episode, Jessica Davis talks about what to do when you missed the mark and it impacted someone you care about. You will learn why the pain is often less about how big the mistake looks to others and more about what it means to you. She breaks down why punishing yourself does not repair anything, what real accountability sounds like, and why trust is rebuilt through your actions after the apology.

You will also hear a grounded path toward self-forgiveness, including why you cannot skip the growth part, how to focus on 1 percent better choices, and the reminder you need if your brain keeps telling you one bad decision erased everything good about you.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode
• Why some mistakes stick because of the meaning you attach to them
• How guilt gets heavier when your choice impacts someone you care about
• Why self-punishment keeps you stuck instead of helping you change
• What accountability sounds like without overexplaining or defending yourself
• Why trust gets rebuilt through consistent behavior, not words
• Why you do not get to control someone else’s healing timeline
• Why self-forgiveness comes from becoming someone who chooses differently
• What “work on yourself” looks like in real life, through small steps
• A reframe to remember when you feel defined by your worst moment

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Transcript

Carrying A Hard Choice

Jessica N. Davis 0:06

I've been carrying something this week. I made a choice at work that truly affected someone I care about, and I can't take it back. There's a part that just sits with you, right? Not just guilt, not just replaying it over and over. It's knowing you can't go back in time, knowing your choice didn't land how you hoped it would. And you just have to sit with it. I know I'm not the only one who's carried something like this. I hear about it from my clients all the time. And actually, this week, multiple clients came in with that same feeling, frustration over choices they made that they can't take back. So today I want to talk about what to do when you've made a choice you wish you could take back and how to move forward when you're not sure you can. Hi, and welcome to Block Out the Noise, a space to quiet the noise of anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking. I'm Jessica Davis, licensed therapist, mindset coach, and the creator of the Courage Method. I specialize in helping teens and young adults build confidence, courage, and purpose. If you want something you can use the moment anxiety shows up, the free anxiety survival toolkit is in the show notes. It gives you clear steps to stay grounded when your thoughts start to race. And quick reminder: this podcast is here to support and guide you, but it is not a replacement for talking to someone in real life. If you're struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a therapist. And if you're in crisis, contact emergency services or a local helpline. You don't have to go through it alone. We've all made choices we wish we could take back. But why do some of them stay with us more than others? As you know, not every mistake sticks with you. Some you shake off, you move on, you forget about them. But others, they sit in your chest, they replay when you're trying to fall asleep. They make you question who you are as a person. And here's what I've realized: it's not about how big the mistake was. It's about how you interpret it. A perfectionist who misses one homework assignment might carry that for weeks, especially if it drops their grade. Someone who trips in the hallway and watches their books scatter everywhere might replay that for months and months. It's not about how big or small it seemed to anyone else. It's what it means to you. It's whether you feel like it says something about who you are. And the mistakes that hit the hardest, they usually are the ones that affect someone else. Someone you care about, someone who trusted you, someone who maybe looked at you differently after. Those are the ones that stick. And sometimes the things we beat ourselves up over and over aren't even mistakes. They're just decisions. Decisions that didn't go well. Decisions where we didn't fully think through how they'd land. That's what happened to me this week. I made a decision. It wasn't careless. It wasn't reckless either. It just missed the mark. And when you miss the mark and it impacts someone else, that's hard to sit with because you can't undo it. You can't go back and choose differently. All you have is what comes next. I'm not going to pretend what comes next is easy either, because it's not by any means. When you carry something like this, you feel sick. If there's like a pit in your stomach, this gnawing in the back of your mind that won't go away. You feel awful. I don't even know how else to say it. It's just this horrible feeling. And the hard part is knowing that what you did might not be fixable. Some things can be repaired. Some relationships can heal, but sometimes, and this is the painful truth, you can't fix everything. I've been there in my career, I've had situations where I made choices with good intentions, and looking back, I can see how they still caused harm. And I couldn't repair it. There's a weight that I carry, not as proof that I'm bad at what I do, because I definitely don't believe that, but as a reminder to be more careful, more thoughtful, more aware. Let me talk about the kinds of things I hear from my clients, because I want you to know you're not alone in this. Maybe you went through a phase where you were skipping school and your parents found out and you saw how scared they were, how disappointed. And now every time they check in on you, you feel it like they don't fully trust you anymore. Maybe you started vaping or drinking or using substances you know you shouldn't. And it wasn't just about you, it was the lie you told to hide it, or the multiple lies you told, and the look on your mom's face when she found out, or your dad getting quiet instead of angry. And somehow that feels worse than him getting angry. Maybe you've been in a relationship where you weren't showing up the way you should. Maybe you said things that you can't take back. Maybe you stayed too long because you were scared to leave the situation and try something new. And while you're staying, you realize how much time you lost out on and how much you gave to this person who didn't deserve it. Maybe it's how you treated your parents. The disrespect, the eye rolls, the things you said that you know hurt them. These are all things that stick. Not because you're a bad person, but because you saw the impact. Here's what I see all the time. When someone realizes they've hurt someone they care about, they start punishing themselves. They replay it over and over. They tell themselves they're a terrible person. They think if they feel bad enough, long enough, it'll somehow make up for what they did. But here's the truth: punishing yourself doesn't change anything. It doesn't change the outcome, it doesn't change the situation, it doesn't undo what happened. In fact, it usually makes things worse because while you're stuck in guilt and self-punishment, you're not actually doing anything different. You're just drowning. So if punishing yourself doesn't work, I'm guessing you're wondering, well, what does? Two things. First, take accountability. Not an over-explanation, not a list of reasons of why it happened, just ownership. I did it, it was wrong, and I'm sorry. That matters when you are genuine, and I mean really genuine about hurting someone or making the mistake that you made, it helps. But here's the second part, and this is the one where I think people miss often. We think if we just say sorry, it fixes things. It's not about what you say, it's about what you do after. Because when you've hurt someone, trust gets broken, and trust takes time to rebuild. You can apologize, you can mean it, but the person you hurt, they're still watching. They're watching to see if you actually change. That's what rebuilds trust. That's what repairs relationships. That's what shows people you're not the same person who made that choice. So sometimes you take accountability, you change your behavior, you show up differently, and they still haven't forgiven you. Or they've forgiven you, but they haven't forgotten. And they're not going to let you forget either. And you can feel it. That's painful. And I think a lot of people get stuck here. They're waiting for the other person to fully let it go, to act like it never happened, to give them permission to stop feeling guilty. But sometimes that permission doesn't come. Not because the other person is being cruel, but because healing takes so much time. And you don't get to decide how long it takes for someone to heal. So here's what I want you to hear. Forgiveness from them isn't what you're really looking for. You're looking to forgive yourself. And that's where the real healing begins. But here's the thing about forgiving yourself. You can't just decide to do it. You can't just say, I forgive myself and have the weight lifted. To actually forgive, you have to be working on it. You have to be making different choices, showing up differently, becoming someone who wouldn't make the same decisions again. That's why people who struggle with addiction often can't forgive themselves until they're in recovery. Because when you're still making the same choices, it's almost impossible to let go of the guilt. In fact, I would say that sometimes they continue the same behaviors because the guilt is eating at them. It's a vicious cycle. But that's an episode for another day. But when you're actively changing, when you can look at yourself and say, I'm not that person anymore, that's what forgiveness becomes possible. I say work on yourself a lot. And I know that can feel overwhelming, like it's a huge project, this massive undertaking, especially when you already feel like you're drowning. So to make it simpler, working on yourself just means putting energy into who you're becoming. That's it. If you've been reading negative things, consuming negative content, this would mean changing what you're viewing, right? Working to have positive things that you're reading and nurturing that. If you're struggling with something like addiction, instead of running from it and having the same arguments with the people who love you, you confront it. You get help. If you've been in a relationship where you're constantly hurting your partner, whether that is physically, emotionally, that means letting go of that relationship and ending it. That means taking a hard look at yourself and ending it for them and for you. So you can figure out how to be healthy on your own because ultimately chances are you're not going to get healthier in this dynamic. Working on yourself means looking at problem areas honestly and making a plan to address them. It's not an all-at-on thing. It doesn't happen overnight. It's small incremental steps. And I really do love the phrase of trying to just do 1% better than the previous day, because 1% better feels manageable. It feels doable. And 1% could be small changes, right? It could look like removing social media people that you follow who make you question who you are. It could mean instead of scrolling and going to pick up a self-help book, it could be if I am really struggling and I don't have a job, it could just mean looking for what is out there. If you haven't worked in a long time and you know that this is causing issues within the family dynamic, it would mean just looking at what jobs you could apply to. It's just small steps. If you're lying in bed tonight or just lying anywhere or wherever you are, because multitasking these days, you could be walking, running, doing whatever you're doing. Wherever you are, if you're replaying something you did, believing you're not a good person, I want you to hear this. One bad decision does not erase 500 good ones. You are not defined by the worst choices you've ever made. At your core, you are good. And sometimes good people make decisions that don't align with who they really are. Sometimes good people hurt the people they love. Sometimes good people mess up in ways that feel impossible to come back from. That doesn't make you bad. It makes you human. And being human means you get to choose again. Every single day, you get to make new choices, choices that align more with who you actually are, choices that move you closer to the person you want to become. And I know that choosing differently is easier said than done, a thousand percent. When you've made a choice that hurts someone you care about, it hurts like hell. But this moment is not your whole life. The fact that you're here thinking about it, confronting it, wanting to do better, that's already a win. You don't have to fix everything today. You just have to take the next step and then the next one, and then the next one. Focus on the choice in front of you, then the one after that, because that's all any of us can do. Make the next choice a little bit better than the last. I believe you can do that. I see you as someone who is good, kind, and capable of change, even if you don't see that in yourself right now. I know this episode is a little bit different, but it was really on my heart to share this. And I do think that we all walk this earth carrying our mistakes and choices that we wish we could undo. And yet we can just try and do better. That's it. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening and letting me be vulnerable with you today. Until next time, keep moving forward. Trust yourself and never forget you have what it takes to block out the noise.