In my very short time on earth, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want to write a brilliant story about the life they are living.

It is human nature to want the best for yourself and have a positive outlook in life, but why do so many of us fail to put down on the pages of existence the kind of lives we aspire to?

Maybe we are caught up in the paralyzing prison of our minds, analyzing each action before it is lived, trying to avoid any mistakes. Maybe our life-stories end up stranded between our ears? Which one is it?

Well I think it has to do with the fact that we are constantly guarding against making mistakes. Mistakes that must happen in order to grow and learn.

Each morning, we wake up and begin planning, rather than living, which causes us to become like directors of our life-stories, rather than actors in them. We try to orchestrate the perfect day for ourselves and our families and our co-workers.

We are constantly second-guessing our choices, the need to balance work and kids and finances, and wondering who we are hurting and which person in our life will end up holding a permanent grudge.

We are afraid of offending anyone, so we sift through our thoughts, and we settle on the safest words—the dialogue least likely to attract negative attention. Having been taught we must not upset others; we edit out anything visceral and real.

We avoid mistakes, because they may reveal parts of us, we wish to keep hidden. Because, you see, our mistakes make us vulnerable.

Well we must learn to snap out of it, we need to learn to put ourselves first, allow yourself to learn by making mistakes and not blame yourself for it.

Our mistakes reveal the cracks in our armor. They reveal our imperfections. They advertise us as broken, fallible creatures. And we are terrified others will decide our mistaken actions mean we are a mistake.

So many of us have so many hold on to the misconception that bad choices are the source of bad lives, but that misconception causes us to miss a lot in our lives.

Think of how your experiences have taught you so much about life. Most of us have stories that still need to be told, learning experiences, allow yourself to make mistakes, you will crash and burn if you are holding on to the notion of no faults.

So, stop blaming yourself for making mistakes, for growing and most of all, caring what people have to say. Stop limiting yourself based on the fear of how people will react, write your story life, act on it and live a purposeful life.

love yourself too.