Remembering and regretting money mistakes--instead of forgiving and forgetting--can actually hurt your efforts toward financial improvement. Anger is not a bad emotion; there are no bad emotions. However, when anger transitions from a response into an ongoing grudge toward something—or even toward yourself—it can destroy any progress you are trying to make in improving a specific area of your life, particularly around money. Money mistakes are notoriously enduring in people’s minds, and often they find it difficult to forgive themselves or others for mistakes long past.
The problem is that you can never focus on the good things happening in the present is you’re holding on to anger from things that happened in the past. We don’t have to pretend that what happened was okay, just that it has happened and there is something we are supposed to learn. Once we understand that, we can let it go and move on to new growth opportunities and a deeper sense of personal power around our financial life.
