I have often been told that I need to give myself grace. This advice is given when things are hard for me. It is also for when things don’t go the way they need to be. It can be hard to learn to give myself grace. My mind tends to think in a literal black and white way. I struggle to understand how to be kind to myself when things become overwhelming. It takes time to understand that it is OK for things to happen from time to time.

When things do not go the way they should, I often think it is a failure. I feel that there was no use in doing something. I believe it was not worth it. But sometimes, outcomes are not as expected because they were out of my control. Yes, even autism can exacerbate the situation and make it harder. I always want to believe that I can do whatever my mind desires. Still, I also have to learn patience. It takes time for things to become what they are meant to be. This is not a skill that can be learned overnight.

My high school teacher once said, “stuff happens” in life. It can sometimes be what brings us down, and that can very well be true. But, it is important not to let it make us feel horrible for what happened. It is not always our fault. Sometimes it happens to teach us the lessons we need to learn. We can then use it as a stepping stone to do better next time. While it can be hard not to play the blame game, we often blame everyone and everything in our path. It is understandable that things in life can make us feel bad. Nevertheless, it’s not wise to allow ourselves to wallow in pity and continue to feel bad for ourselves.

We are sometimes improving ourselves and striving for perfection. As I often want to do, it is understandable that we will find issues that throw us off. It takes time to understand ourselves and cope better. We must work to be better at making it work the next time and prevent the issue from happening again. Life is not perfect. Things will happen that we do not completely understand. It is not an all-or-nothing situation. We do not have to go back to our old ways just because we make one mistake. We learn from it. We do what we need to do to rectify ourselves. We pick up the pieces. We move on with our lives. We do this instead of allowing ourselves to believe that we can’t do something. We show grace in that moment with ourselves. We understand that we can overcome our obstacles. We will do better eventually. While we had a setback, we work at being better. We know and believe we can do what we need to do.