​DON’T LET TYPOS BECOME YOUR TATTOOS

Years ago, when social media opened a whole new world to us, I was intimidated. I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, but I tip-toed in. I created a Facebook page.
I would think about a message for hours before I hit the post button. Then I would be nervous wondering who was reading it, if they liked it, if it meant anything to them.
I also managed to master the magic of text messaging.
One day I was ranting via text to my daughter about how I had found a typo in one of my Facebook posts. In the beginning, text posts were impossible to edit. I was upset with myself. After all, how could I have missed something so simple and hit the post button which instantly transported my mistake to the world of Facebook and its billion users? I was embarrassed and frustrated. 

After a few back-and-forth acronym filled text interactions, she hit me with,
     “It just shows u r human and anyway people are already liking your post.”

We were both traveling in different parts of the country and I had little time to fuss with it, so I closed my iPad and went on with my day. But the typo continued to harass my mind. My daughter’s text, “It just shows u r human,” played mental push back to my self-inflicted criticism. 

Then it hit me – she was right! It was just a typo. A slide of my finger that hit one letter over from the one I intended. One hit of a key on my keyboard. It wasn’t as if that one keystroke was going to be tattooed on me as a permanent mark of shame across my forehead that read – I MADE A MISTAKE!

In an hour it was lost in the stream of Facebook banter and hardly noticed. The Facebook users who received it had let it go in minutes, maybe seconds, and continued to move on through the river of messages that flowed through their screens. So why didn’t I let it go as well?

How many times in life do we turn simple forgettable life typos into permanently inked tattoos that mark us for months, years or longer? So much of our life dramas are really small insignificant issues that we allow to be blown into tragedy by telling and retelling the story of how it happened, criticizing ourselves for why it happened, and bemoaning the outcome as if it were a monumental life-changing event. Most of them are not.

Now years later, I still cringe when there is a typo in my writings or social messaging. I still get embarrassed and frustrated when I make mistakes in life. But I have learned when to call a typo just a typo and not a tattooed mark of shame. We all need to allow ourselves to be seen as human.
Pennie’s Life Lesson: “Release the small mistakes in life – allow yourself to be human.”

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YOUR TURN...        
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