Noelle Sterne, Ph.D., describes her new Unity book Trust Your Life as “a manual of practical spirituality” that “encourages you to forgive your self-judgments, overcome your guilt, step beyond self-imposed ‘shoulds' … embrace your creative strength … and learn how to rely on your always-trustworthy, knowing and peace-producing Source.”

• First, there are no mistakes. Miles Davis, the great and enlightened jazz musician, said, “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” Your self-judged “wrong” turns were nothing less than perfect. Your life experiences prepared you perfectly for where you are now.
• Second, we can reframe our pasts. When we realize there are no mistakes, we can free ourselves from branding past experiences as negative or wasted. Instead we can view our mistakes as inevitable steps toward the future we want to create. I guide you to awareness of these steps so you can finally forgive yourself for those mislabeled mistakes and take active steps toward building your Dream.
• Third, the outer reflects the inner. “Out there” is “in here.” [You can learn], at whatever age or stage you're at, to find another way of looking at your world, yourself and your life:
  • To forgive yourself for what you see as lost time.
  • To see the events and turns of your life in a different, perhaps startling way.
  • To review, relabel and understand your past differently—as the perfect foundation for reaching your long-cherished desires.
  • To recognize that all your experiences have been perfect, nothing less than manifestations of the Divine Order of your life.

… Are you like too many people who live for the weekends or retirement? Do you promise yourself that then—finally—you'll do what you really want to? Too often, as you may have noticed with others, these envisioned golden times never materialize. Why? Partly because of that mindset of “later,” of lifelong habits of feeling nondeserving, and because the steps you need to take first seem mysterious, bewildering or unattainable. …

Yes, we're responsible for where we are in life, but if we don't like where we are, does that mean we're condemned to stay there? Are we also condemned to constantly do penance for where we are? Absolutely not. …

The Price of Not Moving
Often what keeps us stuck and continually doing penance is the very feeling that we must pay for our lack of action. We become caught in a circle of self-blame, condemn ourselves, feel hopeless, and feed the fire—or slow burn—by reciting like a mantra our history of inertia and self-judged wrong choices. Well, let's break that dead-end cycle of waste and regret.

Divine Order
What's the choice? It's to stop the incessant self-judgments and accept ourselves on a new basis—to accept that every moment of our lives has been part of an all-encompassing Purpose, and that this Purpose proceeds by divine order.

When you acknowledge the workings of divine order, you see your life not as a consummate failure but as an evolving, orderly progression. Even though we may not see the purpose of each event, meeting or happening at a given moment, each piece fits.

…What does divine order teach us? We learn that our lives are not the perverse exception to the rest of the universe, as we so often lament. We discover that, rather like the steadfast movements of the planets, the annual renewal of leaves on the commonest trees, and the casually assumed daily workings of our bodies, all our experiences are part of the whole, in divine order.

Divine is generally defined as something above us, but it's also something inside us. We may not even be aware of the divine in us, but it is our God-given, inner knowing. Order indicates not only sequence, but the right sequence, succession, progression. That is, every step we take matters—and is flawlessly connected. When we look into ourselves and listen, we recognize and acknowledge this connection.

All of this means that at every stage, each of our experiences is exactly what we've needed. So how can we possibly condemn our lives? If you're humphing in disgust or disbelief, or mumbling about Fate, Destiny, God's Will, or any other knotty theological enigma, please suspend all such judgments for a moment. I used to raise a thousand objections too, but my doubt only got me exasperation, deepening frustration and indigestion. …

… Become freer from the self-defeating thoughts and labels that have kept you down. You'll start to shed your old habits of negating yourself and ease gently into the splendid clothes of deserving. In these new clothes, which are much more than zipper-deep, you'll begin to blossom and develop your talents and abilities, as you've always secretly known you could.