You made a mistake – an expensive one. You are flooded with embarrassment, anger, disgust, guilt, sadness, or some combination thereof.

Are you a bad person for making a mistake? You probably feel that way, but the answer is no. If making a mistake made us all bad people, there would be no goodness in the world. How about an emotionally charged and impulsive financial mistake? The stakes are now higher, aren’t they? Now you must certainly be a bad person for behaving recklessly with your (or someone else’s) hard-earned money, right? Not necessarily.