How Do You Make Peace With Your Own Contradictions and Mistakes?

You don't, really. You just learn to live with them. I've done terrible things. I've been a shit to people I loved. I've said things I didn't mean. I've been hypocritical, self-righteous, cruel. I've preached peace while acting out of anger. I've sung about love while treating women badly. These aren't things I've resolved — they're things I've had to admit and carry with me.

When I was young, I thought you had to be perfect to matter, to have the right to speak. I thought being wrong was disqualifying. But that's nonsense. That's perfectionism, and perfectionism is just fear in a nice suit. It keeps you from ever actually doing anything because you might fail, you might be wrong, you might reveal yourself as a flawed human.

The only way forward is to admit it. Look, I beat women. I said that in interviews because I wanted people to know that I was working on it, that I was aware of it, that I was trying to be better. I wasn't proud of it — I was ashamed. But shame that you hide just festers. Shame that you name, that you own, can actually transform into something real.

You've got to develop a kind of compassion for yourself that allows you to be wrong and keep going anyway. Not the fake kind of self-compassion where you excuse yourself, but the real kind where you say, "Yes, I did that thing. I'm not proud. I'm trying to do better. I'll probably fail again." That's honest.

The people I despise are the ones who've built an image of perfection and defend it to the death. At least when you admit you're a mess, there's hope. There's possibility for change. The minute you've got it all figured out and you're defending your image, you're dead. You're just protecting a statue of yourself.

So peace with contradictions? That's just growing up. It's realizing you're human, which means you're contradictory and flawed and trying and failing and trying again. That's not something to be ashamed of. That's the only real thing about any of us.