How You Can Forgive Yourself
Believe it or not, forgiveness has a lot to do with loving yourself and you becoming successful. It can be the deciding factor that stands between you achieving your goals and being successful or stuck where you are personally and professionally.
Harboring ill will towards someone that wronged you in the past or even being unable to forgive yourself for a decision or action you’ve made in the past can hinder your ability to experience the success that you want to see or achieve the goals you have set for yourself. Carrying around this burden is as mentally draining as it is physically. At the end of the day, you are both physically and emotionally exhausted, but you are not sure why.
Sometimes, forgiving yourself can feel like the hardest thing to ever do. It can feel much harder than forgiving somebody else, particularly if you’re generally hard on yourself. But although it can feel really difficult, it’s not impossible. It can take a long time, but you’ll get there in the end. If you’re wondering how you can forgive yourself for something you’ve done in the past, let’s look at some steps you can start to take.
Be kind to Yourself
This is the first step on the road to forgiving yourself. You must be kind to yourself, even if you’re not used to doing that. Unless you’re kind and compassionate to yourself, not just other people, you’ll struggle to get to a point where you forgive yourself. You can work on all these things at the same time, so don’t worry about having to figure out too much all at once. As you become more kind to yourself, you’ll find it easier to forgive. As you forgive yourself, you’ll find it easier to be kinder.
Mistakes are there to help you learn
We all make mistakes and may feel embarrassed or like a failure because of them. Sometimes it can feel very difficult to get over your mistake and move on from it. This is often the cause of holding a grudge against yourself or having deep regrets about something you did. Try to see your mistakes as learning experiences rather than something which went horribly wrong for you or something WHICH YOU messed up badly.
Silence your negative inner Voice
We all have a negative inner voice that I like to call your inner mean girl, and it’s much easier said than done to silence it. Journaling is a good way to help you understand your inner mean girl and develop self-compassion. You can do is write out a “conversation” between you and your mean girl. This can help you identify thought patterns that are sabotaging your ability to forgive yourself. You can also use journaling time to make a list of the qualities you like about yourself, including your strengths and skills. This can help boost your self-confidence when you’re feeling down about a mistake you made.
The sooner you start to listen to this voice less, the sooner you’ll be able to forgive yourself. You can start consciously trying to silence this voice by repeating positive thoughts to counteract them each time. Over time, it will become easier and you’ll find yourself hardly ever listening to the negative voice.
Stop replaying it
It’s something that we all do – we replay the negative moments in our minds over and over. Whether it’s a bad breakup, something you got wrong at work, or even doing something embarrassing, it’s easy to dwell on it more than we really should. While some processing is important, going over what happened again and again won’t allow you to take the proper steps to forgive yourself.
When you catch yourself playing the “I’m a horrible person” tape, stop yourself and focus on one positive action step. For example, instead of replaying the tape, take three deep breaths or go for a walk. Interrupting the thought pattern can help you move away from the negative experience and reduce stress and anxiety. When you stop replaying your mistakes and regrets over in your mind, you’ll start to think about them less and will find it much easier to forgive yourself and move on.
