Forgiving Yourself
There is no question that all of us make mistakes. What is difficult for many of us is to be able to let go of them and to not “beat ourselves up” for having done so. Many of us find it much easier to forgive others than to forgive ourselves. “I should have known better,” we think. “I’m such an idiot for doing (or not doing) that…” and on and on the negative mental tapes can go.
Particularly if one has grown up in an excessively perfectionist home or society as a child, or if one has an extremely precise and methodical personality, the occasional slip-up can become magnified in our minds to a far more important stature than it holds in reality.
On occasion people get the idea of forgiveness mixed up with condoning something. The two couldn’t be more separate. You can forgive yourself for something that you regret having done – or not done – without telling yourself or the world that what you did was “all right.”
There are many important reasons why each of us may need to work on our self-forgiveness. High on that list is the fact that guilt is not a helpful emotion; in fact, it is one of the biggest energy wasters that exists. If you’re busy beating yourself up and feeling guilty, you are likely not able to simultaneously take positive steps in your life to improve yourself or your lot in life. Feeling guilty almost never changes anything, and it certainly can’t allow you to go back to the past and undo something that is now over and done with. Guilt can also raise a person’s stress level, which has been shown to affect physical health; stress can raise blood pressure, contribute to depression, and even at times trigger behavioral issues such as overeating or smoking to those who struggle with such things.
Some Native American cultures believe that all illness is caused by not forgiving.
Another reason why forgiving yourself is so important is that you’ll be happier. Happier people have better relationships, both in their work and in their family life, and that creates even more happiness, and more productivity.
The fact of the matter is that some mistakes are a part of our growth process and/or the growth processes of those around us. If you are rigid with fear about the possibility of making a mistake, or if you never make a mistake, how much of life is it likely that you are truly allowing yourself to live? None of us as human beings can possibly know the entire fullness of the story of what our actions have “really” created in the world. What if “what you did” - what you are feeling guilty about and punishing yourself over right now– actually contributed in a positive way to someone’s future well being in a way that you just can’t see? The facts are that you don’t truly know how your actions or inactions have or will affect someone as you are only seeing things from your own perspective.
Yes, it is important to think critically about one’s mistakes and to learn from them. But that doesn’t mean that you must hold onto that mistake forever and never forgive yourself. You take the lesson, and then you let it go and move on, with the resolve to do your best to never make that particular mistake again.
Chances are better than even that you have been carrying around for some time several things that it is past time to forgive yourself about. Go ahead and give yourself that gift of forgiveness. No one has to know that you forgave yourself- yet you will feel much better for having done so.
