Navigating self-forgiveness

Good day, my love bugs.

Happy New Year!

I spoke to a friend the other day and she told me that you cannot hate yourself into becoming the person that you want to be. This made me think about how we are not moving forward because we are still caught up in the mistakes that we made.

According to Verywellmind self-forgiveness is not necessarily about letting yourself off the hook it is also not a sign of weakness. It is an important step that you are taking for your mental health. Self-forgiveness means that you are accepting what has happened and you are willing to move past it without ruminating over past events that cannot be changed. There can be many reasons why you are struggling to forgive yourself it could be that you are worried that you are going to make the same mistake again or you are worried about how facing your actions might damage your self-esteem.

Depending on the magnitude of the mistake(s) and who it has impacted forgiving yourself might not seem like a choice, you feel like you are your mistakes. People around you can also make you feel like you are your mistakes even if you have apologized or have changed your behaviour. You are struggling to forgive yourself because you are thinking that this is all you will ever be. So instead of forgiving yourself, you do the opposite, you punish yourself. Being unable to forgive myself has caused me to dim my light it has made me want to be invisible.

Self-forgiveness is a process and I want us to take this year working on forgiving ourselves. Understanding the act of forgiving yourself can be significant in terms of personal growth and self-improvement. So the 101 to self-forgiveness is not just to 'let it go' like some napkin in the wind. Imagine someone you admire and they made the exact mistake that you did before they accomplished the things that you admire them for, how does this change your perception of them? Pay attention to the physical reaction in your body you are giving them grace because you know we are human and we make mistakes.

You are most likely not the only person who has made this mistake and you are not alone in this. Punishing yourself is not the best way to go about this, consider your mistakes and deeply learn from those lessons. This is something that is going to take a while and that is why we are going to be working through it throughout this year.

Till next time, Cheers!

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