This month I want to talk about forgiving yourself

This month I want to talk about the importance of forgiving yourself. Often I work with people who find it hard to forgive themselves for something they did or someone they hurt. It occurred to me recently that we are all guilty of doing things that hurt others. So, is there a way that we can learn to forgive ourselves in a way that allows us to be free from the guilt that we hold about such things? Yes, I believe there is.

Forgiving yourself is not about letting yourself off when you do something bad. Quite the opposite it’s about realizing that there’s often a very good reason why you feel guilty. Guilt is the brains way of telling itself (you) that you have violated a standard, rule or value in your life. Sometimes we feel guilty about stupid things that aren’t important because we have culturally programmed to do so. The first step is to know the difference between such times and times where we do really need to feel guilty.

I say need to because in order to keep our lives going forward and positively benefiting us, we need a way to make sure we do the right things for the right reasons. Far too often, people try and make excuses about what they have done and don’t just accept that they were wrong. They spend time justifying things because that’s the only way to let themselves off the hook.

Well there is another way… and it’s called being completely honest with yourself. When I look back into my past, even my very recent past I can see a few things that I feel guilty about. At this stage I have pretty much eliminated most of the unnecessary culturally programmed stuff, so what’s left are the things I have done or haven’t done which I feel guilty about. Maybe it’s to do with hurting myself or hurting other people but regardless, it’s times where I didn’t do what I should have done or did do what I shouldn’t have done.

In order to forgive yourself you first need to accept that you have messed up and that you were wrong or stupid. Once you do that you need to face up to the consequences of such actions and feel as strongly as possible about them. Next you need to make sure that you would never, ever make the same mistakes again or do these wrong things again. Once you promise this, you commit to it. Then you can truly let yourself forgive yourself.

Once you forgive yourself you always let yourself in the position to be in that can bring back such guilt as a reminder every time you have the choice to do something in the future. That way, you can always remember how important it is to do the right thing for the right reasons.

In Life, Good things happen and Bad things happen. Sometimes we are partly responsible for the bad things happening. When this happens we can learn our lessons and make sure that we instead change what we are doing and stop causing bad things from happening. After we have learned that lesson, it’s important that we let it go and create the best kinds of feelings in ourselves so we can get on with life and enjoy every moment as best as we can. That’s real freedom.