FEEL LIKE YOU F***ED UP? FIND AND ACCEPT FORGIVENESS HERE

Have you ever noticed that you’re hard on yourself, taking forever to let go of past mistakes? If you’re anything like me, you’re super self-critical and might find yourself unable to let go and move on after something happens. I have long had a problem with forgiving myself, but after lots of practice and therapy, I’ve started changing my outlook. Here’s some tips to help you forgive yourself – and to allow others to forgive you as well.

Realize that forgiveness has an amazing healing power – and like attracts like. If you’re in a situation where you’re constantly beating yourself up and not forgiving yourself for your mistakes, the people around you are going to feel a bit beat up and unforgiven as well. Realize that there’s amazing healing power in the act of forgiveness. It’s more than saying I’m sorry, but apologies are a good start on the road to forgiveness.

By forgiving, you face up to the mistakes you’ve made in the past and move on from them, hopefully with a lesson learned.

These emotional traumas and burdens take a toll on our bodies. This emotional burden is going to cause very real physical stress and tension in the body. Try to take some time to release that tension with a self-care/soul-care session. Grappling with this emotional burden and facing it headfirst will help you to start to dissipate it with the power of forgiveness.

Realize that nobody is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. Sure, you might feel like you goofed bigtime. But your vinas make mistakes too, and from those mistakes we can get to a shared understanding that nobody’s perfect and we’re all in this together.

Here are some steps to forgiving yourself and allowing others to forgive you, adapted from a super handy Psychology Today article I read:

• Categorize the core nature of the offense. Did you insult someone? Did you cheat or lie? Get to the bottom of what you’ve done that needs forgiven, at the core of everything. This allows you to take kind of a cold, hard look at what you did and why you might be needing forgiveness. You can even do this with yourself, if you haven’t hurt someone else. You might forgive yourself for tripping up your diet progress or canceling on a night out. Either way, you have to get to the core of the issue first.
• Once you’ve gotten to the core issue, recognize the feelings that that transgression might have caused. It might have caused anger, confusion, or a feeling of failure. Recognize those feelings – that way you’re able to really see the impact of asking forgiveness.
• Understand what you want and release any unrealistic expectations. Know that if you’ve really hurt one of your vinas, it might not be so easy for them to get out of those hurt feelings. Similarly if you’re trying to forgive yourself, you have to know that this is a process and you have to work towards your goal continuously.
• Apologize and make things right. Once you’ve done this, try and stop the constant replaying of the issue in your head over and over again. The situation has changed – it’s getting better. Try to remind your brain of that every so often. 🙂
• Be good to yourself and give yourself a break! Releasing this stress will probably feel good both physically and mentally. You know that now you’re in a place where things can only get better from here. Once you get forgiveness, and forgive yourself, you’ve acknowledged you make mistakes, but the best part of being a work in progress is learning from this situation.

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to forgive yourself or sought the forgiveness of others? How’d it work out for you? What steps did you take? Let us know below in the comments!