Forgiving Yourself

Forgiveness. If you ever had to think of something random and complex enough to get someone’s attention verbally, well that’s probably the proper word. Forgiveness has to be like one of the top five most difficult words to digest in mankind’s history. Not being dramatic, just speaking the truth. One of the hardest lessons we have to learn is forgiving others. Perhaps an even harder lesson is learning to forgive ourselves.

As human beings it is in our nature to be hard on our fellow man. I know, we’re all well aware of that reality. Many of us are dealing with someone right now who seems like the bane of our existence, but what we fail to realize is the person we are the toughest on is the one we see when we look into a mirror. What we as the human race fail to realize is much of our brokeness, as well as our rocky relationships and interactions we have with other people is because of unforgiveness of the self that we are dealing with inside.

Where does this unforgiveness of self come from? Well there’s a variety of answers to that question, but let’s start with the choices of the past. You might find this hard to believe, but once upon a time some of us weren’t the little darlings that everyone knows us as today. Some of us were criminals, some of us were addicts, some of us were selfish, some of us were even abusive. Some of us also aren’t like that anymore, but we also haven’t fully let go of how and who we used to be.

Many of us who struggle with forgiving ourselves want to change and are trying to change, but we haven’t fully made peace with the impact of our actions from that detestable person we once were. It’s here that the demons of negative self talk find their way into our minds with intrusive thoughts when we take even the slightest chance at redemption or living some form of a fruitful life. “Oh you’ll never change” “you’ll always be that bad seed” “you’ll always be that hellraiser” “those good people will never accept broken glass such as yourself”. It’s normal to have feelings like this when you’re recovering from who you used to be, but it’s wrong when you believe them.

No matter how far you may have fallen in the past, if you are trying to turn over a new leaf and become a better person, then you deserve a chance at a bright future. When you learn to forgive yourself all the intrusive thoughts that suggest otherwise will fall on death ears.

I personally feel like one of the biggest contributing factors to us not forgiving ourselves are our mistakes made in past relationships. Once upon a time, twice upon a time, maybe a even a million and one times have we allowed ourselves to become the wrong person due to a toxic relationship. We all know how this one goes: we fell for the wrong person and compromised ourselves in some of the most unfit ways. I’m doing this we lowered our sense of self worth and if we by chance did snap ourselves out of our toxic trance then we probably hated ourselves and put up this emotional wall of self defense to keep ourselves from going astray again.

That wall I mentioned before sounded like a healthy idea on first contact until you realized that it was hindering you from the healthy relationships that could’ve been. You tell yourself “I’m not good enough for a good person and I won’t even dare take a chance because of the mistakes I made in the past”. This kind of brokeness of the heart has to be healed.

Forgiving ourselves comes when we reconcile with our past. We have to look back on our demons from old make peace with them. We do that by acknowledging what we did wrong, but also realize that these choices are not who we are anymore and that we can change and become something better. Once we become something better then we are worthy of better, worthy of forgiveness. Take a minute to reflect on your past. Make your peace with it, be gentle with your reflection, forgive yourself and move forward. You are worth it…