Letting go and letting in forgiveness is like taking off a jacket that weighs twice as much as you do. You are lifting a heavy burden off your shoulders and your heart, and letting the light and beauty of life back into your world. Learning how to forgive yourself will help you forgive others as well, for the weight of what you hold on to is holding you back in more ways than you may realize. Forgiving yourself for your guilt and shame will allow you an insight to a calmer and lovelier state of being.
Personally, I would recommend you to take the following steps. This is a long procedure, you need to have some patience and insist on the steps. When you finish all the steps, you will be totally released from your thing.
Step 1: Categorize the Offense
It has been noted that when the transgression involves one of these four things, we find it most difficult to forgive ourselves:
- You’ve done something to hurt someone else.
- You’ve engaged in some kind of self-destructive behavior and you’ve hurt yourself.
- You failed at something major, such as making your marriage work.
- You didn’t do something that you think you should have done, like save money for your child to go to college.
You can only begin the process of forgiveness once you’ve categorized your offense. The healing can start after you break down the problem and examine it from a distance.
Step 2: Identify the Hurt
You have to acknowledge that the stress you feel, and your broken heart, hurt feelings and guilt is what is crushing you so hard now. It’s not the offense you committed last week or 10 years ago that is making you feel bad, it’s the reflecting of the act that you are focusing on. What you need to do is let go of the habitual self-shaming and self-hatred before you can learn how to forgive yourself. Holding on to the negative feelings is destructive to your own personal growth and healing.
Step 3: Accept Yourself and Your Flaws
No one is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. Your flaws don’t take away from your beauty, they actually add to it, and because of them you are a more interesting individual. Recognize your magnificence, because it is there for sure and accepting yourself the way you are. This will help you start to grow and make progress in your life.
Step 4: Talk to Someone
Keeping your negative thoughts and feelings bottled up inside your head and your heart will eat you alive. Getting your feelings off your chest can help in immeasurable ways. Sometimes a close friend or family member could help, but a therapist is the most useful in situations of interminable guilt. A therapist offers an unbiased listening ear, and can help reframe the questions you ask yourself in order to pull you past all the feelings that are holding you back.
Step 5: Pay Your Dues
Forgiveness can be complicated in terms of reparation. If it’s an offense against another person, then their forgiveness can help you move towards forgiving yourself. If you’ve damaged property, then replacing it is the obvious means of making amends, but sometimes it is not so clear cut. It is up to you to decide when you’ve done enough good to deserve the forgiveness of another, without punishing yourself too harshly for too long.
Step 6: Don’t Dwell
Spending more time distressing and worrying about your mistakes, shortcomings, and failures, rather than mending the fault is common, but it can consume you. Focusing on the offense, the past, things you can’t change, can spiral your state of mind into a deep and miserable pit of self-loathing. This self-induced anguish is not how to forgive yourself. Taking on a more positive outlook is the proactive way of dealing with our guilt. In the beginning you may not feel it, but staying positive for long enough will become your reality. When your reality is optimistic, you will heal naturally.
Step 7: Don’t Be Afraid to Start Over
Sometimes the art forgiving yourself means having to start all over again. It’s not just learning to live with what happened, but actually rebuilding from scratch on a new foundation, whilst keeping the guilt out of your mind. As difficult as this may be, living in the remorseful feelings you’ve built for yourself will keep you closed off from all of the beauty in life. Starting over is invigorating and cathartic, and you deserve it.
Step 8: Move Toward Self-Love
Learning how to love yourself and build your self-esteem back up is the last step in forgiving yourself. You are your own champion, and you deserve to treat yourself with kindness, compassion and love. You can find your path to true self-love with the help of books, daily affirmations, and a support system of positive and caring people, or you can also find it in a therapist or life coach. You are your number one priority, and it’s time to reaffirm to yourself that you are worth it.