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Self Improvement Index
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Learn to Forgive Yourself
You cannot make process in personal growth and personal development until you learn to forgive yourself.
Many people will replay their mistakes repeatedly, adding more self-criticism every time they do it. However, as much as you would like to be perfect, it will never happen. Human beings do make mistakes.
Because your life will never be mistake-free it is crucial that you learn to forgive yourself, when you make mistakes. If you do not learn to forgive yourself, you will spend much of your life in the past, rather than in the present and future. The fear of making mistakes will intimidate you in setting and achieving new goals, in other words, you will not grow.
Personal growth and personal development is about becoming wise gradually, and not all at once. Scolding yourself over past and present mistakes will not let you go forward. You need to understand where you have made the mistake, you need knowledge and experience when making a good decision, however, this is often not the case.
Even if you do have all the facts, there are other elements that come into play, like emotional bias and acting to quickly. The mature view is that you did the best you could at the time. Here is where you need to learn to forgive yourself, so you can move forward.
Beating yourself up over a mistake will not change the past. Instead, you should take a step back and try to objectively figure out what went wrong. For ever mistake you make, it will contain a lesson to be learned. You need to acknowledge that you did the best you could, at that time; this will take the blame out of the mistake and consequently will make it easier for you to come away with something worthwhile from the mistake you have made.
Learning to forgive yourself requires an environment of forgiveness. Picture yourself at school learning a subject; every time you make a mistake, the teacher smacks you across the hand with a ruler. |
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Now you may be thinking this is cruel and unacceptable, however, you need to understand that every time you do not forgive yourself you are doing the same thing to yourself. You know that a positive, supportive atmosphere is best when learning, so you owe it to yourself to take this attitude towards your own mistakes.
Remember, that you are the teacher as well as the student. When you learn to forgive yourself, you will motivate yourself to try different things and do things in different ways, allowing you to try again. When you do make mistakes, give yourself a good talking to, and move forward leaving the mistake behind.
When you learn to forgive yourself you will be able to forgive others, like you, they are also doing there best. Maybe their social skills are not what they could be, or maybe they are struggling just like you. So why should you judge them, after all they are only human.
You can be harsher on yourself than you can be on others. The question is why should you be harsh on anybody? There is one thing everybody needs in their life and that is forgiveness. You will just alienate others by pointing out their faults and shortcomings. To be honest the chances are they are already painfully aware of them anyway. So I ask you a question, how would you feel, if someone pointed out these things to you? Forgiveness, compassion and respect will build others up, and then these people will help build you up too, if you learn to show these qualities towards yourself, you will learn to forgive yourself.
You can stay miserable the rest of you life, or you can carry on making the same mistakes. Or you can say to yourself “I am going to forgive myself and give myself permission to heal” You have to decide whether you are going to rebuild a new relationship with yourself and remove the roadblocks that are blocking your path to living your life to the full. Or if you are going to carry on doing the same things that keep you right where you are.
When you are faced with pain through your mistakes, you need to open yourself up. Again, it will be your choice to say to yourself “I am willing to consider that there is another way to adjust and deal with my mistake”.
A large part of learning to forgive yourself is to understand that you do not have to punish yourself. You need to give yourself permission to let go of past mistakes. If you are unable to forgive yourself, it is possible that you are holding yourself up to unrealistic expectations. You need at this point to decide whether you want to continue living with your mistakes or not. Once you have made this decision, you need to create a new relationship with yourself.
How much and how quickly you grow depends on the way you treat yourself, when you make a mistake. Once you do this, you will not only be happy, you would have changed you life. Added to this you would have also furthered your personal growth and personal development allowing you to create a new life that will overflow with achievement and success.
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