What Makes Forgiving Yourself Hard

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was you.” – Lewis B. Smedes.

Do you have people and events in your life that were really difficult to forgive? Or maybe even ones you still have not forgiven?

Have those things just kept coming back to haunt you even though you believe that you have forgiven everyone?

Perhaps the one person you didn’t forgive was you!

I know, I have said that to people and their response was, “I don’t think I have anything to be forgiven for!”, but that’s not really what I am talking about.

What I refer to is the fact YOU have not forgiven YOURSELF. You have not forgiven you for taking part in all of it, for needing the lesson, for not forgiving others, for getting lost in it all … for all sorts of things.

You are still angry with the one person you are still blaming for everything … YOU!

So what makes you continue to blame yourself? To punish yourself?

Perhaps you don’t want to admit that you might have been wrong in the situation!

“Who me, wrong? Absurd!”

Does that sound familiar? How much energy are you wasting trying to justify what happened and how it happened and why it happened and on and on, looping back through everything trying to ensure that you were right in all of it.

You judge yourself much harsher than you judge others. Yes, it’s true. You believe that you should have known better, you should have handled it better, you should have … should have … really, really should have!!!

And when you don’t measure up to those “should haves”, then you are just so wrong!! You don’t want to be wrong … you want to be RIGHT! ALWAYS RIGHT!!!

How could you let yourself down like that? AGAIN! How dare you not measure up to those high standards that you have for yourself? How DARE you?!?!

You need to be punished. So now you punish yourself in some way like eating poorly or not sleeping or drinking too much or some such thing. Now you have abused your body so you have something else to not forgive yourself for!

It just goes on and on like that. Wrongness, rightness, judgment … heaped upon each other, looping over and over again. It’s exhausting!

You are giving so much of your energy to it. Energy that you could be using to create a life that you would like to live!

“Never forget that to forgive yourself is to release trapped energy that could be doing good work in the world.” – D. Patrick Miller.

So, what now?

Let Go Of Right And Wrong

I know it sounds hard, but one thing you need to do is to let go of the idea that you have to be right or wrong in the situation.

Let’s face it, in the long run, does it matter? You’ve wasted so much time and energy on it already and it hasn’t solved anything, has it? So allow yourself to just step aside from the whole thing.

There is an interesting tool we use in Access Consciousness® called “Interesting Point of View.” Everything is just an interesting point of view that we have taken for the moment and we can change that point of view at any time. We aren’t stuck with it, it really doesn’t have significance, and we can let it go anytime.

To use it, look at the situation and say “Interesting Point of View that I have about ______”. And then you can go a step beyond and say “Interesting Point of View that I have that Interesting Point of View about ______”.

Freeing isn’t it? It might even bring a smile to your face!!

Let Go Of Judgement Of You

Yes, it’s time to cut yourself some slack!

Realize that you have created a lot of standards for yourself and are constantly judging whether you measure up or not!

When you have judgments, you don’t see the things that don’t match those judgments, only the judgments themselves. You are letting so much of life pass you by because it doesn’t match what you have decided it must look like. So you create rejection, victimization, lack and the sense that you have no choice in life!

Wouldn’t you rather have a life that has choice and possibilities; that is open and expanding?

So when you start judging yourself, stop and ask yourself “What else is possible here that I haven’t considered?” and allow the Universe to show you the possibilities.

Allow that judgment and the feeling that you NEED to judge you, to just slip away!

Ready to forgive yourself now?

As the quote at the beginning of this piece says:

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was you.” – Lewis B. Smedes.

Are you ready to set yourself free?

Are you willing to stop holding yourself captive? To stop punishing you?

Life is a lot more fun when you forgive you and stop holding you hostage!

You deserve to forgive you so you can use all that energy to create a life you would love to live!

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Want to know more about questions and how to ask more effective questions? Check out my eBook, “5 Powerful Questions to Change Your Life” for even more concerning the power of asking questions!!