
Forgiving Yourself
Sometimes life knocks you down, when it knocks you down just get back up when it knocks you down.
– Jordin Sparks, Modified
Disappointment, Depression, Despair. These are terrible emotions to feel towards one’s self. Yet they happen, and most people including me don’t know how to handle it.
The terrible thing about loosing belief in yourself (which is bound to happen sometimes) is that it’s difficult for anyone else to drag you back up out of the hole you dig yourself into.
There’s a quote I heard a long time ago.
It’s easy to forgive others for their mistakes but impossible to forgive them for witnessing ours.
I was confused when I heard this. I was even more confused when I realized it was true. Is it pride, ego, shame, or a combination of all that that makes us wanna hide our weaknesses, shame and failures from others and ourselves?
The most difficult part is forgiving yourself for failing you – not meeting the quarter goals, not doing that important thing you were meant to do – it can slowly lead us down a dark path of thought patters. It can lead to thoughts that make us think that the worst version of ourselves is the most dominant version, thought that changes the way we see ourselves. What you see is what you think and believe so when you see failure all around you, you think and believe failure is the default. Your general outloook becomes dark and somber.
There’s an alternative path though; Forgiveness.
Forgiveness is mostly used to imply forgiving others, that is very easy to do in my opinion. The most difficult forgiveness as to do with forgiving yourself. Forgiving yourself for your errors, your mistake, your shameful deeds, your irresponsibility, your lack of discipline, your lack of vision, etc.
Forgiving yourselves may seem extremely difficult but the price of the alternative is way too hefty to bear. The price of unforgiveness of yourself is loosing your dreams, losing your way, loosing your destiny and the greatness that lies within you.
A person who thinks his core is bad, can never produce good. A man who thinks he’s predominant output is failure can never produce success.
There’s a simple test I have devised for knowing if you have forgiven yourself truly, not only is this a test, but it also helps in the forgiveness process.
Simply, proclaim the opposite of your failing as a reality to yourself. e.g. Gbolade Ogunfowote is trim and fit (I’m currently overweight) so that’s a touchy one for me. This weight didn’t come overnight ofcourse, it’s an accumulation of bad decisions and actions. Looking myself in the mirror and proclaiming this challenges me at my most vulnerable concerning this failing, cos I can see that it’s a lie. Why I would go ahead to proclaim this and forgive myself of my past decisions is because I know that a man who sees himself as fat, overweight and not in control, can never be trim and fit which is my ultimate goal.
Another example for you may be: ______ is wealthy and rich. You can say this no matter the bank balance in your account. You may have come out of school with a 3rd class and not been able to get a job and be beating yourself up about it and blaming yourself and keeping yourself down out of guilt and regret, but saying those words to yourself over and over, would:
- help you forgive your past.
- Help you know that your past doesn’t predict your future
- Make you think up creative ways to achieve your desire and break out of the failure rut
As you can see, one of the greatest things that hold men back from greatness is lack of forgiveness of themselves. It is internal rather than external.
A man that cannot conquer himself, can not conquer the world.
No matter the vile character, the lack of discipline, the wasted opportunity, you can forgive yourself and rewrite your story today.
Pull off the garment of the past, forgive yourself, and make yourself new. and once again step onto the path of greatness that has always been your destiny, this time, with the right mindset.