Its hard to forgive ourselves when things don’t feel like they are going the way we want them to. Whether it is a huge mistake we made or even something that feels so minuscule. We still beat up ourselves for it anyways. No one is perfect and were bound to mess up sometimes in life. But beating ourselves up over these things doesn’t help us do better. It just makes ourselves feel worse and makes it harder for us to pick ourselves up the next time when we make another mistake. We should learn to be easier and be more compassionate towards ourselves.
So with all of that being said, here are some ways we can forgive ourselves.
1.)Mistakes Can Be Our Teachers
One of the most important aspects in being able to forgive ourselves is being willing to learn from our mistakes. Once we start learning from our mistakes we can avoid repeating them. When we chose to beat ourselves up for these things we forget that there can be lessons learned from them.
Ask yourself some of these questions after you have made mistake:
- What caused this mistake to happen?
- Was the mistake or undesired action caused by an emotional trigger, a thing, person?
- What can i do differently to prevent this sort of thing from happening?
When we start to question are mistake from a perspective of curiosity and not judgement we can let go of this mistake and move on and gain wisdom from this we can use the experience as a way to grow and to learn. Depending on the situation, writing down what you were trying to accomplish and why you failed and what caused the mistake could help you understand the situation after time has passed. Also writing it down can help you prevent it by looking back at the notes to better prepare for a similar or identical situation that could potentially occur,.
2.)Listen and Work on Changing Yourself Talk
By bringing awareness of how we treat ourselves and what we say to ourselves we can then begin to slowly correct our negative thoughts. When we get so fixated on talking about ourselves badly we start to make it harder to do things, or even what we truly believe about ourselves.
- A good way to approach this is simply by instead of being critical of oneself is by simply asking questions and coming from a place of curiosity rather than judgment.
- Another way to help change your negative self-talk is through mediation and instead of responding to negative thoughts instead just listening to them and learning to quiet them rather than fight them.
- Set aside to time to write down some positive things about yourself every week or two too help show yourself some basic compassion. Getting rid of negative thoughts help, but it also helps to give your mind something else to focus on rather than simply trying not to think a certain thought. Replacing those thoughts can be a great way to start showing yourself love.
- One way that takes some extra time is to start a gratitude journal. Doing a gratitude journal at the end of the day or at the end of the week. Using a gratitude journal can get your self talk to a much more appreciative and get you into a mindset where yourself talk isn’t as negative.
3.)Recognize your Emotions
When we take the time to start to actually pay attention to the way we feel versus being instantly reactive to situations this helps us gain back some of the control in our lives. When we become explosive or sad we can often just sink into these feelings further which makes it easier to perpetuate narratives and the things we tell ourselves all of the time more frequently. Instead by learning to observe the way we feel we can than slow down the way we think this opens us up-to being able to be more forgiving to ourselves when we are upset. This allows us to hold a frame and gradually shift negative thoughts.
- The way we think influences our emotions dramatically as well, sometimes we jump to conclusions which can lead to severe negative thoughts because we get lost in all or nothing thinking. That basically means that we think things have to be perfect and incredible or that they are awful because things didnt go exactly the way we want. When you learn to shift away from all or nothing thinking you can defuse your emotional state easier because you start to recognize that things dont have to be one or the other, perfect or terrible. You learn that everything can be okay even if it wasn’t the exact situation you wanted to happen or even if you made a mistake.
- When we learn to slow down as well and not jump to the worst case scenario after you make a mistake you can help yourself from being so explosive if we can just take a second to breathe in and out and just stop for one moment and ask ourselves questions like these, it helps to ask these questions a couple times when were upset and when we calmed down we can then notice the two different responses and think more rationally :
- Is this possible to fix?
- Will things get better with time?
- What can i do to work through this current situation?
- Why am i upset? Is it as bad as i think it is or is it just fear?
- Are you thinking rationally as well or are you ignoring other facts that could support the opposite of what you feel. When we start to look at the facts versus the way feel, we can get better clarity and get a real idea of how bad a situation is versus how bad we just feel about the situation.
- Another way to recognize your feelings is talking about it when you don’t want tor when things feel really hard.
- By expressing our emotions to others this can help rationalize what you are thinking while also getting an outside perspective.
- Also it can help you feel more relaxed because this prevents us from bottling up our emotions and by talking about it and can help us process more easily.
- A great way to handle future situations with the problems we faces by reflecting upon the things that occurred in the prior week and how you reacted to them. And then challenge yourself to do better the next time. What did you do that you did like and would have liked to improve based upon the way you reacted to certain situations.
4.) Learning Not to Replay Scenarios in Our Heads
One of the things that we do is replay the same thoughts over and over in our heads we consecutively beat ourselves up for things that had already happened and the things we cant change. We get stuck on dwelling on these negative thoughts. And it ends up feeling practically inescapable.
- The first thing we can do is distract ourselves. By distracting ourselves we learn to be more present in the moment and not get so fixated on something we cant fix or change because it has already happened. Here is just a couple things you might be able to do:
1.) Do chores or run errands
2.) Watch your favorite shows or movies
3.) Go on a walk
4.) Read a book
5.) Play a game
- Another important thing we can do to that can help us deal with our problems and not getting so stuck on them is by talking to a friend. Talking to friends can help bring us to moment and process through our mistakes with them. They can also give you a different view on the problem. Its always important to make sure that there the type of friend you can bring a problem to and that person wont judge you for it. Its important to have person that’s supportive it can make dealing with replaying the idea over and over more manageable.
- Set aside some time to think of the positive things, things that have been going right in your life. The things that our good. This is another way to help us stop ruminating on negative thoughts. By recognizing your life has good things going for it, it can help us stop being so stuck on how things went wrong and can help us gradually shift our thoughts of what things are going right in our lives.
5.)Put Your Thoughts on Paper
Writing down your thoughts and getting them out can help you not only better process a situation but it can help you put things into a perspective for the situation. It cal also allow you to have perspective on things after your mind is more clear this allows you to leave what you wrote down and come back to it later which can really let you see the situation for what it is. This also can help prevent us from catastrophizing a situation which means that you don’t over react to a situation and helps you realize this isn’t the end of the world that this situation isn’t as bad as what it seemed to be in that very moment.
In Summary:
These are some ways that you can work on forgiving ourselves and working on shifting your mindset on a more positive outlook when things to go wrong or we make a mistake. Now it does take time and effort to apply these methods and one of the toughest things to do is remember when to apply things to our lives and what fits the situation. Its important to remember as well to be easy on ourselves when we try to be more forgiving and kind to ourselves and to switch our negative narratives we tell ourselves