On this self-growth journey, one of the most important concepts I’ve had to learn is self-forgiveness. The reason is that I had failed myself so many times, resented myself for that and had to make peace with myself in order to move forward. This is why I believe it’s the best concept to kickstart our self-growth journey so we are all on the same page. To move forward, it’s important to let go of the past.
For a while now, I’ve been working on my mindset so I can become a better version of myself. This was influenced by a series of encounters that forced me to look inward including my mum’s incessant badgering to ‘CHECK YOURSELF’. I have been doing that ever since I was a teenager. I have checked, evaluated and analyzed every one of my actions ever since to ensure I was growing and making progress. I am pleased to inform you that I have failed over and over again and disappointed myself more times than I could believe. I didn’t even realize it was possible to hold a grudge against myself until I stumbled across the concept some years back.
What does self-forgiveness mean?
Forgiveness is all about making a deliberate decision to let go of feelings of anger, resentment and retribution towards someone who you believe has wronged you (including yourself). While forgiving others may be easy for some of us, forgiving ourselves seems to be a herculean task. Self-forgiveness means that you accept your faults, you accept that your actions has caused a negative effect in your life and you are willing to move past it and move on with your life without fixating over it knowing that what has happened cannot be changed. As I am now learning, self-forgiveness allows me to separate who I am from the mistakes I’ve made. It allows me to learn from my mistakes and gives room for growth. Showing compassion to yourself allows you to learn how to forgive yourself and extend that grace to others too as well. It allows you to let go off feelings that are not serving you. It is definitely not a sign of weakness. Neither does it mean that you’re condoning the bad behavior. It’s about understanding your emotions, accepting responsibility of what has happened, stop making excuses or trying to justify your actions or pushing blame around, treating yourself with kindness and compassion, expressing remorse or apologizing, making amends while focusing on the silver lining (the lessons of the experience) and making better future choices.
There are so many reasons why we may be holding a grudge against ourselves. It could be because we have failed ourselves by making poor financial decisions or we have sabotaged our growth by being lazy or misusing an opportunity. It could be that we are even holding a grudge against ourselves because we know that we have disappointed both ourselves and our loved ones. For me, it’s all of the above. My guilt has its root in wanting to be accepted and to be the best so I tend to set unrealistic goals for myself which oftentimes turns to be too much for me to handle. Instead of being honest with myself, I let my fear of failure get to me, and I sabotage myself by procrastinating and being inconsistent. Eventually I get overwhelmed by the amount of work I need to do in a short period of time and then fail at whatever goal it is I had set. As if that’s not enough, I proceed to drown my sorrows in movies, distractions and useless activities like daydreaming (like a drunk does with alcohol). As soon as I’m able to forget the guilt, I do the same thing over again. It became a vicious cycle that ensured I was not moving in the direction I wanted. I resented myself because I felt I was mediocre (I even wrote a poem about it) and worse, I was letting my family down. As the first-born child, there were expectations from me. My mother expected me to lead my sisters and all I did was the barest minimum. I definitely had goals and expectations from myself but I didn’t seem to be reaching those ones either (the ones that truly mattered). I only cared about passing my grades and doing things that would bring me external validation but was not relevant to building the person I wanted to become. Whatever the reason might be, not forgiving yourself keeps us stuck and hinders your progress.
What happens when you don’t forgive yourself
As an intuitive person, I spend a lot of time in my head which means holding a grudge with myself only leads to heightened negativity, making my headspace an unbearable place to be. Losing faith in myself was the first problem I noticed when I realized I was holding a grudge against myself. I would fixate on emotions like guilt, shame or anger (mostly frustration) because I felt as though I had let myself down over and over again. Dwelling on my mistakes led to self-resentment and low self-esteem because I could not trust myself and constantly doubted my capabilities. I often felt like a fraud. Whenever I got a little bit of motivation, I would be filled with thoughts like what if I fail again. From then on, I would be productive but that only lasted a few days. I had to accept that action needed to be taken to stop my self-sabotaging traits. I lacked time management skills and would procrastinate till the right time passed. Then I would ignore that guilt in my heart that it was totally my fault that I let the opportunity pass me by. I knew if I went on like this, I would never reach my goals so I made a change starting with a meditation practice I stumbled upon while listening to a podcast. I cried so much after meditating because I realized I needed to let go of those feelings in order to move forward. It was so hard to finally accept that If I didn’t stop, I would completely lose faith in myself and fail eventually.
A lot of us often deal with this problem but we rarely speak about it. It’s an internal struggle and a burden we carry around because of the fear and the shame. Some of us even believe no one would understand so we never consider talking about it. What we don’t realize is that whatever goes on in the mind shows up in the body. This is because the mind, body and soul are connected in a way that can only be explained by Allah. For instance, when you’re tense, your body expresses it through the frown on your face, the profuse sweating or even the bunched-up muscles in your shoulders. Guilt is an emotion that shows up in your body the same way. The more troubled your mind is, the more tense, uncomfortable or irritated you are. It’s no wonder they say everyone in Lagos is mad. Most of us are going through life unaware of how to regulate the emotions we feel so we just operate on auto pilot. Not realizing what is even wrong with us in the first place. The truth is that most people are unfulfilled. Some of us are constantly attacking ourselves because we have not met ours, or our family’s or societal expectations. We end up thinking ‘maybe I’m just a worthless person’ or ‘I’m bad person’. Some of us outrightly give up and then we stay stuck, not having any real growth to account for. In essence, what we are left with are adults with no healthy outlet to express their frustrations so we are easily triggered and we lash out.
What forgiving yourself feels like
Self-forgiveness is a proactive practice that allows your mind and body to stay calm when facing difficult emotions instead of falling easily into the mental trap of shame, anger and despair. It leads to fewer mental health problems, better emotional well-being, healthier relationships, positive behavior change, higher levels of self-satisfaction and self-compassion.
When you practice self-forgiveness and acceptance meditation, you are practicing compassion, releasing negative feelings and thoughts, accepting responsibility for past actions and mistakes and committing to making better choices.
It has taken years of faith and mindfulness to finally accept that as humans, its normal to fail at something but what is not okay is letting the guilt hold you back from trying again. Failure is a form of learning and if we never got back up when we fell, we would never learn to walk. I needed to forgive myself for my past errors and focus on changing the self-sabotaging traits that were leading to my failures. Holding myself to realistic standards and focusing on better habits were my ways of making amends.
As a Muslim, I constantly reminded myself that even Allah (SWT) loves to forgive as long as you sincerely repent. No matter how many times you fall, Allah forgives you when you come back with sincere repentance. The same applies to you. When you fail yourself, it’s necessary to accept your fault and sincerely commit to making better choices.
When it comes to your mental well-being, practicing self-forgiveness boosts your feeling of wellness and improves your self-image. When you don’t forgive yourself, you struggle to move on from your mistakes and assume an identity that is untrue, leading to mental stress. However, those who practice self-forgiveness experience lower levels of depression and anxiety, higher-level of productivity, focus, concentration and success. Since I faced my guilt thoughts, I’ve felt as though a weight has been lifted off of me. It has had meaningful contribution to my growth, improved my outlook in life, my focus and my emotional wellbeing.
Like I pointed out earlier, whatever your mind feels shows up in your body. This means that when you practice self-forgiveness, your physical health improves. Scientists believe that it improves your cholesterol level, bodily pain, blood pressure and lowers the risk of a heart attack.
As someone who is very family oriented, the need to be at my best is important so I can present the best version of myself to my loved ones. No one likes the cranky sister. Practicing self-forgiveness gives you a compassionate and forgiving attitude. It helps you to be more accepting and understanding of others. It increases your empathy and generally enhances your relationship with people. You’re even able to forge close emotional bonds with your loved ones. For married folks, it helps to repair broken relationships and facilitates a better understanding of your partner.
The 4r of self-forgiveness includes responsibility, remorse, restoration and renewal. To forgive yourself, you must accept responsibility for what has happened, express remorse, guilt or other similar emotions that point out your fault, make amends in order to restore self-trust and self-confidence and focus your thoughts on taking better actions in the future so as to limit the feelings of guilt and regret.
Feeling guilt is actually considered healthy because it means that deep down you consider yourself a good person that made a mistake. However, shame means you consider yourself a bad person and that could lead depression or addiction. When you acknowledge your mistakes, it doesn’t take away your values. I am learning that forgiveness is a choice that says that I want what is best for myself and I have to make tough choices and work through problems and consequences to see results. I hope you have learnt something new. If you have a story about how you have practiced self-forgiveness and its effects in your life, kindly share. Till we meet next time, peace be unto you!
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