Laura Small
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

A Beginners Guide To Self-Forgiveness

In a busy, unpredictable world, it’s easy to forget about forgiveness. The implication of forgiveness is that a mistake was made or something went wrong. In order to talk about forgiveness, we must first discuss mistakes. Mistakes happen every day. Living an open, creative and thoughtful life will result in repeatedly making mistakes. All too often we let our fear take over and we put ourselves in situations where fear holds us back from making future mistakes. Fear keeps us grounded in a reality where safety rules and mistakes are rare.

The problem with this logic is that even when you let fear guide your decision making, you still make mistakes. Making mistakes is an inevitable part of being human. Mistakes can feel scary and uncomfortable, but what’s arguably worse than making mistakes is what happens after. For many of us, on the other side of our mistakes is a whirlwind of self-loathing thoughts. Self-loathing thoughts are negative units of energy that swirl around in our mind, often in a repetitive loop. Self-loathing thoughts pave the way for you to make negative conclusions about your self-worth. They play to your fear and keep you from learning and growing.

Here is how the cycle plays out:

Fear → Overcome fear to take on a challenge → Make a mistake → Self-loathing → Stop taking risks

One important way you can free yourself from the fear of making a mistake and having to overcome the fallout from that mistake is through a practice of self-kindness. And in particular, a practice of self-forgiveness. Forgiving others is challenging, but forgiving ourselves is even harder.

Forgiving ourselves is hard for the following reasons:

  • We put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else
  • We have to live with our actions and thoughts every day
  • Self-loathing thoughts can easily take over
  • Our actions hurt someone else

All of these reasons make sense. All of them make self-forgiveness challenging. But if we don’t forgive ourselves, how can we continue to take on challenges, get out of our comfort zone and continue to evolve as individuals. Mistakes provide an opportunity for growth and learning. And isn’t growing, learning and evolving as an individual part of what living a fulfilling life is all about? Self-forgiveness frees you up from all of those reasons listed above, it allows you to overcome them in a thoughtful way.

It’s important to recognize that self-forgiveness should not replace learning from a mistake. If you make a mistake, you should always try to learn from it. Those learnings are the red meat of this entire process. If you approach the process of understanding your mistakes from the position of self-loathing, learning from your mistakes will be clouded with judgement and fear. However, if you approach this process from a position of self-forgiveness, learning and growing from your mistakes is a kind and thoughtful process.

Embracing a practice of self-forgiveness provides you the emotional nurturing you need to extract the important lessons from your mistakes, grow from them and move forward.

What if the cycle looked more like this:

Fear → overcome fear to take on a challenge → make a mistake → self-forgiveness → learn from mistake → repeat cycle.

I challenge you to embrace self-forgiveness and keep making mistakes.

Laura Small

Written by

Digital Community Organizer, Sister, Writer, Pro Bono Life Coach & Connoisseur of Fun!

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade