The Importance of Forgiving Yourself

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Forgiving Yourself

By John Holland

Do you find forgiving yourself harder than forgiving others?

There may be times when you do something you’re not proud about. Yes, we all do it from time to time, some of us more often than others!

The feelings of shame and guilt will complicate your life causing stress and emotional discord. It weighs heavy on your soul. Societal conditioning encourages us to forgive everyone else for our actions, but if you don’t forgive yourself, you’ll end up holding the key to your own emotional captivity.

Many of us agonize over our past mistakes, living them over and over again in our minds, like a video player caught in a perpetual replay loop. It depletes your energy and prevents you from forgiving yourself. When you feel guilty, you attract punishment into your life, and in situations that are more serious, you even manifest it for yourself. It’s easy to reconcile the feelings, by saying: “I deserve this.”

In a previous newsletter I wrote the Serenity Prayer and there are two sentences in it, which I want to repeat. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can,” and “Your past mistake may not be fixable but you can acknowledge, accept, take responsibility for them and begin the healing process on yourself.”

If you’ve hurt someone and need closure with those feelings, maybe it’s time to be courageous. Talk to the person and really listen to them with an open heart as they explain how they’ve been hurt by you. Don’t go on the defensive – just listen. Understand how they feel. Try to apologize but if they’re reluctant to accept, then acknowledge the pain that you’ve caused.

Remember that it’s often just as important for the other person to come to terms with the hurt, to understand the whys and wherefores, as they need closure too. Equally, you may want to ask forgiveness from someone who’s passed away. When I link with spirit as a medium, I often connect with souls who look back at their lives and the people still on the earth plane with a new sense of wisdom, appreciation, and understanding. I’m sure they don’t take past grudges across with them. There are times when I feel their forgiveness in the link so strongly.

OM Times is a leading voice of the Conscious Community with articles covering the full spectrum of Conscious Living. Click here to see all we share.