Authors: Lori Deschene
This terrible feeling continued, and tears began to stream down my face. Flashing before my eyes, I saw all the opportunities I had to visit Josh in the hospital but had chosen not to. Then my memory came to our fraternity meeting where Josh's death had been announced. His last wish had been that we would not forget him after he passed. I pictured Josh saying this over and over again.
And then a strange thing happened. I realized that not only was I not going to forget Josh, but that I would never make the same mistake again. In an instant, I had forgiven myself, let go of the pain, and accepted that I could still be a good person even though I had made a serious mistake.
I've learned a few things about self-forgiveness. One is that, despite our flaws, we are okay, just as we are. Your flaws, rather than making you “less” of a person, are what make you,
you
. What you think of as a defect actually makes you far more interesting to others. You are not perfect. You make mistakes. But you are also on a path of growth. Your mistakes and failures help you improve. As
flawed as you may be, you must accept yourself, flaws and all, if you are to make progress in your life.
You can do something wrong while still being a good person. A lot of guilt or shame can make you feel like there is something wrong with you. Realize, right now, that there is a very big difference between
doing
a bad
thing
and
being
a bad
person
. Even when you do something that you regret, you had a valid reason for doing it at the time (even if that reason doesn't make rational sense). You didn't do something bad because you are a fundamentally bad person; there was an intent, or valid motivation, behind your action.
If you are struggling with guilt, it might help to talk to someone about what happened. Sometimes you just need to get it off your chest. Talking to someone else about what is bothering you can have serious benefits. For one, it provides another perspective. When you are upset with yourself, emotions can cloud your reasoning abilities. A friend will often point out a reason you deserve to forgive yourself that you never would have seen. Secondly, it will likely make you feel better to realize someone else has your back. Knowing that other people are not as critical of you as you are of yourself can be encouraging.
If your internal voice is getting overly cruel, it can be helpful to “personalize” it. Imagine that there is some other entity that is thinking your self-critical thoughts, and have a conversation with them. It might sound silly, but you should give this entity a name, which will reinforce the idea that this voice is separate from you. During
your “conversation,” ask your internal, critical voice what their positive intention is. This voice is saying what it is saying for a reason. It might be to protect you, to prevent you from making the same mistake again, or to help you improve in some way.
When you realize that your thoughts of guilt or shame are intended for your benefit, it becomes easier to forgive yourself. You can find another way to satisfy that positive intent while reducing your guilty feelings. In my case, one of the positive intentions of my internal voice constantly shaming me was to help me remember Josh after he passed. Since forgiving myself, I have dedicated each of my yoga sessions to Josh, which ensures that he will not be forgotten.
If you still feel unable to forgive yourself, imagine your best friend did exactly what you did and has now come to you for advice. What would you tell them? You would reassure them and tell them not to be so hard on themselves. You would tell them that everyone makes mistakes. You would tell them that they deserve to be forgiven. Why can't you say this to yourself?
Forgiving yourself is far more challenging than forgiving someone else because you must live with yourself and your thoughts 24/7. Despite the challenge, an emotionally healthy person must have the capacity to forgive themselves when they have made a mistake. When you forgive yourself, you are not pretending as though it never happened. On the contrary, you are acknowledging that your actions have consequences. But the consequences need not include self-inflicted negative feelings.
Not forgiving yourself is like picking at an open wound; you are only making a bad situation worse. The wound is already there, but you have control over your reaction to it, and you can stop it from getting worse. If you can forgive yourself when you make a mistake, it becomes easier to address the consequences of your actions in a productive way.
by Lisa Stefany
Things and conditions can give you pleasure but they cannot give you joy—joy arises from within
.
—E
CKHART
T
OLLE
I struggled with anorexia for four years before I went to rehab. Rehab saved my life, and although I am not “completely recovered,” I am
in recovery
. I am coping. I am living again.
One of the biggest sources of fuel for my eating disorder was my hyperfocus on the physical and transitory aspects of life. In my mind, I overemphasized the importance of my body. I put the appearance of my body, and how I felt about my body, above my true, underlying nature. I would treat fleeting thoughts, feelings, and emotions as crucial, life-and-death matters. I did not realize or appreciate my enduring self, which (I now understand) transcends the fleeting states of the corporal realm.
When I was anorexic, surface feelings took on a villainous and critical role. I know this sounds melodramatic and unrealistic (because it is), but “feeling bloated” literally felt like the death of me. I could not separate my true self from my passing thoughts and feelings. A huge part of my recovery and self-discovery has been my
ability to separate my identity from the surface mental sewage that blocks my view of reality.
Through therapy, I realized that I am not my body—I am much more than just my physical form. Kind of weird, but also quite pleasant and freeing. Makes you feel lighter; makes you
live
lighter. I'm not saying that I'm some waif-like spirit, floating on the whimsical current of an indefinable world (that
would
be cool though). What I'm saying is that my physical self—my body, my fleeting feelings and thoughts—do not define
me
.
I am not just me sitting here typing this blog post. I am not me who ate apples with a whole lot of peanut butter for breakfast. I am not me who will take a sip of black iced coffee in about three seconds. I am a conglomeration, a whole melting pot of things and thoughts and feelings and actions and ideas and emotions. I am now and then, and I am more to come. I am so much more than what you see, how I feel right now, and what I think at a given moment.
If you accept and embrace this way of thinking—this “I extend past the fleeting, corporal now”—it makes it so much easier to accept yourself. If you make a mistake, you can just brush it off and move on. You might have
made that mistake
, but that mistake
does not make you
.
I am not dismissing how you feel and what you think in the present moment. Being present and aware of your thoughts and feelings is crucial for happiness as well. But your whole world expands when
you stop confining yourself to these drifting, passing mental mutterings. They come and go, and they may help to form who you are, but they are not entirely what you are or all that you have to offer. Not in the least.
So the next time you feel like crap—whether you feel bloated, or embarrassed, or hungover, or ashamed—just remember that what you feel right now is not the whole you. What people see right now is not the whole you. This moment will only define and defeat you if you let it. So don't.
by Maelina Frattaroli
Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are
.
—P
ROVERB
A friend of mine once said, “If there's a word in the English language I detest, it's ‘should.’ What a pointless, useless, waste-of-space (euphemism for other choice adjective) word.” I think he's right on the money. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, you
should
consider the definition of should, as defined by
dictionary.com
:
Should: must; ought (used to indicate duty, propriety, or expediency): You should not do that
.
There is always something we feel we cannot and
should
not do for fear of humiliation, regret, or having to explain ourselves to others (and sometimes to ourselves).
Should
is an instrument of regret. Maybe one of these sounds familiar to you: I should not have lashed out near the end of my last long-term relationship. He should not have been so insensitive or distant; that way I wouldn't have lashed out. I should really get a grip on life; people must think I'm unmotivated and stagnant. I shouldn't contact him so often; he must think
I'm annoying or needy. I should stop acting on my emotions because I'll regret it later. I should clearly try harder because my boss doesn't give me the time of day.
Some of these decisions may not lead to the results you want in life. But does it serve you to tag on a conditional disclaimer to everything you've said or done in the past? It does if you want to, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in
The Great Gatsby
, “beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” But in the real, modern world—without prohibition, flappers, speakeasies, jazz, and glam—it doesn't serve you to caveat your life with
should
if you want to experience life, in the moment, at its fullest.
It's not easy to remove this seemingly harmless word from your vocabulary because we're programmed to blame ourselves when things don't go according to plan or as we hoped they would—as if there's something wrong with us. It's almost as though we hold on to
should
to justify who we actually are: human beings with emotions and flaws.
The truth is, we will continue to occasionally make regretful decisions, lash out when we feel emotion, remain stagnant in unfavorable environments for fear of change, send one too many text messages to unresponsive people, or even lie to remove ourselves from uncomfortable situations. All things we're programmed to know we shouldn't do. I say we
should
do all those things (more hypocrisy—just to make a point). We
should
make mistakes sometimes. Why? Simple: so we can learn from them, and, in time, move
forward when we know how and why to do things differently. Not just because we should, but because we understand and are equipped to make that change.
I'm on this rocky road to self-discovery in several aspects of my life, and I'm learning to embrace it, even though it's difficult. Right now, my step is to try and distill all the past “should have/could have/what if/if I had/why didn't I say/why didn't he do” lines of thinking, and the illogical “if I had done X, then Y would have happened” mindset.
It's time to throw logic out the window—to analyze life less and live more. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to think for myself, not under the opinions or reign of anyone else. I suspect it won't be easy. I often stumble without being caught; but the next goal is to learn to catch myself. And if occasionally I don't, to remember that wise proverb:
tension is not who I am. It's not who you are, either
.
by Michelle Ghilotti Mandel
When you lose, don't lose the lesson
.
—U
NKNOWN
The spiral staircase has always intrigued the yogi designer in me. The visual draw, similarity to DNA, and cosmic patterns, as well as its mathematical genius, could be enough, but the structure can mean even more.
Picture yourself tripping up in work, life, or love. You've made a mistake, said the wrong thing, or didn't come through with your end of the bargain. You think: how did I let that happen? What a fill-in-the-blank I am. I can't believe I did that,
again
. If only I could rewind.
These aren't the greatest feelings—it's true. However, we live our lives in irony. Though we dislike how we feel having just tripped up, we continue to beat ourselves up for it way after the fact. We cause our own suffering. Furthermore, we seem to forget that when we make mistakes, we grow. An atmosphere of growth is integral to happiness. So, create happiness by seeing mistakes as true growth opportunities.
Although yoga, psychology, and conventional wisdom scream at us to live in the moment, I say we are not
just
the present moment.
We are very much our past in the most rich and helpful way. We can use past mistakes to yield a shiny new perspective and, in turn, create a new outcome. If we allow them, our mistakes can fuel our awareness. In helping us decide how to act and react in a fresh and fruitful way, mistakes can actually help bring us closer to happiness and further away from (causing our own) suffering.
Picture a most beautiful spiral staircase in Rome, Paris, London, New York, or Barcelona. Visualize its ample room. Now visualize yourself on this staircase, midway up. You're accomplished. You've come all this way. Look up at where you're going and down at where you've come from. Peek around and up at the spirals above; over and down at the spirals below.
Now comes the part that we don't like that's part of being human. You've suddenly tripped up and missed a step, and you've probably done something similar before. Look down at your feet. Yes, you are here, right now, and it's close to before—but not exactly. You are wiser today than yesterday. Though you might feel bad because you're encountering the same or similar problem, this time it's with a different view and perspective.
Accept where you are. You will immediately suffer less. Remember, this is merely one moment in time. It only defines you and your worth if you choose to make it a defining moment. Look down the middle of the staircase at what you've ascended. Keep hold of this view of yourself and see where you are now in comparison. Yes, this human moment has come to find you again, but you're
now higher up and can respond from a different place—literally, figuratively, emotionally, and intellectually. Ask yourself: How can I respond from this higher place instead of causing myself pain?