Forgive Yourself: Let it go. Fall down. Meet the real you.

It’s hard enough to forgive others when they’ve hurt you but it’s even harder to forgive yourself. Forgiving yourself means admitting you’re not perfect, that  you’re not 100% innocent and that you have some things to learn. These are tough concepts to wrestle with even on a good day never mind when you’ve actually done something wrong. And let’s face it,  sometimes you just think you’ve done something wrong because sometimes we haven’t even done anything wrong but it still feels that way because we’re so tough on ourselves.

Similar to forgiving someone else, forgiving yourself doesn’t make what you did right, acceptable or ok. Forgiving yourself just means owning it. It means letting it go and accepting that it doesn’t need to define who you are or who you want to be. It means you have to look in the mirror and be honest with yourself (which your ego really really hates to do.)

It means falling down.

Here’s the thing about falling down though. When you fall down, you actually meet the foundation of who you really are. The ground, the bedrock, the bottom – that’s where your feet should be planted and forgiving yourself actually helps you to get back to this place. It helps you to meet the real you.

So how do you forgive yourself? You cry. You feel bad. You sit with it.  You accept that you can’t change it. You accept that it’s in the past.

You let it go.

You meet the real you.