How to forgive yourself in 12 steps

Forgiveness is essential to our lives because it gives us peace. It is important to the healing process since it allows us to let go of the needs of the ego.

Forgiveness is what clears the interference between us and our higher selves. With that in mind, I’ve compiled 12 strategies that are meant to help you forgive yourself.

1. Cancel, Clear, Connect...

When you’re having a repeating negative thought about yourself, “cancel” it. When you recognize the subconscious thoughts that are attracting that conscious thought, “clear” your whole mind. When things do not leave us and they sit within our unconscious, we must utilize a mechanism to “connect” to what inspires us. Use that inspiration to overcome any feeling of doubt or shame.

2. Understand That You Can’t Out-logic Your Emotions.

One of the first steps in learning how to forgive yourself is to focus on your emotions. While it is difficult to trick yourself into feeling a different emotion, what you can do is to take action.

Think about something that makes you feel better, and take a positive action. Use negative emotion as a trigger to do something positive or productive. Change the way you look at things, so the things you look at change.

3. Make Your Internal Dialog External

Often, it can help to speak out loud the mistake we’ve made and the lessons we’ve learned from it. If you make a mistake and continue to struggle with letting it go, acknowledge out loud what you learned from making the mistake. You can even write them down as a reminder.

When you give a voice to the thoughts in your head and the emotions in your heart, you may free yourself from some of the burdens. You also imprint in your mind what you learned from your actions and consequences.

4. Remember That Mistakes Are Indicators

Each “mistake” is a learning experience that holds the key to moving forward faster and more consistently in the future. It’s a turn signal, not a stop sign.

When applicable, remind yourself that you did the best you could with the tools and knowledge you had at the time. Not taking yourself too seriously and taking a learning approach will help you forgive yourself and move forward.

5. Give yourself permission to stop, drop and decide when to roll.

When you are becoming frustrated with yourself over an error in judgement, stop and give yourself a mental break. Find an activity like meditation that helps you to feel at center and put your focus on that for a while. Then, either create a plan of action to deal with what is bothering you or let it fall away if it is less important after reflection. “Roll” in a positive direction.

6. Have a conversation with your inner voice and look for patterns

Journaling can help you understand your inner critic and the common triggers for your negative self-talk. Try writing out a “conversation” between you and your inner critic. Work to identify the thought patterns that are sabotaging your ability to forgive yourself.

You can also use journaling time to make a list of the qualities you like about yourself, including your strengths and skills, to help boost your self-confidence when you’re feeling down about a mistake you made

7. Don’t treat others like we treat ourselves.

We tend to be our harshest critics, so be aware of the times where you are critical or overly critical of others. When that happens, try to catch yourself in order to prevent any further harsh words or actions. Then, contemplate whether the thing that is bothering you about someone else could reflect something that bothers you about yourself.

8. Quiet the negative messages of your inner voice with positive affirmation

If the negative self-talk continues to repeat itself, write it down to acknowledge it. Then, flip that piece of paper over and write a counter-argument with all of the different reasons that this self-talk is inaccurate or unwarranted. If you find the same thought continuing, try re-reading this argument (or re-playing it in your head) in order to counteract it/

9. Forgive ourselves and others because we deserve it.

Remind yourself that when you forgive, it’s not that other people deserve your forgiveness. It’s that you deserve the peace that forgiveness brings. And we cannot be forgiving of others without first practicing forgiveness for ourselves.

10. Pretend you’re giving yourself advice... then take it!

Put yourself in an advisor’s shoes and think about the advice that you would give about how to move on from your current situation. Then, try taking that advice and putting it into action.

11. Use the conscious continuum to your advantage

In order to fight against a consistent inability to forgive yourself, you need to be consistent and persistent yourself. Pick a strategy or two and follow them every day, without quit, until it almost becomes second nature. Soon, you will practice forgiving yourself subconsciously, without even realizing it.

12. Seek professional help

If none of the other strategies seem to be effective for you and you are unable to forgive yourself, seek the counsel of a professional who has experience dealing with your particular area of need. Asking for help is never a weakness, it is a strength.