Apr 28 2008
Self Esteem Week
Today, I’m kicking off Self-Esteem Week, so give yourself a big hug and pat yourself on the back! I’ve already got a few guest posters lined up, but I’d love to have as much input from you as possible. If you’d like to write a guest post or suggest a topic for this week, please let me know! If there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to arrange multiple posts per day or extend Self-Esteem Week to accomodate all the topics you’re interested in.
The topic of the day is forgiveness. In a previous post, I talked about my tendency to obsessively relive the past. Unfortunately, I don’t tend to relive happy or proud moments, but experiences that were negative in some way–usually incidents in which I “messed up.” Reliving those memories is accompanied by a barrage of negative internal self-talk. How could you be so stupid? What were you thinking? What’s wrong with you? It gets pretty ugly, and as you might imagine, it has a significant impact on my self-esteem.
I caught myself doing this again the other day, and it got me thinking about the importance of forgiveness. I don’t know about you, but I find it much easier to forgive someone who’s hurt me than to forgive myself for hurting someone else. All my mistakes and misdeeds just sit in the pit of my stomach like a stone. They’re weighing me down! Refusing to forgive myself keeps me trapped in an endless self-criticizing loop in the past, preventing me from fully enjoying the present and from planning for the future.
Forgiving yourself is hard, that’s for sure, but fortunately, it’s not complicated. In fact, it’s as easy as ABC (or to be more precise, ABCD):
- Acknowledge the mistake. Admit what you did wrong–both to yourself and to the person you hurt–and offer a sincere apology. I’m usually pretty good at this step.
- Become a good student. Why did you do it? What can you learn from it? How can you keep it from happening again. There’s a lesson in this experience–find it and internalize it. This is something I generally neglect to do. In fact, until I started researching this article, it never occurred to me to think about why I did something wrong. I was too focused on feeling guilty to think about learning from the experience.
- Correct, don’t punish. Your mission is not to judge and condemn yourself, but to gently correct yourself. Heaping scorn, guilt, shame, blame, and criticism upon your head won’t do anyone any good. (One extreme of this behavior would be a self-harm response such as cutting.) It helps me to think about this in terms of the way I’d discipline my niece. If she did something wrong, I’d definitely correct her, but I wouldn’t punish her by shaming her for the incident or telling her she was a bad person.
- Decide to accept yourself and move on. You’ve admitted your mistake and made amends. Now let it go. It helps me to do this out loud. “Yes, you snapped at your friend. You took her phone call even though you were feeling stressed and frustrated at work. Next time, you’ll know to just let the call go to voice mail when you feel that way. You already apologized, which was the right thing to do. You’re a good person and a good friend, and you’re going to leave this mistake behind you.”
Do you struggle with forgiving yourself? Do you have any tips for practicing forgiveness?
Table of contents for Self-Esteem Week
I’m overly critical of myself all the time. I can accept others mistakes at being human but I won’t allot the same way of thinking to myself.
What I’ve learned to do is keep telling myself it’s okay to make mistakes as long as I keep learning and do my best not to repeat them. Even if it’s hurtful towards another person, I’m a firm believer in karma and I try me hardest to always be mindful of that and to always own my accountability in any given situation even when I don’t want too!
Great post!
My advice: get older. It’s amazing how much easier it is to let things drop and forgive yourself when you’ve had a few more decades under your belt. Eventually one realizes that everyone is human and it’s in our nature to screw up.
But if someone is impatient, yours are much better suggestions and they can help things a lot faster!
I’m worst about this when it’s a chronic bad habit. If I do something out of character, it’s a little easier to let go. I do something like ABCD, but for me, D is more like: “I know that I’m bad about…. (being late, being nasty when I’m hungry, procrastinating, etc.)… and that’s okay. I’ll continue to try and minimize the impact, but we all have faults, and this is one of mine, and that’s okay.
Hooray for self esteem week!
You asked if we struggle with self forgivness and I think it’s fairly safe to say that I (like many others) do. One thing I noticed in your post is that you mentioned you have a hard time letting go of the past - I tend to do this, but over time it’s lessoned a bit. I find myself moving past this mistake/issue/screw up and letting go(at least that is what I tell myself) and I try to take the lesson that I’ve learned and not repeat it, however the next time I am faced with a similar situation I am that much more critical of myself than I was before. Not only do I relive the past (and all my negativity) over analysing every detail (trying to escape repeating it) I basically psych myself out. I know what doesn’t/didn’t work but I don’t always know what will work so I beat myself up about it.
Granted this is also a double edged sword because for all the negativity I can bring into my life, if I tackled a situation and won-you bet I’m going to relive that moment too…and that’s a pretty good self esteem booster!
~K
I have improved with D a lot over the years. I have certain characteristics that I simply have to admit to, and just ask others to accept that about me. I tend to be a drama queen when a tough situation first arises. But I get it out of my system quickly. Usually, by the next day, I’m fine and ready to move forward with fresh ideas. It’s almost like I need the crazy time so that my head can clear itself all the way. I also admit out loud to anyone I may affect if I am tired and cranky. Sometimes just the acknowledgement to witnesses can help one to not revert to their habit behavior.
Great post! I can’t wait to read the guest posts!
Isn’t it funny how we can forgive others easier than we can forgive ourselves? Sometimes I need to remember WHY it is that I shouldn’t think too highly of a person, when they really don’t deserve it (okay, yes, I’m talking about a guy). I just forgive so easily — but don’t worry, I DON’T forget. Not takin’ that loser back, no sirrreee…
I need to work on all of this. Bad memories or decisions will replay in mind at the oddest times. I hate when I am going along and everything is fine and WHAM a blast from the past tries to knock me over.