I’m all about generating original content here at Semi-Charmed Wife, but sometimes,  brilliant people put out such great stuff that I am compelled to highlight it! Today’s post comes to us once more from Stephanie Qilao at Back in Skinny Jeans. I love her “Tiny Changes” strategy–I’ve featured it before, and I’m featuring it again!

The topic is… (drum roll) FORGIVENESS!

Go read the post–I’ll wait…

This week, pick one low hanging grudge, something minor, you’ve been holding onto and let it go. Forgive the other person and yourself.

I forgive you, A. I was really hurt that you shared what I told you in confidence, and I was angry that you dragged me into your personal drama with W. But I recognize that I had a large role in this mess, and I’m really sorry for it. I forgive both of us for being petty and small.

When you feel you can be emotionally objective for a moment, take a few minutes, and make a list of the top 5 things you’d like to forgive and heal, so you can let go of it. You don’t need to take any action yet, just write the list. The simple act of writing the list states your intent, and is a move in the direction of your joy. When you are ready, start to tackle each item on the list one at a time.

1. I’d like to forgive my parents.
2. I’d like to forgive my Christina.
3. I’d like to forgive ex-husband.
4. I’d like to forgive God (or whatever you want to call Him/Her/It).
5. I’d like to forgive myself.

Ask yourself, “What am I gaining by holding onto these hurts, grudges, and pains?” The only reason we hold onto to anything is because of some perceived benefits whether real or imagined. There is a part of you that is benefiting from holding onto the past. By looking at it consciously, you may find out that you don’t even remember why you’re even holding on to some of the hurts your holding on to. In other cases, you can gain insight on what you need to heal.

The answer is the same for all of them. By holding onto anger and pain, I am getting something very valuable–an excuse. Why did I throw away my first shot at a college education? Because of problems from my childhood, of course. I can’t be held responsible for that. Where did I first learn how to make myself throw up? From Christina. Clearly, it’s not my fault that I developed a severe eating disorder and gave into it for ten years. Where did I first learn to depend on substances instead of deal with my problems? From my ex-husband. He’s the one who taught me about drugs. Why did I get the breast cancer gene and have to have a masectomy? Why did I then have an allergic reaction to painkillers and have to go through it with only Tylenol? Oh, that was God. I never did anything to deserve that. But seriously, it’s all my fault. I’m a horrible, awful person and need to be punished. So I should drink too much. I shouldn’t exercise and eat right. I should sabotage friendships. I should push away people who love me.

That’s right. Holding onto this anger and pain just gives me an excuse for bad behavior.

Ask yourself, “What will I gain by letting go of these hurts, grudges, and pains?”

I will gain peace of mind, emotional comfort, focus, insight, and clarity. I’ll be able to look at myself clearly–without the distorting veil of hurt–and see what it is I’m here to do and how I can best do it. I’ll gain something I lost a long time ago–self-worth and personal power.

Is it more important for you to be right or to have peace? Sometimes, we hold onto an anger or grudge because we need to feel that we were in the right, and we cannot forgive until that other person admits that they were wrong and you were right. But really, each person has a part in an argument, and each person has a part in the forgiveness process. Does it really matter who makes the first move, and is it really worth it to waste valuable peaceful times with friends, loved ones, or collegues simply because your ego needs to feel vindicated? Would you rather have peace or the heaviness of a continued stand-off?

Oh, I want peace. I want peace so badly. I’m not in open conflict with anyone right now, which is almost worse, because it means that all the anger and pain and hurt is confined to my own mind. I need to release it in order to be free.

I want to do something to formalize this process, so I’m going to write letters to the people I named above expressing my feelings and venting all the anger, shame, frustration, and sadness that’s been bottled up. After I’ve written the letters, I’m going to burn them. From that point on, any time bad memories arise, I’ll tell myself “All is forgiven” and let it go.

Whom do you need to forgive?

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):

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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?