Give Yourself Something Priceless - Forgive Yourself

I don’t know about you but historically forgiveness has not come easily to me. When I’ve been told to forgive someone for something hurtful they did, or for a situation in which I felt really wronged, I might have nodded and agreed – because that seems like the polite response, but really in my head I was thinking – forgive? Are you kidding? I think I’d rather run the person over with my car.

I know. Not the healthiest response. Thankfully I think I’ve evolved a little since those days, and I’ve come to realize that I’d been looking at the idea of forgiveness all wrong. I used to think forgiveness meant letting someone or something “off the hook” for their bad behavior but I now see the value is more about forgiving me. (Again, if you’re like me you’re probably like “what?” Forgive me? What did I do? I was the one hurt!)

Here’s what I mean. It’s forgiving me for my role in the situation. It’s forgiving me for the choices I may have made that led to whatever happened. It’s forgiving me for continuing to carry around the pain from something that happened in the past. And finally, it’s forgiving me for the ways in which I may have reacted poorly or unintentionally gone on to hurt someone else because I was carrying around wounds from something that happened to me a long time ago.

Now I know it’s one thing to know intellectually that it would be best to forgive, but in reality, it’s often quite another thing to accept it. So, here are 3 ways to help mentally reframe it to make that mental shift.

The first thing is to recognize that life is really just all experiences.

The aim, I believe, is to learn and grow from them. When we’ve learned what we need to, we don't need to repeat the experience. We just take the lesson and leave the rest. So then, I’ve found that it’s critically important to remind ourselves that we did the best we could with what we knew at the time. We’re older and more mature now. We need to stop beating our younger self up for things we couldn’t have known then! We have to let it go. Otherwise, it’ll keep us from our potential.  And, there are more important  places to put that precious energy. So, don’t give another drop of it to that person or situation for one more second. It’s too valuable and they don’t deserve it.

The second tool I use to mentally reset is this.

Did you know the etymology of the word “forgive” means to “give away”? It essentially means to “let go.” So that’s where I focus. I focus on the idea of giving it away. In this way, I view forgiveness as a gift to me. After all, carrying the pain from the past is just too draining.

And finally, one last way I like to think of it is like this.

Imagine you're driving your car down the highway, and you’ve got all this luggage strapped to the top of your car. The luggage represents all the pain and hurt and trauma you’ve experienced over the course of your life. All the stuff you think you’ve put behind you and that you’ve told yourself doesn’t affect you anymore. Because, you can’t see it as you look out the front window of your car. So, you think you’re good.

What you don’t see is how that stuff is creating a drag and slowing you down. You don’t notice how it’s making you less fuel-efficient. In essence, you don’t see how you’re carrying the past around with you now. Other people driving by might see all that stuff on top of your car and give you some weird side- eye. You know the look, like the one you get from people when you’ve been driving for miles with your blinker on but you haven’t changed lanes?! Yeah, that one.

Sometimes it takes a reaction from someone else for us to develop some awareness of the problem. I.e you’ve got all this baggage flapping around on the roof of your car. But then it’s up to you to decide that it’s time to pull over and reckon with it. That it’s time to summon the strength to untie the stuff, take a good hard look at each piece and then lay it down on the side of the road.  And drive away. Without looking in the rear-view mirror. You need to forgive. -  “Give it away”.

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