Forgive Yourself for Judging Yourself

“The action of entering the center point of the labyrinth represents the moment you forgive yourself. This is the action of your own forgiveness and of reclaiming the power, or the impeccability, of your own word, of your own intent.”
― don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

Your heart feels heavy.

Your stomach is in knots.

You wish you had a do-over!

What do you do when you realize you hurt someone with your words or actions?

For most people, guilt is the first sensation that comes up. Guilt is a big shout-out that asks you to listen up, bring awareness to yourself and the situation. It prods you to figure out how you are going to fess up and make this right. Guilt is a great corrector, yet if you use it to hammer at yourself over and over again you will suffer and the healing balm of love will never be offered.

Everyone makes mistakes, we are all human and we do our best. Sometimes our desperation, fear and lack of consciousness in the moment take us in a direction that we later regret. “What the heck was I thinking?”

The truth is that if you had known better, felt better and had your compassionate heart on board at that time, you most likely would have done things differently. And yet, you didn’t.

Here are some steps to remedy past actions that you regret:

• Cultivate awareness of your offense. “I was hurtful.” “I went the wrong way.” “I made a painful decision.”

• When you’ve hurt someone, take your heart for a walk in their shoes.

• If you judged yourself, let it go. The very first step is to release the guilt that keeps you feeling bad about yourself is to Forgive Yourself for Judging Yourself. Otherwise, your judges hammer of guilt will ask you to pay and pay, again and again. This is not a loving action and it won’t raise your state.

• Have a heart to heart with whomever you’ve disappointed. Acknowledge, Apologize and Ask for Forgiveness and then…

• ACT ~ Set out to “do better”. Take actions that re-build trust. Prove to yourself that you can learn from your mistakes and trust yourself to refine your intentions and actions.

• Drop your Image of Perfection ~ Accept all of you, to include the unconscious, fearful, selfish and insensitive aspects that run through you and everyone. Perfectionism isn’t the way! Accepting your humanity is. Full self-acceptance brings great love into your life – even when you take a mis-step.

It is a powerful, courageous and loving act to Forgive Yourself for Judging Yourself and ask others for forgiveness.

It will Raise The State of Your Life.

If you know someone that would benefit from releasing guilt, I’d appreciate you passing this email on.