Forgive Yourself and Others for Improved Self-Esteem. This ability may be your biggest ally in finding not only self-esteem but also happiness.
Confidence and Self-Esteem are born of feeling good about yourself and releasing negative thoughts and emotions.
Forgiving yourself and others may be one of the quickest ways to increase your self-esteem. With the following techniques – it can be easy!
Be yourself; Accept yourself; Value yourself; Forgive yourself.
Technique One: Forgive Yourself First
When you notice you are not feeling good about a circumstance, an action, something you said, or even a judgment by another person – forgive yourself immediately and specifically.
The best way to forgive yourself easily when these feelings arise is to forgive the small things every single day. This makes the challenge of forgiving yourself for larger missteps easier.
This works because you are:
1) exercising your forgiveness muscle; and
2) just plain letting go of some thought pattern that is no longer serving you.
Forgiveness may be as simple as “I forgive myself for being late to this appointment today” or “I forgive myself for not eating as healthy as I should have yesterday” or “I forgive myself for being upset by what my boss said to me today (then, forgive your boss for not knowing how to better phrase something)”.
Then move on to more complicated forgiveness… “I forgive myself for not being there today for my children/spouse/pet” or “I forgive myself for not accomplishing my goals for last year”.
Struggling with Forgiving Yourself
If you are struggling to forgive yourself, all it means is that you have built up negative feelings around a particular subject.
Those negative emotions are currently stronger than your desire to forgive yourself.
Keep working at it!
Example: You’ve been repeatedly late to appointments in the past and you just keep beating yourself up about being late; you can’t forgive yourself and you then you’re late again.
In this case, it may take longer to forgive yourself because of the residual feelings you’ve piled on over time.
However, keep reminding yourself every single time it happens that you forgive yourself – until it’s gone.
The good news is once you have truly forgiven yourself and moved on, you most likely will have cured the perceived problem as well.
Result Benefit: you are no longer late to appointments.
Why It’s Important to Forgive Yourself Daily
It’s vital that you forgive yourself daily so you stop building up residual negative feelings about a situation/something you said/something you did.
If you allow the beating up of yourself to continue, it will only be harder to forgive yourself easily in the future. See the pattern?
Eckhart Tolle, Spiritual Teacher says the following about forgiving yourself “To forgive yourself is to realize this is not who you are.”
Forgiveness of self is the opportunity to heal the past and to be free.
Imagine how it will feel to give up your past history so you can move forward, grow, change, be more confident and be free of negativity.
Forgive Yourself and Others for Improved Self-Esteem is the goal!
Technique Two: Forgive Others
Easier said than done. However, now that you’ve exercised the muscle of forgiving yourself, it’s time to forgive those who have hurt you – intentionally or unintentionally.
The definition of forgive is to: “stop feeling angry or resentful toward (someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake”
The key to forgiving another is to not generically forgive someone. Just forgiving may be too broad for the mind to embrace.
Try this instead:
- Consider deeply why it is that this other person hurt you, offended you or just plain made a mistake. Evaluate the situation to get to the deeper meaning.
- Always remember, forgiving does not mean you need to ever be in contact personally with the person again. It means, you have forgiven them for you and your peace of mind and contentment of heart so you can move on and not think about the person, the situation, what happened anymore.
- After considering deeply about why someone has hurt you, then forgive them for that specific reason.
Most likely in your thoughts, you realized that the other person may have been or is one of the following:
- ignorant (lacking in knowledge or information);
- addicted to something (drugs, sex, drama, pain);
- in so much pain that they only hurt others;
- are stubborn and unwilling to change;
- are afraid to change or look at a situation another way;
Consider, think, and find the specific root cause of why the other person did what she/he did and forgive that part of them.
Personally accomplishing the goal of forgiving yourself and others can make you feel more confident about yourself.
Feeling peace, giving up the past, moving on all give you confidence and will increase your own personal self-esteem and ultimate happiness.
Another thing that builds positive self-esteem – making decisions! Make a decision to forgive – yourself and others.
Forgive Yourself and Others for Improved Self-Esteem and enjoy your new found confidence!