Self-Forgiveness | ep81
Self-Forgiveness is one of the hardest things to practice, but also one of the most important things to learn to do. Many of us still cling to a version of ourselves in the past that we hold anger or resentment towards. A version that we still blame. A version of ourselves that we still roll our eyes at. A version of ourselves that we just can’t even with.
“I just make such bad decisions. How is this going to be any different?”
A month after having a huge breakthrough about changing careers, my client came to our session with this opening line.
“I mean how do I know I’m not going to mess this up like before?”
I see this time and again with the most incredible women. They are trying to transform and make real shifts in their life and yet, a part of them keeps resisting the change.
It’s not the part that’s worried about failure
It’s not the part that’s afraid to make a mistake
It’s not even the part that’s afraid of change.
It’s the part that still hasn’t forgiven themselves.
Even after all these years.
Part of us believes that if we hold on and keep punishing this version of ourselves then we will finally learn. We’ll never make the same mistakes again. But the truth is that by holding on to her, we stop ourselves from going forward and we keep living in the past. We keep recreating the past. We stay exactly where she left us.
By punishing her. We end up punishing ourselves. Again and again. It’s not until we can truly forgive and hold compassion for that version of ourselves, that we can move on.
Here’s the thing, that version of you was trying her best. She was trying her best with the tools, resources and wisdom that she had available to her.
I once had a coach tell me that I have to start seeing my past like a rom-com where I am the flawed but lovable heroine. When we watch rom-coms, we can’t help but root for the main character. No matter what mistakes she makes or self-sabotage-y techniques she employs, we’re always on her side.
We have to start seeing ourselves as the hero of our own journey, not the villain.
Love, when you can finally learn to forgive her, you liberate yourself from the past and open yourself to the future.
If you want to learn how to practice self-forgiveness, I’m sharing one of my most transformational self-forgiveness exercise in this episode. Tune in below, love.
A quote to take with you:
“The key to transformation is actually in forgiveness. It’s in letting go.”
Want to dive deeper through journal prompts?
If you want to be in the know and get each Mindset Monday straight to your inbox complete with journal prompts to take you even further, get on my email list.
About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to trust your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.
+ Read the episode transcript here
Shirin: Welcome to Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast. If you're looking for more purpose, more passion, more joy in your life, then you have come to the right place, let's create your dream life while living your dream life. Okay, love.
Hi love. Welcome to Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast. This is where we take a deeper dive into my Mindset Monday post, which you can read on Instagram (@wholeheartedcoaching), or you can get the full post. Plus my weekly journal prompts. When you sign up for my email list, you can do that in the show notes, or you can head to my website, wholehearted-coaching.com So on this podcast, we have talked often about self-compassion. In today's episode, we're going to talk about a topic that is related to compassion, and that is self forgiveness. The ability to forgive ourselves, the ability to give ourselves grace and kindness and patience and compassion. And especially when we look at our past, when we look at those past versions of ourselves that made quote unquote mistakes, that did things that we think, oh my gosh, why did you do that? That version of ourselves that still makes you cringe? Okay. I know I have that version of myself. Like when I just think of the situation or the circumstance, like my belly gets tight, I get this like cringy face on my, you know, my face. And I just think, oh girl, what were you doing? What were you thinking? And not being able to extend forgiveness to that person for doing that thing. We are really terrible at extending our forgiveness towards ourselves. Now I know this is a podcast, so I cannot see you, but I have a feeling that this is resonating with you, that you perhaps are nodding your head, or maybe just internally thinking, oh yeah, I definitely know what she's talking about, but the truth is. That's self forgiveness is one of the biggest keys. I truly believe one of the biggest keys in transformation because we can't expand into our fullest version of ourselves and whatever fullest version of yourself means to you, right? Fullest version of yourself to you may mean someone who is living in their joy and in their ease, their rest in their confidence. Maybe fullest version of yourself means someone who is going after their dreams, going after their desires, maybe fullest version of yourself as someone who is surrounded by a community that fully supports you, whatever that means. But I truly believe that if we do not know, do not learn how to forgive ourselves in a genuine way, then we truly cannot reach that fullest version. I just finished doing an incredible week long workshop called coming home. And on the second day of that workshop, we looked at self forgiveness. And to me it was the most powerful day. It was the most vulnerable day. It was the day in which everyone was like, oh my goodness, this is the thing I've been missing. I've been focusing my efforts so much on self quote, unquote improvement on trying to get better on trying to do this. I'm trying to cultivate this habit, but I'm realizing now because I've never forgiven myself. I cannot fully embody those things. I cannot fully embrace those things. I cannot do those things. So today we're going to look at self forgiveness, love and today's mindset Monday. The person who deserves your forgiveness the most is your self. So often when I'm working with a new client, we're having these amazing breakthroughs, these really great insights and aha moments. And they're feeling really great about the work we're doing. Like just really feeling like, wow, I can do this. I can become this version of myself that I designed. And then perhaps they stumble on a goal that they want to do or a dream. And they're like, oh my goodness, Sharon, this is the thing I want to do. This is the achievement I want to achieve. This is the goal I want to set for myself. And I'm feeling great about it. This feels aligned. This feels true. This feels really good Shirin. And then all of a sudden, I look at fear and panic spreads, and they say a version of this phrase, And I want you to see if you've ever said this phrase or a version of it to yourself. How do I know I'm not going to mess this up again? I don't trust myself to actually do this. I'm probably going to mess this up. Just like I've messed up everything before. How is this going to be any different Sharon and all of a sudden they lose that joy, that excitement, that sense of trust that we have been building together. Have you ever said a phrase like this to yourself love, especially in that moment where you get clear on something you really want to do. I know you have, we all have, I see this time and again, with the most incredible women, because listen, I got to work with the most incredible women they're trying to transform and make real shifts in their life. And yet they can't. There is a part of them that's resisting against the change. And it's not the part that's worried about failure. Right? We've talked a lot about failure on this podcast. It's not the part that's afraid of making a mistake. It's not even the part that's afraid of change. It's the part of them that still hasn't forgiven themselves still hasn't forgiven themselves for something they did years ago. Here is the truth. Many of us, most of us, I would venture to say all of us still cling to a version of ourselves in the past that we hold anger or resentment towards a version of ourselves that we still blame a version of ourselves that we still roll our eyes at a version of ourselves that we keep saying, had you not done that? And had you done this, everything would be fine. Everything would be better even after all of these. We hold onto a version of ourselves in the past. And we hold that version hostage, blaming it for the hurt and pain we experienced now, blaming it, always when things go wrong, right. When things go wrong in the present, we take that version of ourselves that we're holding hostage. And we berate that version again and again, and we say, this is your fault. Had you not done that? Had you not messed that up? This wouldn't be happening now. It's because we believe that if we keep holding onto this version, if we keep punishing this version of ourselves, if we do not let go, then we'll finally learn. We'll never make the same mistake again, but by holding on to this version of ourselves, we actually stop ourselves from going forward. And we keep living in the past. We keep ourselves frozen. In that moment, we keep recreating the past. We stay exactly where she left us. Love. If you cannot forgive yourself, if you can not learn to let go of what happened of what you did, then that moment, then that version of you is going to dictate every single thing you. Right. The reason why right now in the present, you're not doing the thing you want to do. Isn't because of your procrastinator. Isn't because you don't know what you're doing. Isn't because you're a failure. It's because you are holding on to this moment, to this version. She doesn't want to keep getting punished. And so she stops you from doing things that are risky from doing things that are outside the norm from doing things that are different, right? Because where there is difference, there is risk. There is uncertainty. I talk about this in a podcast I have on failure. I believe that one of the biggest reasons we're afraid to fail. It's because we are so afraid of the version of ourselves that appears after a failure. And that version of ourselves is a bully that version of ourselves doesn't let go that version of ourselves, berates us and punishes us. And so this old version of ourselves who made a mistake, perhaps who did something that maybe wasn't the best decision now that we look back on. She's tired of getting punished. She's tired of being held hostage. She's tired of being blamed for everything. So she's like, you know what? Let's just never, ever try anything new. Okay. So this is why I say the key to transformation is actually in forgiveness. It's in letting go. Y'all we got people out here telling us that the key to transformation is waking up at 5:00 AM, is making a bullet journal is doing all these extra things and yes, you know what? Those things may help. But if you can't learn to forgive yourself, forgive that version of yourself, then all that stuff, it's kind of just useless. It's just useless because you're always going to think you're going to mess up. And you're going to go back to that version of yourself and you're going to punish yourself and you don't want to stop going through that cycle. Right? We want to self preserve. We want to be in a place where life feels, you know, quote unquote good. And so we don't want to be punishing ourselves all the time. And so we just stopped doing the things that could possibly create punishment. And a lot of those things are new things, things that you desire, goals that you want to achieve. Love forgiveness is liberation. We liberate ourselves our future, our dreams, when we can learn to forgive ourselves, when we can learn to extend our forgiveness, that forgiveness that we give to everyone else in our lives. When we can learn to extend that forgiveness towards ourselves, that is when we heal and grow and thrive and transform. Love self-forgiveness, isn't just this thing I'm telling you as a coach, like, you know, you should try this. It's really nice. No, no, no, no, no. This is huge. This is huge. So I have some prompts for you that I want you to think of while you're listening to this podcast. Maybe you want to pause after every prompt and write your answers down. Maybe you're on a walk and you want to pause the podcast and just think on it, but see what comes up for you. So here are some of the prompts and if you want the full prompts, get on my email list and you can get all of them. So the first prompt is to forgive means people who can be forgiven are in my household or growing up forgiveness. And just see what comes up for you love in the workshop and coming home. That question of in my household growing or growing up forgiveness was that was like a real catalyst for conversation because people were realizing that forgiveness was always conditional forgiveness. Often wasn't given. And was sometimes used against you, right. That a parent or parental figure, or maybe even a teacher would kind of use that mistake against you and kind of hold it against you. So dig deep into those prompts and see what is coming up for you. Because a lot of what we believe forgiveness is, and how it is shown, comes from what we saw growing up in our household and our communities and in our society. So how do we actually practice self. First it's a practice, right? It's one that we just keep trying again and again, and sometimes we do it really smoothly and sometimes it's a little more clunky, right? But, you know, forgiveness really has to be practiced because so often when it comes to these moments, these moments where we perhaps stumble or make a quote unquote mistake, we think that like time heals all wounds that, oh, you know, I really messed up, but you know, years have passed. So I'm totally fine. No, actually time can also make a wound even more embedded in our. Right time can mean, then that wound really becomes a part of our identity. And so practicing self-forgiveness is really important. Yes. Time does help, but if we're actually not doing things to cultivate and create liberation and forgiveness and ease in our lives, then time really. Not going to help us that much. It's just going to make that wound deeper. It's going to make that wound even more sad. And it's like, I don't know if anyone has ever done this. I'm sure you have, but you know, when you get, like, I don't know, you stub your toe or something happens to you physically and you probably should go get it checked out, but you don't. But so because you don't get it checked out for like two weeks, you're walking with like a weird lamp or you're just like, you're just doing all the things to avoid. Injuring that part again. Right. But you still have the injury, but you're just like doing all of these weird things with your body to not feel that pain. That's literally what this is. So in the book, the untethered soul, Michael singer has this amazing analogy and I'm probably going to butcher it, but he talks about when we become wounded. And I think in the book, he uses the example of having a splinter and instead of going and really tending to the wound, taking the splinter out, you know, disinfecting it, putting a bandage on. Well, we ended up doing as humans is we ended up creating all of these weird ways for the splinter not to be touched, right? So we like put this weird barrier around it and then we have this like fabric around it, like just all of these things so that nothing can touch the splinter. And so we can't feel the pain. Instead of just going deep and tending to the wound. Right. And that's what happens when we don't know how to practice self forgiveness. We're just putting these really weird layers of quote unquote protection over this wound that aren't really tending to the wound that aren't nourishing the wound that aren't helping the wound, but we don't feel the pain of the wound as long as nothing. But when something touches it, right, we become reminded of that pain of the wound. I do this all the time. I step on a piece of glass or a splinter or something, and I just think, oh, it'll be fine. I don't need to dig it out. You know, my body will expel it or whatever I believe. And then all of a sudden you're walking and it's like, oh crap. That piece of glass. And so that's what our right wounds become when we do not practice self forgiveness. When we don't practice self-compassion and really tending to the pain that's there. Yes. We can avoid the pain by not doing the things that are going to touch it, to aggravate it. Right. But those things in our lives are often the things we want to do, taking risks, doing things we really want to do stepping into the uncertainty. So how do we practice self forgiveness? So I want to share my favorite practice. And this comes from one of the very first coaches I worked with. And she said to me, you know, when you watch a movie, when you watch a romcom, you are so rooting for the hero of that movie, the heroine of the movie, right. I've used this analogy before in the podcast, but you know, just think of like a J-Lo movie, Meg, Ryan. Oh my gosh. Insecure is coming out again. Right? ISA Ray, think of those characters. And when you watch the movie, you're just like, oh my gosh, what are you doing? We are sitting there through all of their, like self sabotaging moments, their quote, unquote mistakes, all of their foibles. And yet we still root for them. We can have grace and compassion and understanding for. And so the practice becomes seeing yourself as the hero, the heroine of the movie of being able to see what they're doing and saying, oh, wow, that's you deflecting? That's you projecting? That's, you're trying your best, but also still having the love and the grace there. We have to stop seeing ourselves as the villain of our movies and seeing ourselves as that lovable, imperfect hero. The hero that we love to go to the movies and watch the hero that we are rooting for the hero who in the end has their happily ever after. So the practice that I do is really envisioning myself in a movie envisioning that former version of myself, like I'm watching a movie, I'm in the audience with my popcorn, with my m&ms, and I'm watching a movie of this past circumstances, past circumstance that I still have a lot of judging. Towards myself, right. A moment where I hold a lot of guilt or shame. And so I think of this moment, just like watching a movie and I pause it at that moment where I make the quote unquote mistake where I'd make the decision that I'm like, oh, why did you make that decision? I pause the movie there. And so I start to ask myself questions, really looking at this former version of myself as like a character outside of myself. Right. And so some of the questions that I asked. R what is happening in this person's personal life? What are their current circumstances? Like? What resources were available to them? What kind of community where they surrounded by, what were they believing about themselves in this moment in their lives? How were they feeling day to day? And this allows us to gain this greater understanding. Greater compassion for this former version of ourselves who was trying their best, trying their best with the tools and the wisdom and the resources that they had available to them. So love, I really encourage you to practice this right, create a visualization for yourself. Be in the movie theaters, start watching that movie, recreate that moment for yourself. That moment that you have shame and judgment and blame and guilt around and pause it. Pinnacle that pinnacle, where you make that quote unquote mistake, you make that decision that you wish you hadn't made and ask those questions of yourself and see what comes out of it. See what resonates with you. See what wisdom, what insights, what compassion results from that. The word forgive originally means that originally meant both to give and to receive, to quote unquote, give for. So I want you to think right now, if I give myself forgiveness, right? If I give myself this, what do I gain? What do I get? What is it for? I give forgiveness for my liberation. I give forgiveness for ease. I give forgiveness for joy. I give forgiveness for peace. So love this week. I really encourage you to try the prompts and the visualization and just see what arises for you until next week. I will talk to you then.
Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you liked this week's episode, please share it with a friend comment and rate this podcast until next week. See you later. Love.