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Self-care Sunday: 5 tried-and-super helpful tips to forgive yourself and let go of regret
As self doubts and over-thinking roam freely inside the brain during this Covid-19 quarantine, here are 5 tips to learn-by-heart on how to forgive yourself, outrun your past and simmer self-hatred to move forward for your own emotional wellbeing
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has brought with itself an unwanted baggage of stress be it in school children’s experience with online classes, adults’ job insecurity, lovers’ long distance relationship or old people’s confinement and spike in illnesses. You are only human if self doubts arise while juggling personal and professional life from home.
The blurring of the work-life boundaries and the nudging pressure to be constantly productive, calls for a break from regrets, burnout and depression. As self doubts and over-thinking roam freely inside the brain during this Covid-19 quarantine and self-care seem alien at the moment, we need to stop replaying situations in our heads when we acted like a total jerk and change our own outlook or find a productive way to cope with remorse.
Here are 5 tips to learn-by-heart on how to forgive yourself, outrun your past and simmer self-hatred to move forward for your own emotional wellbeing.
1.Acknowledge your emotions instead of bottling them up
No route to self discovery and self-care starts without focusing on your feelings and emotions. Welcome the feelings that have been triggered in you and allow yourself to recognize and accept them instead of bottling them up.
Every emotion we have, be it happiness, sadness and even guilt, serves a purpose. Guilt is only a reality check of our actions or behaviours conflict with our values and beliefs and draws our attention towards repairing the damage.
2.Own your mistakes
While shame might make us feel underneath a pile-on with no way to climb out, the solution is to admit our mistake instead of covering it up with denial. Owning that we messed up not only protects ourselves from the negative emotions of shame and guilt but also marks our evolution towards becoming a better person.
Admit and apologise to anyone you might have hurt by breaching their trust in the past. There is no better way to right any outstanding wrongs than by offering a heartfelt apology.
3.Pen an apology to yourself and read it out loud
The key to moving forward is by reminding ourselves that we did the best with the resources at hand and think of each mistake as a learning experience. Know that this error doesn’t define you, be comfortable with accepting that you disappointed yourself but remember to be kind and compassionate like you would be towards your best friend.
Write an apology note to yourself including the remorse you feel and the solutions to better your stance or plans to make amends. Read it out loud to feel okay at the moment and to drive out emotional stress.
4.Be your own knight in shining armour
You save everyone but who saves you? Well, the answer is in the question – ‘you’ are your own knight in shining armour. Rope in all the advice you have been handing out when best friends and loved ones messed up and show yourself the same compassion by practicing what you preach.
Say ‘hello’ to a pint of ice cream or take a sound bath or opt for a binge watch coupled with gorging on your favourite food or journal the untangled emotions or Yoga it out. You know the drill.
5.Be patient
This last part might be the hardest as we can’t rush our feelings or anybody else’s. True, we want everything to be back to normal and have put our transgressions behind us but let us not overshoot and flog ourselves to a point that’s out of proportion.
Of course, we might feel embarrassed by our actions but after making amends let us try accepting that there is nothing else that we can do to resolve the issue. Press a pause button on the worrying as the process of forgiving ourselves has begun and do not let other people’s opinions hold so much weight to ruin your day.
Everyone makes mistakes whether accidentally or through bad judgement calls. Practice avoiding shame for this and also remember to not shame people who’ve wronged you.
Since we tend to be our own worst critics, it is easier for us to forgive others than to forgive ourselves. However, irrespective of how hard it might seem currently, the right amount of intention and self-compassion are all we need to get on the path of living guilt-free while stilling holding ourselves to a whole different set of standards.
