The first and most important step on your journey to changing your mindset and self acceptance is forgiveness. Now I’m not going to lie, it’s probably going to be the hardest step for some people and I’ll admit I didn’t find it particularly easy as I had to face a few home truths and found this incredibly uncomfortable. Before I go into how you can start the process of forgiveness I’ll tell you a bit about myself and why I went in search of changing my life. I’m embarrassed to say that I spent the second half of my twenties and most of my thirties full of resentment and anger. I blamed other people for the crappy life I was living. Of course it was my parents fault for getting divorced and breaking our family up, of course it was their fault we didn’t have any money growing up and arguments were an every day occurence. So of course when I had my first son at 18 and ended up a single mother in a foreign country on my own raising him, I saw myself as damaged and believed I didn’t deserve to be happy because I was broken. There must have been something wrong with me if I couldn’t make my relationship with the father of my child work and there must have been something wrong with me if I couldn’t make any relationships in the years that followed work either. I just wasn’t good enough and I never would be.
It was all these negative memories and thoughts that were holding me back. Keeping me in the mindset that I wasn’t good enough and that I would never amount to anything. I wasn’t pretty enough or thin enough for a man to want to be with me. I wasn’t smart enough to apply for that job promotion I really wanted. I wasn’t rich enough to buy all he things we needed. And believing all these lies, that ultimately only I had told myself, made me sad inside but to the outside world I must have just come across as angry. If something good did happen my first thought would be that this won’t last because I don’t deserve it, and of course thinking that way it usually never did. I had never been told growing up that I could be whatever I wanted and that as long as I believed in myself I could accomplish anything I put my mind to. We are taught from a young age that life is hard, you have to get a job and work hard for what you want. So there I was living many miles away from my family trying to work hard at life but full of blame, shame, anger and resentment. And all of this was affecting nearly every aspect in my life, my relationships, my job, I was shouting at my kids like I mean full on screaming so felt like a failure as a mother and my self-confidence had disappeared. I knew something had to change.
And then one day, I don’t know how it came about, but I started listening to The Secret by Rhonda Byrne in the car on my way to and from work, and it made me look at life in a completely different way. I woke up to the reality that only I am in control of my life and what comes in to it. Now this didn’t happen instantly or overnight because believe me, when you are working against a lifetime of negativity it takes a while to change your way of thinking. I realised that all that negative self talk over the years had been bringing me exactly what I had been putting out and I’m glad to say I had finally found a way to start changing it. I knew that change needed to start with me. I needed to start believing that I did deserve all the good things to start happening to me. I needed to start accepting myself in order to move past all the lies I had been telling myself for years.
The book I listened to next by Denise Duffield Thomas – Lucky Bitch: A Guide for Exceptional Woman to Create Outrageous Success was where I learned that forgiveness is the key, she said that self-love and forgiveness is the most rewarding gift you can give yourself and that stuck with me. We all spend loads of money on personal development, whether it’s courses, our fitness or how we look by having our hair or nails done to try to feel better. But at the end of the day if we don’t fix the underlying issues and get to the core of the problems then none of that will matter. And the powerful tool of forgiveness is that first step and single greatest thing you can do for yourself.
The easy steps to follow come from the Ancient Hawaiian practice of forgiveness called Ho’oponopono and uses the mantra “I forgive you. Thank you. I’m sorry. I love you”. Now these can be used in any order as there is no wrong or right way to do this, but the one great thing is that you don’t have to call anyone up and have that awkward conversation, you don’t have to be face to face with someone, which also means you can carry out this forgiveness work if people are no longer here. This process is a fantastic way to get rid of your emotional baggage. Let me just make it clear, forgiveness does not condone bad behaviour, if you have had something really horrible done to you I’m sorry. Forgiveness is the gift you give yourself not them.
The first step is to make a list of all the painful memories you have, of anything cruel that someone has said to you, your parents, friends, family, anyone who ever made you feel bad about yourself, previous jobs if you had a mean boss or colleague, old relationships if anything makes you angry or sad, financial problems you may have. Add it all to the list, nothing is too small. You might end up with pages and pages of things that come up for you but that’s ok, once you start forgiving and clearing the emotional tie you have to the memory you’ll find things stop coming up. Some things you may need to work on more than once, others might just take the once.
Next you need to think about each person or situation and recall the emotion you felt. Let it come up and then say the mantra. “I forgive you. Thank you. I’m sorry. I love you” and let the memory fade away. The thing to remember here is that even if you don’t 100% mean it, it is the intention behind the process that’s important and it does not need to be perfect. Check back again in a couple of days and you might notice that some are gone or that some don’t bring up the same emotional feelings they once did. You may find that you suddenly have unexpected happiness or you may hear from the person you have forgiven, be reassured by this that the process is working. And as well as forgiving others, you can also use this process on yourself to forgive things you may have done or said. The lies you’ve been telling yourself that you aren’t a good mother, the fact that you stole stationery from work, that you got yourself in to debt or simply that you aren’t good enough. Add it to your list and forgive it all.
Forgiveness has definitely made a huge difference in my life, I have been able to let go of memories that were making me bitter, lies that I’d told myself about not being good enough that were making me resentful and feelings of self-doubt that were stopping me accomplish what I want in life. I can now look back and take out all the positives I gained from those experiences and learn from them. I can look back now on my parents with compassion and realise they were only doing the best job they knew how, instead of through the eyes of an angry child. And I am finally accepting myself the way I am and am building the life I want for me and my family. I am on an exciting journey of personal development and building my online business that will afford me time and financial freedom to spend time with my loved ones and travel more.
But remember, forgiveness is a lifelong process, it’s not something you can just do once and be done. Things will come up as you go along and there will always be new things that you’ll need to add to your list. It will get easier to go through the process and you will clear things quicker but until then just take one step at a time, believe in yourself and know you’ve got this.
Until next time….
Angela Harris 