The Me: "You Can’t See" (Part. Two)
What Helped You Forgive Yourself?
“A year ago today I made the worst decision ever, I’ll never forgive myself no matter how I look at it. I forgive myself for every time I let anyone makes me feel less than good enough, the only person to forgive for feeling less is me.”
So I took the responsibility for how I feel about myself.
Throughout life, I’ve had people tell me that I can’t, I won’t and I shouldn’t based on how I express myself, what I believe in and also how I look.
I’ve learnt to first pause, then forgive and then be indifferent, because someone else’s limitations are not mine and never will be.
Learning to forgive myself for how I used to treat myself, I deserve kindness not more anger. When I say we’re on good terms I mean my conscience is clear and I can go to sleep at night knowing I’m at peace with myself and how I handled the situation from start to finish. I forgive and forget, yes but I move on. Your good terms are between you and god.
• How does a person learn to forgive themself for taking over 40 years to figure out how to live?
• How do you learn to see the value in what would appear to have been a wasted life?
- The Me: "You Can’t See" (The Answers):
• A wasted life would be the one that never recognized they had things to learn.
• You just have to figure out that the regrets were really lessons in disguise.
• Nothing learned is a waste, just make sure you take note going forward. How do you forgive, you accept it and move on and stop criticising yourself.
• What I’ve managed to do most of the time is to focus on what I was able to do despite my illness and use that time to inspire my life as a storyteller. My point: our journey takes us all kinds of ways, and it’s important to be kind and remember what those experiences taught.
• In my own experience, I think of it as “I didn’t know.” — If I’d known back then that, like everyone else, I could ask for what I wanted and that I deserved better, I would’ve but I didn’t know. Being angry with myself for not having known then would be, hatever it took I eventually figured it out. I know it now and that’s what matters.
• I think it really depends on how much you like yourself at the end of it all. I forgive myself as often as possible, it’s how I move forward.
• Eventually, I realized that no one really "gets it" and everyone is trying to play catch up in way or another. So, I just try to be as deliberately and deliriously mortal as I can be, always remembering that in the end I only answer to myself for it all.
• Sometimes I think like that but then I have to stop myself and reframe my narrative, failures are lessons and doors closed are windows open. It doesn’t fix things but it helps me lose regrets.
• You haven’t had a wasted life, you have learned from experience what sort of life you want . Nothing is wasted you always learn something from everything, now you know what you want you can make changes and move forward. - The Me: "You Can See" (The Answers):
• You don’t need to forgive yourself because we don’t have a manual or rule book, what you see as wasted got you to this point. It’s society that fools us in to thinking we’ve wasted time, experience, or opportunity. Doesn’t matter because it can’t be changed. Vera Wang designed her first dress at 40, many people just got going at our age. Just move forward with some grace for yourself and live!
• 3 ways — some people never figure it out so props to me, everything I did led me to this so changing anything might have made me miss the mark. "Get busy living or get busy dying" — I don’t want to waste the next 40 years angry or depressed now that I finally succeeded.
• What you think needs forgiving, actually is a triumph. “Most people never figure it out, or only figure it out by habit. You’re doing it consciously. Welcome to this next stage in your life.”
a) you have wasted nothing, you have been learning this entire time.
b) package up what you have learned from your experience and sell it to that 20 something who needs to hear it but has no one to guide.
c) figuring out how to live is a process, not a destination.
• By negating the past which is only memories. The past, therefore is not something that can be travelled back to. Nor is it something you can learn from, you learn something through anticipation of the future which, paradoxically, like the past, is only images too.
• Valuing the past over the future is only going to make it worse. It’s ok to regret and ponder what might have been but don’t dwell, take the day for what it is and plan the rest of your life since you can’t undo the previous 40 years.
“I’m so quick to lose what was never mine to keep and I cannot stand on what’s broken under me and I don’t know how to forgive myself for everything but I must learn trust.”
I’ve learnt an awful lot this year, and I finally learnt to accept that my depression isn’t my fault. It doesn’t make me a failure, weak or selfish.
- I learnt that I’m enough and I learnt how to forgive myself.
- I learnt that I’m also deserving of the kindness I so readily give to everyone else in my life.
- I learnt that it can get better.
- I learnt to hold onto hope, this year was all about survival but I survived and now I’m ready to thrive — so excited for the next chapter of my life.
(Special thanks to, a coach):
to be continue...
