Over the next few weeks, I’m introducing a few blogs that will be related to improving self-worth in relationships. This is the first part of that series.
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Mahatma Gandhi
Forgiveness First!
Life is filled with people who come in and out of our lives; for the most part, we have positive experiences; however, some people come into our lives and have caused pain and suffering to ourselves and potentially to the people around us whom we love, and it’s these people who can be harder to forgive.
Whatever your story or background, forgiveness is the way forward. If you’re not quite ready to forgive another person, we will start with the most important person to forgive: YOU!
Realising you need to forgive yourself may surprise you; you may not even recognise the need to forgive yourself or the part you played.
However, we carry a lot throughout our lives that we bury in our subconscious. It sits there, and to us in our daily lives, it’s invisible, but everything in our subconscious creates our daily behaviour and actions. The saying ‘what lies beneath’ has never rang so true when it comes to letting go, healing and coming back to loving ourselves. There is a lot we can forgive ourselves for. Sometimes, we must forgive ourselves for holding on to painful memories for so long or for blaming someone else for all these years, for saying the things we said that became cruel or pushed at the triggers of our loved ones. We might have to forgive ourselves for staying in a relationship or situation or not listening to our intuition or the advice of our friends and loved ones.
“True forgiveness is when you can say, ‘Thank you for that experience,’ Oprah Winfrey.
To share a personal example of something I had to forgive myself for, I had very low self-worth when I was a teenager and in my early 20s; for reasons which I’ll share later on, my self-worth came wrapped up in what others thought of me if people thought I popular, cool, funny if had a boyfriend, if I had a lot of friends around me, if people liked me and if not. When I met people who weren’t that bothered about me; my inner wounded self would kick into overdrive to make this person love me.
Low self-worth will always show up in actions and behaviours, by the people you choose to spend time with, how you allow yourself to be treated, and if you treat others poorly to make yourself feel better.
One of the things that took me years to forgive myself for was when I was 17; I had a lovely boyfriend. He adored me and took care of me, and I just felt so safe with him, but I went on holiday with the girls, met a guy and cheated on him. It ended the relationship, of course, but I felt the guilt of it for years. My Ex and I became friends as adults and caught up when I was back in my hometown, and he very kindly forgave me for doing something so painful to him as a teenager; however, every time I would meet up with him, I would feel the guilt of what I had done. It took me years to look in the mirror and finally forgive myself for cheating and behaving that way and for hurting someone else. I now understand why I did what I did. It, of course, had nothing to do with my boyfriend and everything to do with my low self-worth. I cheated because I needed to feel popular, attractive, and part of the cool single gang of girls on my holiday ( sidenote – none of them were impressed with my actions and stopped speaking to me when we got home). There’s still an element of shame even writing it, but that’s also part of the forgiveness chapter, taking ownership and accountability for your part in what you need to forgive yourself for.
We are all human; we can make and take full ownership of our mistakes.
No one ever sets out to hurt another person; our motive is always to do these things to try and get out of our heads and make ourselves feel better.
If you look at people who are serial cheaters, they don’t do that to hurt their partner; most serial cheaters do that because they need validation and they get that from sleeping with lots of people; there is a deep need to feel as much love and validation as possible and the more partners they sleep with, the more validation from different sources they get (If you’re involved with a serial cheater, this doesn’t mean you should take them back – this means you understand their motive and that they need to do the work on this part of them – this is not an invitation to try and heal others and take away their right to do their own work).
“Remember, it is not the snake bite that kills, but the venom which circulates afterwards that is fatal. Do not let the snake bite another person and release any venom inside you. You can control its entry, and you are responsible forever thought in your mind” – Robin Sharma.
If you look at people who steal, they don’t steal to take from someone else; they steal because they either need it to survive (food) or to gain some street cred, which allows them to feel accepted and respected. Both of these motives come back to feeling better about themselves.
If there are moments in your life you feel shame for; it’s time to start taking accountability and forgive yourself for any shameful feelings towards yourself. Recognise at that time in your life you may have acted in a way that came from a place of trying to get respect, attention, acknowledgment, love but essentially to feel better. If someone wronged you in the past, can you see that whatever they did may have come from a place of trying to make themselves feel better, even if that mean they ended up hurting you.
There’s a process I will share with you soon that will allow you to go back in time and forgive yourself, your actions, or the feelings you carried about yourself. To take full ownership of your life now and allow you to change how you feel about yourself radically in the present and as you move forward.
Self-worth is the internal sense of knowing you are good enough and deserving of love from others.
Self-worth is always an internal game. You can only get it by teaching yourself to believe you are worthy and becoming the person you want to be from the inside out.
When you don’t grow up experiencing worthiness, you create ways to get it from the outside:
- People-pleasing.
- Saying yes to everyone and everything.
- Being anxious about friendships and relationships.
- Experiencing competition and jealousy toward others.
- Burning out while trying to prove yourself to others.
- Valuing the quantity of friends over the quality of friends
- Dropping people for the shine of something else brighter
The list is endless, but essentially, you forget yourself, you forget what you love and what lights you up, and you place your life and your happiness into the eyes of others looking at you.
If you’ve ever experienced low self-worth, you also understand that and when you’re operating from a place of low self-worth and insecurity, what that means is that your actions and your behaviours can reflect that. You might say you only want to date great people with great values, but when your next date shows you a whiff of attention and says something nice, you can drop your guard, drop your friends and be back in the cycle of valuing someone else above you once more.
Low self-worth will always show up in your behaviour and actions. Rather than feeling deep shame about it when you find yourself in the same cycle or behaving in a way that doesn’t make you feel good, this is a nudge from the universe to get some help, identify the behaviours that aren’t of your authentic essence and work on changing them and changing your inner world in your behaviour. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s something to be aware of and forgive yourself for. It’s essential to realise that this, like everything in life, is a journey, and this behaviour can be changed.
Every action or behaviour you exhibit comes from your deep-rooted beliefs about yourself. As we move through these chapters, you’ll understand how, by starting with forgiveness, you can change these programs and behaviours and how you date and are in intimate relationships.
When you change these programs and behaviours, your standards for yourself will change, and you’ll understand and allow great people into your life.
In your past dating experiences or relationships, you have allowed people to walk all over you and accepted crumbs from people regarding their friendships or relationships. It could also mean that in the past, you’ve cheated on people, you’ve been cheated on and allowed that behaviour to continue even though you knew what was going on. So there are a lot of areas where we need to get real and realise forgiveness is an inside job as much as an outside job.
“Forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else. It’s something you do for yourself. It’s saying, ‘You’re not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.’ It’s saying, ‘You don’t get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.'” Jodi Picoult
We have these moments in our lives when we look back, cringe, and go, why did I do that? Why did I allow them back in? Why did I make that decision? Why didn’t I ask them questions, set boundaries, or take more time?
We can always see red flags in plain sight, so you may forgive yourself for ignoring what your intuition is trying to tell you. You know, there was a massive red flag there; why did I let that pass me by, or why did I dismiss that? Or we might look back at how we’ve behaved, the things we’ve done, and the actions we’ve taken and feel a deep shame around those.
Now is the time to acknowledge that and understand that when you are burying shame and not going into it and forgiving yourself for that shame, you’re carrying it around with you.
We’ve all got those moments in our lives. You know those most embarrassing moments when you’ve said something or done something, and it doesn’t necessarily connect to self-worth, but every time you think about it, you cringe and go, oh god, why did I do that? It’s so bad.
There are three easy ways to start this forgiveness and healing process.
1 – Listen to or read the Forgiveness Meditation below (use the link to listen to the audio version)
2- Write a whole page in your journal about how forgiving yourself or another person feels. Write ‘As I start to forgive (INSERT THE NAME OR ‘MYSELF) I feel………..’ in the present tense
3- Describe your life without the blame, shame, guilt, or negative thinking once you have forgiven and let go
I.e. Now that I have forgiven, my life feels.
“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself to forgive. Forgive everybody.” Maya Angelou
Coming up now is a Meditation, which you can read below, but it’s also available on my website, which you can access here.
In this meditation, we will go to those deep parts of us that need forgiveness, not just embarrassing moments. It’s parts of us that we need to let go of, forgive, and understand that we are operating from a different operating system. We’re working from a place of low self-worth, which makes us behave in a certain way. So, with that in mind, I’d love to invite you to start getting relaxed; make sure you’re somewhere nice and quiet where you won’t be disturbed, and we’re going to go and heal those parts of you.
If you want to read this, slightly close your eyes so that you can read it and feel relaxed.
Take a few nice deep breaths in through your nose and out through your nose as you take that breath into your body and release it, bringing in lots of calmness and just releasing any tension, and keep that breathing going now.
I want to invite you to go back to a time and a place that you know you are operating from now, a place of low self-worth where you allowed somebody to treat you poorly, where you didn’t use your voice. There might have been a time and a spot when you were so young that you didn’t have the skills or freedom to speak up.
You may have been sent some information and chose to ignore it. There are so many things. So, find where you know you were in a place of low self-worth.
Continue to breathe nice and deeply here as you find this scene, this memory in your mind.
Just let it come to you.
Nice and easy
When you’re at this scene, I’d love you to observe that scene now as if it’s on a giant cinema screen in front of you, and you can see yourself in that scene and just know you’re just the observer now, so you’re not involved, you’re not reliving that scene, it’s not happening again. You’re just witnessing it now. As you see it, you’re witnessing it from the eyes of somebody with all this wisdom, knowledge, and lessons, and so I’d like you now to feel completely safe, completely at ease, and know you’re entirely protected. I’d like you to step into that scene and walk over to yourself, and as you walk over to your younger self, I want you to be aware of what they’re doing and be mindful of how they’re feeling in this moment. Maybe there’s an intuition that something’s wrong and, as you notice this, I want you to pick them now up or just wrap them in your arms and just hold them in your arms and just repeat these words: I forgive you and thank you for going through this experience. I’ve learned so much from this experience, and I’ve learned so much from you, and it’s all going to be okay; it’s all going to work out.
When you made this decision or made this choice, you didn’t know what I know now, but now that I know, I’m coming back to say that I forgive you and understand why you made this choice. I know now why you did what you did, and it will all be okay. I love you, I honour you, and I thank you, and I forgive you.
And as you hold the younger in your arms, allow them to feel that total forgiveness, that complete love, that full compassion now; just let them morph into you, become part of you, soak into you every blood cell, bone, and muscle. They wash into you and become you. And you’re now going to leave that scene. You’re taking this younger version of you with you, and they’re full of forgiveness. You’ve forgiven them; they’ve forgiven themselves.
You’re going to step back out of that scene, step back into your world right now, and allow that feeling of forgiveness to flood your body.
Let the ease, peace, and calm flow through you, knowing that you’re okay, learned that lesson, and forgiven yourself. You’re setting yourself free and caring for that younger self. When you’re ready, take a few deep breaths and slowly open up your eyes if they were closed and allow yourself to notice if you do feel any differences, if there’s a lightness and a calmness and an ease about you now, and just knowing you can repeat this meditation with as many memories that you need to. This is here for you so that you can allow yourself to forgive yourself. As you repeat this process, whenever you need to, remember that you are allowing yourself more freedom, cutting yourself off from any resistance, any negativity in the past, and setting yourself free.
On our journey of self-worth, we learn to forgive ourselves and not be surprised if other memories or different feelings come up about situations from the past as we move through this work. And this meditation is always here for you. It’s here for you whenever you need it. So rest easy now. Just know that you’ve done enough. Just know that everything that’s happened in your life is forgivable and always starts with you.
You may not be in a place where you’re ready to forgive others, but you can forgive yourself for whatever part you played. As we start to end now, I’d love to invite you to listen to these last words of forgiveness and allow them to soak into your mind.
DAILY MANTRA FOR FORGIVING YOURSELF
I forgive myself for looking for love in places I’m not even respected.
I forgive myself for finding excuses for those who used my kindness and compassion as weapons against me.
I forgive myself for trying to fit into a box,
I forgive myself for shrinking and dimming my light to please people who never even question their hurtful behaviour.
I forgive myself for staying too long in an environment that slowly broke my soul.
I forgive myself for doubting my worth whenever someone judged or rejected me.
I forgive myself for apologising for being me, with my needs, limits, and dreams.
You can come back and read or listen to this forgiveness-guided meditation as often as you like. If different memories from your past cause you to feel shame, guilt, or fear, you can use this guided meditation to go back and heal that younger version of you.
As we heal our younger selves, even if that was only six months ago, we allow our bodies to know we are now safe in the future and for our bodies to relax.
You may notice how harmful thoughts towards other people from your past will become less and less and how forgiving yourself for whatever part you played or thoughts you had towards the other person is now freeing you to fully step into calm, ease and start healing so that you can move forward.
Each experience you have can be turned into a gift. Every person you forgive allows you to regain some peace and freedom.
We will start moving step by step, chapter by chapter, into total self-worth, the realisation of your high value, and the next few episodes in your journey toward self-worth and making intelligent decisions regarding your love life, dating and relationships.
You understand now that the first step starts with forgiveness, and you’re already on your way.
Sending you healing vibes,
Em x
