Each of us has areas in our individual lives where we need growth.  One of those areas for me has been in the area of self-forgiveness.    I am a very stong-willed person, and I will admit that at times in my life I have been very stubborn when it comes to my way of life and what I think. I do think there is a good place in each of our lives for such attributes, but as we all would probably agree, being strong-willed and stubborn can be very negative for our lives also.

One way that is true is when it comes time to "anty up" or "own up" to a mistake that we've made. First let me say that if you are as stubborn as I am and you are at the point where you are owning up to a mistake, you are already past a very difficult point, and the rest should be no harder than what you've already been through!

Once you realize that you've made a mistake, and you admit that it was your fault, one of the most important next steps is forgiving yourself. You might think off hand that this is easy, but haven't you ever totally kicked yourself on the inside for something you've done? I think we all have, in fact, I have done this and let this go on inside of me literally for years on some of the bigger mistakes that I've made.

And THIS is where I have gone wrong. Self-critisism is good at small levels, don't get me wrong. But self-critisism that turns into anger, temporary self-hatred, and action-changing lack of progress is what we really need to be careful with.

Everyone goes through this, mainly because we are all our own worst critics! It is our human nature to do the right thing in life. This is displayed in its truest form when we are children, before our minds are ever corrupted with the idea that we can lie, cheat, steal, or do anything wrong.

So when we make the choice to go against our human nature and do something that is wrong, we are working against ourselves in a way that makes us naturally feel uncomfortable. When we do this, and it is something that we cannot reverse, our coping and recovery skills immediately begin to take over.

It is at this point that we should RECOGNIZE what we did wrong. Then it is important that we try to understand WHY we did what we did. What motivated me to do that? Then, we have to CORRECT our behavior to ensure that we will never intentionally create the problem again. And finally, we need to FORGIVE ourselves by moving on.

The forgiveness of ourselves is extremely important because when we feel ashamed of ourselves, this is when our actions are most likely to be affected by what we did. And, we tend to make more rash decisions that we may not usually make, which can lead to more mistakes and more problems in our lives.

ALSO, don't you think that if I am mad at myself and hating myself for years after a mistake that this is simply continuing that mistake way beyond it's original "shelf life?" Really, how long we let a mistake fester, irritate us, or affect us is the true measure of how big that mistake was. I think the last sentence was THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I have said in this today, so I will write this again.

How long we let a mistake fester, irritate us, or affect us is the true measure of how big that mistake was. Do we really want to make the mistake we made BIGGER than what than what it needs to be? An effective person tries to MINIMIZE mistakes, not make them bigger...I think you understand.

Of course I have just begun with this subject, but for today I will stop here. I have personally struggled with the task of forgiving myself, so even writing this here helps me too. I hope that reading this can help you, if only once, to deal with a mistake just a little better or slightly quicker than before.

I will certainly be back with more on this subject and I will also be expanding on some of the other topics that I mentioned here today. I hope you all have had a great weekend. Thank you for reading! ~ Scott