Forgive yourself

I love Martha Beck, a coach and author whose Sunday ‘Gathering Room’ I can recommend on Facebook where she gives helpful tips on how to navigate the world, mainly internal!

Last week she spoke about a new book by Stephen Mitchell about self-forgiveness (not out yet) and the technique he describes for how to do it. Here it is:

Find a thought about yourself that feels bad.
Let it know you know it is a lie (anything that feels bad or restrictive is not the truth of who you are).
Thank it for appearing to you so that you have to now see through it to the truth.
Reverse the thought (find it’s opposite).
Ask yourself for examples of how this opposite thought could be true.

It may be no surprise that Stephen Mitchell is Byron Katie’s husband and she is the author of ‘The Work’. This is another technique to question your thoughts, and the last part also involves reversing to see how the opposite could be true.

What this does is it releases us from automatically buying into thoughts that are damaging us and most of all, untrue. When we unpack them, one at a time, time after time, and look at how the opposite could be, if not just as, potentially far more true, we become deeply free.

It’s like finally having someone on the inside, finally on our side. Seeing us at our best, seeing the truth of who we are and backing that true version of who we are. This means we require far less validation from outside through achievements or other people, as we are completing this process internally for ourselves.

So next time you find yourself believing a negative thought about yourself, try welcoming that wake-up call, realise it is a lie, reverse the thought, find ways that could be true and forgive yourself – not for the originally perceived fault, but for ever believing the lie it contained. in the first place.

Happy self-forgiveness!