If you want to have great success in your life, then you must expect to make a lot of mistakes. In order to survive the guilt from these mistakes, you must learn to forgive yourself. Additionally, if you cannot forgive yourself, you will never be able to fully forgive others, and all of your relationships will break or suffer great distress.
Forgiveness is the message of many of our religions. When we think of forgiveness, we very often think of forgiveness of others and not ourselves. The truth is that we will suffer the greatest harm from our own actions and our own words. We will beat ourselves up far more viscously than anyone else ever can.
In order to forgive, we must see our emotions for what they really are. A creation of our mind, our emotions are products of a set of beliefs about how we are and how we should be. No one of us strives to be mean, but at times we are mean. We don’t want to overindulge, but at times we do. In some Christian faiths, the Ten Commandments are seen as a list of how every one of us are, the absolution of our souls by the death of Christ is seen by some Christians as forgiveness of our human nature, and a message that we cannot progress in our humanity until we forgive ourselves. The key to obtaining enlightenment and happiness in many religious beliefs is the acceptance of our humanity. A famous Buddist koan, (or question asked in order to guide a follower toward enlightenment), asks, “Who was I before I was born, who am I after I am gone, who am I now?” To answer this question, the student must first confront his or her humanity.
Refusing to forgive ourselves is a defense mechanism that we use to avoid the emotional pain of guilt. By avoiding this guilt, we are destined to repeat the same mistakes. In order to face our weakness, we must accept that we are weak and live in the pain of guilt. Knowing how we are is the first step to forgiving ourselves for being human.
Pride is the enemy of forgiveness and forces us to reject our humanity. We place ourselves above human frailty by refusing to acknowledge our weaknesses. Lowering yourself and bowing before the truth of being human is very difficult because of the pain of failure. Many men and women experience great success in their lives after a great awakening. The awakening is always precipitated by some great failure, which cannot be overcome by pride.
As children we were encouraged to strive toward independence as defined by self-determination. The adults in our lives modeled behavior, which taught us that we could control our own destiny if we only work hard enough. The phrase, “you can do anything if you put your mind to it.” has misguided many of us to believe that we need only to work harder in order to avoid all mistakes and reach the highest level of attainment and achievement. But success is recognition of our progress and we cannot make progress if we avoid knowing how we are.
Matt Pasquinilli is the Executive Director of the non-profit Asian Arts Center Taekwondo School in Dayton, Ohio.
