Moving Past The Pain

Have you at anytime looked back at an experience or incident in your life and cringed. You did something in your past and now in hindsight you wish you never did it.

And now every time you remember the incident you are overwhelmed with guilt and maybe even pain. You just wish you could turn back time and do it all over again. 

The sad truth is that as much as you wish you can magically freeze everyone :-), go back in time and re-live the experience and do it differently, you can't. 

You need to come to terms with the fact that as long as you are living and breathing there will always be occasions where you take actions and make decisions that you're not proud of. 

The bigger question however is how do you move past those experiences so they don't define your past and hold you hostage emotionally. Here's how I go through those painful moments: 

I tell the truth about the situation. I don't make excuses or seek to justify myself or anybody else. I raise my hands to my fault and really say it as it is. If I messed up, then I call it out and admit it.

I forgive myself (everybody deserves a second chance, even you). I give myself permission to make mistakes. I am human and part of that package of being human is fallibility. I don't excuse myself, but I give myself permission to be human.


This is where you put self love into practice. Part of the reason we are really hard on ourselves when we make mistakes is because we hold ourselves to a high standard of how we expect to behave, which is great but we need to also make room for mistakes when we don't meet those high expectations.

I learn the lesson from that bad decision (there is always a lesson to learn)

Finally, I let it go. I refuse to be held hostage by my emotions. I own up to my mistake, I make amends if possible. And whether it's possible or not to make amends, I forgive myself, learn the lesson and strive not to do it again then I move on.

You have a lot of possibilities in your future and good decisions to make. Don't let the pain/guilt of your past steal your moments of happiness and joy. And don't make it a question of self worth. Don't question your self worth because you made a bad decision or even a serious of bad decisions.

Move past the pain because there's some much more joy, beauty, good decisions and possibilities in your future. You can't linger in the past.


To moving into possibilities.
xo


Featured photo credit: Flickr - Freedom by Alban Gonzalez

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