Easy Ways to Forgive Yourself and Move on from Past Mistakes
Making mistakes is known to be one of the most notable human attributes. It has become such an integral aspect of humans such that it is hard for anyone to lead an entire life without making a mistake. Mistakes are parts of the learning process and a way to make us better persons.
As rampant and common as mistakes are, they come with certain consequences which may include regretful ends. Mistakes can be simple with less consequences and can also be serious. Extreme mistakes can be disastrous and sometimes hard to forget and forgive oneself.
Unforgettable mistakes most times leave a trail that hinders an individual from moving on from the past to what awaits the next phase of life, and what the future holds. Once a mistake leaves this level of pain and regret, it can destroy one's life, affect their reasoning and reflect on their attitudes and lifestyles.
Do you find it hard to forgive yourself or moving on from a certain mistake you made in the past? In this blog post, we present to you the easy ways you can forgive yourself and move on from your past mistakes in order to grab the new phase of life and the upcoming opportunities in good faith.
How to Forgive Yourself and Move on from Your Past Mistakes
1. Accept Your Mistake and Weaknesses:
Just like every other person, you are not perfect. You have both strength and weaknesses and bound to make mistakes. Accepting this fact is one of the first steps you need to easily forgive yourself and move on from the snare of your past.
Do not let your mistakes haunt you, it was not absolutely your fault but part of the human nature in you. When you realize how imperfect you are, you will be able to sort for perfection and possibly discover a better version of you.
2. Have a Sincere Conversation with Yourself:
Call yourself to order and speak kindly to yourself. Try to understand where you went wrong and how you can get it right next time.
Self-communication, mindfulness and meditations are great ways to heal from emotional burdens. A quiet moment alone will do this perfectly.
You can talk to yourself as if you are communicating with another person or just contemplate on the positive perspectives of all aspects of you, your strengths.
Being sincere to yourself and apologizing to your inner mind, if there is any need, can help you forgive yourself of your past and relieve yourself from emotional burdens.
3. Grant Yourself an Amnesty:
Let go of the past and give yourself another chance. Taking your life, hating yourself or holding pains and bitterness are all bad approaches to handling life mistakes.
You have already accepted the reality and besides, you cannot turn back the hands of time. It is time to offer yourself an amnesty and a fresh approach to life. It may not restore your losses, but it will at least give you a relief and help you move on from your emotional cage.
4. Reconnect with yourself:
A lot of people have lost their minds over certain mistakes they made in the past. They sometimes think that it can't ever get better again thereby failing to pay any more attention to themselves.
Call yourself to order, listen to it and take care of it. Once you reconnect again with your inner self, you will have a boost in intuition, reasoning and decision making.
5. Set New Realistic Goals:
Living a life without a goal is like embarking on a journey without a destination. You know what? Such journey would be frustrating, aimless and hopeless.
Goals are like compasses of life and enable one to make good decisions. Where there is no goal, it is hard to move on from the past because life is already vague and blurred. While it is important to set goals, it is also worthy of note that only realistic goals can lead to accomplishment and a sense of satisfaction.
You can search for goal setting ideas and use it as a compass to draft your own realistic goals.
You have lost your last fights, now is time to set new targets and go after them. Having realistic goals will define your focus and take your attention away from your past as well as helping you ignore the mistakes you have ever made.
"The past only tells the story of yesterday. What matters now is today and what tomorrow holds"- Abas Obot.
6. Pursue bigger Dreams:
Pursuing realistic dreams does not mean that you should limit yourself to purposeless pursuits. Go after courses that once you succeed, you will be proud of yourself.
You can invest in yourself, learn new skills, further your studies, and find better jobs. I mean go for the "better things".
If your regrets or what is holding you back in the past has to do with relationship, next time go for someone that is better than your ex. It is a way of recovering your worth and self-esteem.
7. Prioritize What Matters Now:
Live in the moment and leave the past. Give priorities to things that matter and forget about whatever brings you more frustration.
Also bear in mind that you cannot accomplish everything or go to everywhere in life. Therefore, while setting realistic goals, consider your scales of preference and what matters most to you either at the moment or in the next moments. This does not stop you from planning about the future, but it helps minimize how much you worry about a problem that is not even real.
8. Celebrate Your strengths:
Recognize what you have achieved for the past years. It has not been all negative and tragic news. At least there was a moment in the past you accomplished something tangible, a moment you smiled and a moment you celebrated.Consider those positive sides of life, the good aspects of you, your uniqueness, talents and skills. When you count all your wins and strengths, you will probably be able to put down the thought about your weaknesses and focus on how to use your strengths to make your life better.
9. Cage Your Thoughts and Emotions:
Beware of what you think and where your mind goes. Thoughts are known to influence the reality of life. It is thought that leads to action and decision making. This post wouldn't be here if no one thought about it prior to its writing.
When your thoughts are positive, you have an edge advantage over your life but when your thoughts are negative, it is hard for you to move on from your past.
All the negative feelings and pains you feel over your past only come to stay because you give them chance in your heart through your negative thinking. Once you train your mind to think positive, you will move on from your past and also have advantage over the future.
10. Stay Healthy in Body and Mind:
Good health is wealth and one of the most important things in life. Keep your body and mind healthy.
A healthy person is a hopeful person. Healthy physical activities like exercises are known to boost positivity. In addition to physical well-being, your mental health should be given a prior consideration.
The truth is that living in the negative past and the state of mental health are correlated. Most people who keep getting troubled by their past experience are known to suffer from anxiety or other mental health related conditions like depression. Whether it is the condition that precedes the negative thinking is not a subject to deliberate in this context but if you feel you are mentally depressed or suffer from anxiety, seek help now.
11. Surround yourself with positive minded people:
Spend time with those who support, think well of you and ready to lift you up when you are down.
Building a good relationship is also one of the most important things in life. Such relationships might be family, friends or partners. If you find it hard to maintain good and healthy relationship with friends, check this guide.
When you surround yourself with positive minded people, you will get motivated by their actions, words and lifestyles and thereby emulate virtues and good habits that can help you move forward in life against your past mistakes and setbacks.
12. Make Gratitude a Hobby:
Besides acknowledging your strength and what you have, do also congratulate yourself, your wins and God for his provision.
A grateful mind is a happy and positive soul. Sometimes take yourself out to celebrate your little wins, if you can do that alone, go out with friends. This heart of gratefulness will help you rise above lowliness and blue feelings over your past.
13. Purge Yourself of Every Form of Bitterness and Hatred:
When you build a bitter mindset and hate others around you, it is hard that you will be able to feel positive towards yourself.
Love everyone around you and show them genuine affection; then observe how it turns out. Even if they seem not to care, such free mindedness will help to lessen your worries and boost your positivity and virtues.
14. Read Inspirational Books Like the Holy Bible
There are a whole lot of wonderful books out there that can help you sail through whatever challenge you are facing in life.
The reason we single out the Holy Bible is that it is the most read and most popular book in the world and has almost every word of comfort, lesson, love and good tidings you can think about. Reading it can give you comfort and help you move on from your past mistakes because of the inspirations therein.
Even if you are not a Christian, there are great lessons to learn from every book or you can go for other inspirational books or materials of your choice. Reading can keep you inspired and able to hold tight your muscles against all life setbacks.
15. Forgive Those Who Have Offended You
It is hard if not impossible to easily forgive yourself if you cannot forgive others who have offended you. Sometimes, when you keep living in your past, you will hardly be able to forgive, especially those who led you into the mess.
When you forgive your offenders, the memory of the offence will begin to fade away until it finally vanishes. Even if you still remember what happened, the fact that you have forgiven them will help you to also forgive yourself. Failure to forgive others have consequences including holding you back in the past.
16. Never you transfer your anger or bitterness to an innocent individual:
There are instances where people transfer the bitterness of the disappointment they had in their prior relationships to their spouses, friends or partners.
Passing your past resentment to the person in your new phase of life is a great setback and a bad attitude. It will not only prevent you from attaining your greatest height in life but can as well hinder you from living your best, and also make you remain a slave to your past and whosoever offended you.
Try to let it go and embrace your new life and the new person that is there in your life. Do not let whatever you face in the past to affect how you associate with people. With this, you would be able to move on from your mistakes, forgiving yourself and accepting the new person that you are.
Your new relationship or marriage cannot move forward if you are not ready to let go the past and enjoy your life as a new one. You can't allow the consequence of your previous reckless life to befall an innocent fellow who is ready to give you his/her all. This has led many to a frustrating marriage life because members of the parties are still judging the new partners based on people they came across in the past. Move on and see things turn around. This also applies to every aspect of your life.
"You need to let your past go for your present to have its way."
17. Seek for a new dawn:
It is important that you seek for a new life, a new you and a new perspective. The past has past, and the present is here. How do you handle the present to avoid repeating the mistakes you have made in the past? How do you nullify the consequences of your past life? When you think about this, work on yourself and any aspect of you that you want to amend then watch everything turning for your good.
The whole process of moving on in life requires that you embrace yourself as it is (including your strength and weaknesses), accept your mistakes, forgive yourself, give yourself another chance, prevent yourself from living in the pains associated with your past, call yourself to order and seek for a new perspective. Also, it is important for you to forgive others including those you think were responsible for your predicaments. Create a new you and ensure that nothing holds you down from moving on. You stand to gain a lot in moving away from your past and preventing your life from the influence of your past mistakes.
Abas Obot
Abasiama Akpan (pen name: Abas Obot) is a creative writer who aims to inspire, inform and educate his audience. His major focus is on human capital development, forged by his educational background, passion, experience, and personal objectives. Founder: Inspired Scoop and Knowledge Trend Media. Social handle @Abasdgreat facebook twitter instagram linkedin email
