00:00 

This is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and you are listening to episode number 33, "Forgiving Yourself." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Well, hey there. Happy to be with you. It has actually been about a week and a half since I've recorded, since I was down in California, visiting with my sister down there, and I gave a presentation, which I was really happy with. The women down there that I spoke to are just wonderful and so nice and so accepting of me, and I really appreciate that. We had a really good discussion and I was happy with how it went. But meanwhile, so I had pre-recorded several, and so here I am. I'm about a week out right now, so this one will come out next week, but that's kind of how this works. So here I am after a week and a half off. It feels good to be back and to be processing this information again, and preparing information for you. I hope that you're enjoying it. 

01:03 

So today, we are going to be talking about forgiving yourself. This is actually a topic that was requested of me that I speak about, and I think with good reason. Because so many of us struggle with forgiving ourselves for things that we've done. We just sometimes have a hard time letting go of behaviors or thoughts that are in our past, and continue to let them impact our present in a really negative way. So let's take a look at what forgiving ourselves really means, and why so many of us have such a hard time getting there. 

01:38 

So we're going to start off today talking about forgiving other people, and some of the elements necessary to get to a place where we can forgive other people, and then we're going to move on. So one of the first and most basic concepts of forgiveness is realizing that our extending forgiveness to others really has nothing to do with the other person and what they did. Rather, it has everything to do with us. Because I want the peace and contentment that comes with forgiveness, not because they deserve it. Choosing to stay in a place of being unforgiving just eats away at our peace, doesn't it? It will cause us to continually feel anger and resentment, frustration or anxiety. Whereas choosing to stay in a place of unforgiveness also creates strained relationships, short tempers, unrighteous judgments. 

02:31 

But choosing to forgive comes from a place of compassion, of understanding, and of Christlike love. Choosing to move to a place of forgiveness is choosing to move into peace and to mercy and to shared humanness. I love that President Gordon B. Hinckley referred to forgiveness as the greatest virtue on Earth. Isn't that beautiful? I love that, the greatest virtue on earth. But as we talked about in an earlier podcast called Forgiveness and Trust, those two things are not the same. Forgiving someone does not mean we automatically trust them. And this is gonna kinda work with us as well. But now let's take a look at some of these ideas about forgiving others and start to apply them to forgiving ourselves. 

03:15 

So just as we forgive others so that we can find peace within ourselves, so we must also learn to forgive ourselves in order to find peace within ourselves as well. Being unwilling to forgive ourselves have some pretty strong roots in what we call shame. Brene Brown speaks extensively about shame and guilt. If you have not checked out her stuff, I know I've talked about her before on this podcast, check her out if you need more information about shame and guilt. But again, being unwilling to forgive ourselves starts off with some strong roots in shame. 

03:53 

Shame is the idea that "I am bad." Guilt is the idea that "what I did was bad." Shame is something that we identify with ourselves. And guilt is something we identify with our behaviors. So just as being unable to forgive others can often be founded in the idea that they are a bad person rather than seeing them as separate from their behaviors, being unable to  forgive ourselves is also founded in the idea that we are bad people to the core rather than separating out our behaviors from who we are. And this will often cause us to beat ourselves up over and over and over. Why? "Because I am bad. I deserve to be beat up." When I can't separate out my behavior from who I am, I start seeing my behavior as indicative of what I am. It's not my immoral behavior. It's that I am immoral. It's not unkind behavior. I am unkind. It's not dishonest behavior. It's that I am dishonest. These thoughts keep us so stuck in unforgiving thoughts because though it can be possible to change behaviors it can feel impossible to change the core essence of who we really are. 

05:19 

So one of the first things we can learn to do we can learn to we can do is to stop feeling shame and to start feeling guilty instead. We need to start feeling bad for the behavior that we engaged in but don't connect that with the person that we really are. My behavior was bad. I am not bad because really as we've mentioned before, and this is the second important point, our worth as a person is not on the line here. Our worth of a person never is and never has been on the line, regardless of what our behaviors are. Our worth is never in question in God's eyes, and it would do us well to embrace the truth that our worth always has been and always will be consistent. We are a person of great value. We are worth no more nor less than any other person, but our value is great and it was determined before we were born. It has always existed and it will always exist. Nothing we can do can change that. 

06:30 

And one of the reasons we struggle to forgive ourselves is because we feel our behavior has impacted our worth in a negative way. But that's just not even possible. Our worth does not change. So first, we need to become aware of our thoughts about shame and guilt. Second, we need to acknowledge our worth before God and embrace and accept that worth ourselves. 

06:58 

Third, here we go. Let's start becoming more aware of God's Plan of Salvation and the role of our humanness within that plan. Okay, God's plan was to send us here to earth so we could have a human experience. We needed to be tested. We needed to be tried in all things so that we could grow strong and hopefully choose paths that would lead us back to Him. And I'm a firm believer that God individually gives us specifically what we need to strengthen our strengths and to strengthen our weaknesses. I think that my challenges and trials are specific for who I am and what I'm already a good and bad at as are yours. In this plan of salvation, God's plan was to send imperfect people with imperfect bodies to an imperfect world to interact with other imperfect people and have imperfect experiences. 

07:55 

The whole plan is about imperfection, hence the overwhelming need for a Savior, right? In all this imperfection, God knew that we would sin. He knew that we would make mistakes. He knew that we would stray off the path and do things that went against His commandments. He knew we would think unkind thoughts and do unkind things. He knew we would hurt other people accidentally and sometimes on purpose. He knew we would struggle with mortal bodily weaknesses such as lust and overeating and laziness. Being human is what the plan was all about, getting a body and learning to manage and control it. 

08:40 

But learning is a process of many failures and a few successes. Coming to earth to understand that our worth is amazing and infinite, and that our behaviors are sometimes not, was part of God's plan as well. If we were expected to come down to earth and never make a mistake there would have been no need for a Savior, someone to redeem us from our human frailties. In denying our humanness we are inadvertently denying the plan of God. In learning to accept our humanness we come to accept the plan and we come to understand the goodness and the love of God. We begin to see how vast his love for us really is in creating this world where we can come get a body figure it out through trial and error, lots of trial and error, and still be able to enter into his presence worthy to be there. 

09:45 

So I love the story of the prodigal son. Christ tells of this young man who takes his inheritance while his father is still living. He leaves and he squanders it in riotous living, meaning he was being a pretty naughty boy. He was not doing what he needed to but then things get really bad and the scriptures say that eventually "he came to himself." Isn't that an amazing phrase? I love that phrase. He came to himself. I see that as meaning that he realized that the way he was choosing to live really wasn't being true to who he really was. And In our in a lot of today's terminology that would that would mean he wasn't living authentically, right? He wasn't living true to who he really was and isn't that what our recognizing our need to repent is all about? Understanding that our behaviors are not aligning with who we really are and who we want to be? Powered by Notta.ai

10:45 

So look at the shame and the guilt here. This prodigal son was able to clearly separate his behavior out from who he really was. He felt guilt, but not shame, and this is what allowed him to return to his father. When he returns home his father embraces him, gives him a ring, and throws a feast in his honor, right? And then that's the last we hear of the prodigal son. Then then we go on and start talking about the brother. But the last we hear of the prodigal son is a hug, a ring, and a feast. We don't hear about this prodigal son wallowing in self-pity, questioning his worth, and refusing the ring. We don't hear about him refusing to eat because he needed to punish himself and going to a room or out in the field instead. From everything that we understand from this story, he apparently received both the embrace and the ring, and he entered into the feast. He accepted being accepted. 

11:49 

And this is a huge part of forgiving ourselves. We have to accept being accepted by God. In providing the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ, God has accepted us even before we came to earth and sinned. God accepted us as the imperfect humans that He created us to be. And if we can learn to accept what God has already accepted us, in our ultra-flawed state, then we are in a good place to begin forgiving ourselves. 

12:28 

And just a reminder, perfectionism really isn't a thing. It really doesn't exist in the context of humanness. Perfectionism is expecting something that even God is not expecting of us. Perfectionism is denying the Plan of Salvation. Perfectionism is denying our worth, the same worth that God established when He created us. Forgiving ourselves is embracing our imperfections, not because we believe we can enter God's Kingdom with them, but because we understand that we can't enter God's Kingdom without them. If that confused you, here we go. The growth that these imperfections provide us is what will make us worthy to enter into God's Kingdom. Those imperfections are necessary for us to be able to grow, because growth is what we are ultimately here on earth for. 

13:32 

So, once we acknowledge our guilt, not our shame, our guilt, our worth before God and His Plan of Salvation, we are in a place to begin forgiving ourselves. So first of all, we have to start off by just noticing our suffering. As I spoke about in a podcast entitled "Processing Pain" just a couple of times ago, we have to acknowledge our suffering, we have to acknowledge our pain, we can't ignore it or avoid it, as we talked about in that last one, or we can't beat ourselves up over it, which would be reacting to it, right? We have to just allow ourselves to feel the pain. Find a quiet place, lay on your bed, go sit in your car, down in the basement, in the bathroom, your closet, wherever and just allow yourselves to feel the pain. Feeling the pain though is different than having thoughts of shame about who you are or feelings of worthlessness. Don't let your thoughts go there, just feel the pain for a little bit. 

14:37 

Alright, then once you start to adjust to that and realizing that, then let's offer some understanding for our mistakes, realizing that this is just part of the process of growth that God created for us in His plan. We don't need to shamefully judge ourselves and see how horrible we are, but we can be kind in recognizing that our behavior was out of line. But knowing that we can change that behavior, this is the process God created for us in the Plan of Salvation. 

15:15 

And last, realize that you are where you are because you're human. You are having the human experience God wants you to have. And what an amazing blessing that is. Through these tough experiences, we are learning to become more like Christ. We're learning to turn to Christ in his Atonement for relief from our guilt. Through these experiences, we are experiencing exactly what God wants us to experience, growth, dependence on him, understanding other people's weaknesses, patience, acceptance, kindness toward other people. When we fight against the human experiences of struggle, imperfections, suffering, or not getting what we want, we will never find peace. But the more we truly believe in and understand the plan of salvation, the easier it becomes to forgive ourselves for things God is already willing to extend forgiveness for. And the peace we are seeking for will settle in our hearts and we will find forgiving ourselves becomes part of the process. 

16:29 

I love this quote from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. He says, "however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don't have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ's Atonement shines." I love that understanding the gospel of Christ helps living make so much more sense. Understanding the Plan of Salvation and who I am within that plan, an imperfect person who is full of amazing worth, that makes forgiving myself an option. Because I understand that God loves me regardless, I understand that my going through this is part of the process, and who's to say that the exact thing that you need to learn to forgive yourself for is not the exact thing that you needed to go through in order to become the person that you need to become. 

17:56 

So we can spend hours and days and months and years beating ourselves up over something that may have been the exact thing that we needed to go through. Maybe our lives aren't really falling apart. Maybe they're falling into place. I love growing up, don't you? I love, love the process. Okay, if you would like some help from me learning how to forgive yourself a little bit better, please contact me. You can go to my website at tanyahale.com. Go under the coaching tab and you can sign up for a free coaching session. I will not be able to offer these forever. The busier I get, the more I will have to start restricting these and taking times off. So if this is something you've thought about and thought that, "you know what, I wonder if coaching could help. I wonder if I would like this process," now is a great time to get in a free coaching session and see if that's something that's going to work for you. See if you like it. 

19:00 

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19:51 

So I hope you have a really, really amazing day and I hope that this process of forgiving yourself becomes more intuitive as you really start tapping into the plan of salvation and your worth before God and realize that that your worth means we don't have to shame ourselves but that guilt is actually a good process that helps move us where we need to go. Alright enjoy! Have a super, super awesome day and I will talk to you next time. Bye! 

20:24 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!