Ep. 33: 7 Steps to Self Forgiveness - a podcast by Josh Becker: Speaker, Author, Teacher

Over the last week or two I heard from several people asking me to talk about Self Forgiveness. While I have done a few episodes of the podcast on forgiveness they were primarily focused on forgiving others.

Yet, forgiving ourselves is quite possibly the best gift we could give ourselves. It’s my hope that by the end of this podcast that you’ll have an even deeper understanding of the following:



* How harmful it is to not forgive yourself

* How self hatred plays into it

* The 7-step process for forgiving yourself



We all make mistakes every day. Some of them are pretty minor and others aren’t but one thing for certain is that we can be really cruel to ourselves. Often times we’re much harder on ourselves than the people we’ve wronged. So why is this?

Shame is a sticky and toxic thing and we carry it around deep in our psyche. From a young age, likely around 5 – 7, we started getting messages that we weren’t enough. Whether it was that we weren’t beautiful enough, smart enough, good enough, or fill in your favorite “not enough”.

These messages started coming in so often that we took them in as our own. Fast forward 20, 30, 40 years and those same messages are still there! When we make a mistake shame takes the opportunity to stick to any guilt we feel! As soon as we make a mistake those same old messages of not being enough creep right back in and shame is there to finish us off!

Once this happens the mistake we made goes from something we did wrong to the horrible person we are. But aren’t we allowed to make mistakes? Shouldn’t we be a little less harsh with ourselves? Isn’t it harmful to carry around all this shame with us? YES! YES! and YES!

Listen to today’s podcast where I share a mistake I made when I laughed at my son!

So what should happen when we make a mistake?

Well, if we’re not going to allow shame to take over us, stay in the present, and be mindful about our life the following would likely happen.

1. Make a mistake

2. Acknowledge that we made a mistake

3. Feel guilt

4. Look for ways to make amends

5. Allow guilt to drift away as we continue to love ourselves

Sounds great, huh? Yeah, doesn’t usually work that way right?

Usually it looks something like this…

1. Make a mistake

2. Acknowledge we made a mistake

3. Feel guilt

4. Look for ways to make amends

5. Berate and self-shame ourselves by saying how horrible we are and what failures we are

6. Guilt turns into shame

7. Isolate and go into hyper-sensitivity mode in the future as to try and avoid those situations reminding ourselves we suck

8. Likely attract more situations in our life that remind us how not enough we are and the cycle continues

It actually looks a little worse than this but I was going easy on you! LOL As you can see, it’s a viscous cycle that doesn’t have a pretty ending. This is why shame = self hatred.

We love ourselves by giving ourselves what David Richo calls, “The Five A’s” (Attention, Acceptance, Allowance, Appreciation, and Affection). How much loving attention are you giving yourself when you focus on your lack and how horrible you are? How are you accepting yourself by telling yourself you are a horrible person? How are you allowing for your fallible nature when you call yourself a screw up? How are you appreciating yourself when you call yourself an idiot? How are you giving yourself affection when you emotionally abuse yourself?

As you can see, when we make mistakes and don’t forgive ourselves,

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