Latest / RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way / Ep. 26 – Self-Forgiveness

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Ep. 26 – Self-Forgiveness · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is produced by my friends at Walk West.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to RiseUp.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Live Joy Your Way with Comedy Wood.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's time to step into your power.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who are not familiar with me, I am Comedy Wood and I am a certified life coach that works with individuals on healing that relationship with themselves and ending the outsourcing of their self-worth.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: My clients are able to move forward and to really recognize the worth that they have from an inside-out approach so that they can go on to have healthier relationships with others and to go on to have success and happiness as they see it, defined by their own standards rather than trying to live up to some external expectation or consistently trying to reach some external validation.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about how we self-source that self-worth.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So today I wanted to talk about the concept of self-forgiveness.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that this is so important because if any of you have been following me, one of the things I talk about a lot is this concept of self-compassion.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, self-compassion is honestly three-pronged.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh number one is uh judgment versus kindness, right?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's about learning to be kind to yourself instead of getting into that judgment mode.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: The should's, would've's, uh, you know, you're so dumb because it's about letting go of that judgment and really learning to be kind to yourself and recognizing that you are a spiritual being having a human experience and you are doing the best you can and making the best decisions that you can with the information given to you at the time that you have it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about learning from things that don't go, quote unquote, the right way.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's about taking what we can from experiences, what can we learn from the experience and how can we use it going forward?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not about perfection, it's about evolution and continuing to grow.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we only grow by learning from our past experiences because again, it anchors into this thought of life is a journey that's happening through us and for us, not to us.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if we anchor into that thought, we can recognize and give ourselves the space and grace to understand that what we're doing is the best we can with the information we have, and if we can glean lessons and things we've learned and apply them moving forward, that means that we are continuing that process of growth.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The other two prongs of self-compassion are uh recognizing the difference between isolation and common humanity.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what that means is we are not in this alone.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: There are people who've had similar experiences as we're having, and we can ask for support.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It goes back to that concept that Brene Brown talks about, about this there's strength and vulnerability.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you have to be vulnerable with every person you meet, it's about finding the people you trust that you feel comfortable with, that are your supporting people, and asking for support when you need it and recognizing that other people have gone through similar situations.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third prong to that point of self-compassion is a practice of mindfulness.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a practice of getting into your here and now.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Many times, especially with the monkey mind, we spend a lot of time worrying about things that happened in the past and future tripping, what I call future tripping, which is about solving problems or thinking up problems for the future and trying to solve them now when they're not even happening yet.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So mindfulness is about getting into your present state.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you right now?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not about sitting in the past because the truth of the matter is you can't undo the past.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: You can't go back and fix something that's been done.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: All you can do is learn from it and move forward.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you also can't you can't solve a problem that doesn't exist yet.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So mindfulness is this practice of becoming aware of your here and now.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, in this spirit of the idea of self-compassion comes this concept of self-forgiveness.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, being human means that we're flawed, we're imperfect, we're gonna be triggered.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I say this to my clients time and time again, you know, when we're coaching, it's not about solving every problem that could possibly happen and promising you're never gonna be triggered again.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I working with somebody, it's about how do we shorten the time between trigger and back to center.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we're thinking about ourselves as humans and recognizing that we are flawed and we are imperfect, just because we fail to achieve some goal we have set or live up to some internal standard doesn't make you a bad person, right?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make the mistakes you made um, you know, define you as not good enough or, you know, somehow being bad or evil or not a good person.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's understanding that as human beings, we're bound to be imperfect.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's learning self-forgiveness is about learning how to accept these flaws as your unique life experience.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: They are unique to you, and if you can learn how to become more self-compassionate and replace this concept of shame and guilt that comes along with um looking at yourself in that judgment negative standpoint, practice this concept of self-acceptance and self-forgiveness, we can start moving towards the ending of that negative self-talk and that negative self-judgment, and it will all also end up leading to less stress and less anxiety.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because what happens when we are in that self-judgment stage or that negative self-talk stage, we're just building up the guilt and shame, and we're building up the stress and the anxiety and the possibility of becoming depressed because of it.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, first things first, guilt and shame.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about it before, but understanding the difference between guilt and shame is an essential part of self-forgiveness and healing from quote-unquote mistakes that you've made.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, guilt.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Guilt appears as a result of an awareness that you may have done something wrong to another person, and it inspires you or motivates you to change your behavior and to take responsibility for what you may have done.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Guilt helps you understand your mistakes and the wrong choices you may have made or the harm you may have caused another person.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, shame triggers feelings of imperfection.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It triggers feelings of worthlessness, it triggers feelings of that false center of not being good enough, and it involves a belief that there is something at your core that makes you a wrong person, that there's something wrong with you.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, shame is often at the root cause of anxiety or depression or other mental health concerns.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're practicing self-forgiveness, it is really essential that we learn that and we understand that there's a difference between taking responsibility for yourself and blaming yourself.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens when we get into judgment mode is we tend to scold ourselves or beat ourselves up, and we take mistakes that we've made and we turn them into these unacceptable, not changeable flaws, and we let our inner critic sort of take control and actually get out of control, which ends up harming our emotional state, our mental well-being, and our health.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: When we take responsibility for the thoughts and feelings we're having, but not the actions, um, I'm sorry, when we when we take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and actions, it doesn't mean that we have to be self-judgmental or critical.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: The ability to accept yourself can help you learn from your experiences to make better choices in the future.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so by that, what I'm really saying is that you can take responsibility for your thoughts, you can take responsibility for your feelings, and you can take responsibility for your actions, you can recognize and accept that they're there, but at the same time, you can also accept yourself as in the experiences that you have had as a consequence to what occurred.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, to forgive yourself, you will need to let go of the criticism and just simply accept that responsibility.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just simply accept what is, and you inevitably what ends up happening is when you accept that it is there rather than judging it, you're able to move into this step of committing to what is my next best action step forward.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if we accept the thoughts, feelings, and actions, and we say, okay, well, this didn't go the way that I wanted it to go, but this is what I have learned, and now I'm committed to either making amends with somebody, for instance, if we've wronged them, and also this is my next best step to take what I have now learned and apply it moving forward.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, in order to forgive yourself, you need to obviously nurture self-love and self-kindness.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's recognizing that just because you did something that didn't go the right way or was not necessarily, you know, may not have treated somebody the right the way that you would have wanted to treat them.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: The recognition that you have done something wrong and are willing to take responsibility for that is step one.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is to be compassionate with yourself and say, okay, I've done that, but instead of spiraling into the negativity, it's treat yourself with that same compassion that you would your child or a friend.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't, you know, um totally uh butcher them up and tell them what a horrible human being they are.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: You would look at them and say, okay, that might not have been the best decision.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to do now?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be, you know, we're compassionate to them and we say, okay, we understand, let's move forward.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You need to offer yourself that same thing.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It truthfully, when we're practicing self-forgiveness, it's really embracing this concept of, you know, this common humanity that we are human beings having this, you know, we are we're exposure beings having this human experience, and that we are all going through it.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're not going through it at the same rate, we don't experience things experience things exactly the same way because again, our thoughts create our reality, but we're similar, we're having similar experiences, and we're not alone, and that it's okay to learn from the mistakes that we've made rather than just sitting there putting ourselves down over and over again.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and what's really important here is, and this seems to be lost, or people tend to forget this, and I mentioned it before, you know, when we were talking about mindfulness and the fact that we either spend a lot of time thinking about the past or we spend a lot of time future tripping, when we're being forgiving of ourself, it doesn't mean that we think about the past and we're trying to fix something, because you can't undo something that has already happened.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: What you can do though is look at the past and learn from it and apply it moving forward.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's about being generative, not reactive.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So as you're going through this process of self-forgiveness, if you would like support and would like to talk more about it, feel free to reach out to me.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm easily accessible at chatwithcomony.com.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you'd like some more information or just access to additional articles that I have available, feel free to visit my website at comedywood.com.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, I'm Comedy Wood.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to Rise Up.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Always remember your uniqueness and the gift that you bring to this world.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Life happens for you, not to you.