Shaky Shergill talks about how he discovered one of the most important practices for emotional well-being.
Recently a cousin of mine invited me via social media to join the Gratitude challenge. This consists of sharing three things I’m grateful for every day for five days, and then nominating two other people to do the same thing.
At first I wasn’t convinced, over the summer holidays life had been slipping into autopilot but when I did start I realised that there was a lot that I had to be grateful for and a lot that I took for granted. As grateful as I was for the gratitude challenge and the buzz that it gave me.
I felt that I needed something else, something that would help me become more self aware and reconnect with myself on another level. Something that would help me to feel even better about myself.
At first I wasn’t sure about the direction I was heading or where it would lead, but after some contemplation and a timely YouTube video, I knew what the answer was. More than being grateful for what I had, it was time for me let go and forgive myself for what I hadn’t done. Gratitude filled one emotional need, but forgiveness was something I needed on a deep level.
Inspired by the five day gratitude challenge I set myself the goal of forgiving myself for three things every day and that’s what I did. At first it was a slow and painful process. There was the obligatory denial; I didn’t need to forgive myself for anything, “shit happens”, that’s the way life is and a whole host of other clichés sprang to mind.
As someone who thinks he is empathic and compassionate with others I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to provide the same consideration to myself. It was as though my mind was actively fighting forgiveness.
Then I realised that one of the reasons this particular exercise was so difficult was that it meant looking at my failures; things I hadn’t done, promises I’d made and then never kept, people I’d let down, and more. That I discovered that there is a skill to self-forgiveness.
The skill begins with forgiving oneself for what can seem to be minor transgressions of the “I forgot to call my aunt on her birthday” variety (not a hypothetical example), and then moving on towards what will feel like more significant ones such as “I forgive myself for not becoming a doctor and feeling I let myself and my parents down”.
It was only when I started to practise the skill of self-forgiveness that I realised how much I’d been carrying around with me and for how long (in some cases for years). I also realised how important some of these things had been (as otherwise why would have let them go).
I also began to appreciate how much more visceral than gratitude forgiveness can be. There was something positive in expressing gratitude; it was a celebration of something. However, for me to forgive myself for something I had to revisit it and acknowledge how much the original wrongdoing had meant to me which was why I’d carried it around for so long. Forgiving myself for it, and by inference letting it go, was very freeing and I felt lighter for it, but at times it felt as if what was being released was taking some flesh along with it.
To use one of the examples above, forgiving myself for not becoming a doctor meant that I had to go back over 25 years to the time when I didn’t get the necessary grades to get into medical school. I also had to deal with both my parents’ and my own disappointment. At the time, that disappointment had been masked for my parents by the knowledge that I was the first person in my family to go into higher education, and for me, knowing that I’d be embarking on the adventure of higher education. Underneath that, though, there had been a feeling of being let down, a feeling of failure. I thought I’d dealt with this particular issue long ago, but it was only by looking back that I could see how much impact not getting into med school had on my life, and some of the choices I’ve made since.
Learning self-forgiveness has been a very subtle experience. It didn’t offer any earth shattering revelations. It did provide me with a space to be more compassionate to myself and become more aware of the subconscious messages that I’d been carrying for so long, and the impact they’d had on their life.
It also reminded me that one of the reasons I didn’t become a doctor was that I don’t like the sight of blood.
So, I’m wondering if you practise the skill of self forgiveness. If you set out to forgive yourself for three things you did or didn’t do every day for five days, what might they be?
Photo—Ananth BS/Flickr