Perfect Mistake

Day 238

“I have learned, that the person I have to ask for forgiveness from the most is myself. You must love yourself. You have to forgive yourself, everyday, whenever you remember a shortcoming, a flaw, you have to tell yourself “That’s just fine.” You have to forgive yourself so much, until you don’t even see those things anymore. Because that’s what love is like.”

– C. JoyBell C.

It’s 5am and I just realized it’s Thursday morning, and yesterday was not Friday. For some reason, it felt like Friday to me and I wrote the first post of my Food For Thought Friday series. Oh well, I’ll consider it a bonus addition to the series and move on. Like I’ve said so many times, everything happens for a reason – this little kafuffle brings a discussion to the fore. The obvious thing that pops to mind is that it’s ok to make mistakes, which I have talked about before, and although I have talked about forgiveness, what surprises me is that I haven’t talked about forgiving yourself.

I don’t think that mis-taking Wednesday for Friday is a big deal, or that it requires forgiveness, however, it brought that fact that I haven’t written about this important topic to my awareness. I’m a perfectionist, so I do tend to expect well, perfection, which stops me from realizing my dreams, because there’s an underlying belief that whatever I achieve or experience is not good enough.

“Expecting perfection keeps you in a constant state of “lack”, and blocks the flow of creative energy.”

– Rajni Kurichh

Hmmm. I don’t think I’ve ever quite framed my perfectionism that way before; maybe that’s the real reason I confused the days of the week yesterday.

It’s no coincidence that I realized my mistake, and was inspired to start writing this post at the crack of dawn either – I just started reading a book, Write It Down Make It Happen, where the author suggests a practice of waking up fifteen minutes earlier than usual, and writing whatever comes to mind as a means of crystallizing your desires. She instructs you to write about whatever comes to mind, even if it’s to complain about wanting to go back to sleep, knowing that once you run out of things to complain about, “your pen moves on and starts giving you some useful direction.” 

I need to clear my desire for perfectionism and the underlying limiting beliefs that are blocking me from crystallizing my desires, so I can get clear about what I want. That’s definitely useful information! Now that I am aware of this limiting belief, I can work on clearing it with EFT Tapping, and make a conscious effort to expect good rather than perfect.

Back to forgiveness. I just read a review of Joe Vitale’s new book, At Zero, about Ho’oponopono, where the reviewer describes what forgiveness really looks like to her. I found her observation to be very insightful:

“When real forgiveness happens is when things fall apart, the Phoenix crashes and burns, things can get ugly and “the shit hits the fan.”

– Emma Caddy

It certainly does hit the fan, especially when you begin to forgive yourself, because once you are ready to release a “negative” experience, it will bring up emotions that cause discomfort, and force you to accept your mistakes. And that’s hard work. So how do you do it?

Start by letting the sh*t fly. You have to embrace the feelings that you have resisted, and allow them to come to the surface. You must allow yourself to feel your pain. Once you give your blocked emotions a pathway to be released, they will stop blocking the flow of energy through you; the pent up feelings will pass, and you will be able to let go of the “negative” experience and forgive yourself, opening yourself up to self-love.

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”

– Reinhold Niebuhr

Self-forgiveness is the gateway to self-love, and when you love yourself, you give yourself permission to be Who You Really Are without limitations.

Are you ready to leave your limits behind?

Thank you, thank you, thank you!