Why Forgiving Yourself For Past Mistakes Is The Key To Manifesting Love
Letting go of the past allows you to create a love that will stand the test of time.
Forgiving yourself can be one of the most difficult steps you take on your journey to lasting love, but it can also be one of the most worthwhile endeavors.
Self-forgiveness is a journey of self-discovery and growth that will lead you to a more fulfilling life, happy and healthy relationships, and a love that will stand the test of time.
The first step in learning how to forgive yourself is realizing that you're the common denominator in all your relationships. Although it's too easy to take more responsibility than your fair share, it's also unhealthy and unrealistic to take responsibility for your partner’s actions and choices.
It can be difficult not to judge yourself when a relationship ends. You can find yourself constantly reliving in your mind everything you ever did or said, wondering if you could have done something differently for it to work out.
You trigger feelings of guilt and shame, believing that love is something you don’t deserve. Or, you may become apathetic and feel like you don’t even want to bother having another romantic relationship.
These false beliefs can’t be further from the truth. Everyone is deserving of love — even you!
Making mistakes is inevitable in relationships. You might behave badly, upsetting and disappointing the one you love. You're human, after all.
When you begin the journey of forgiving yourself for all your past mistakes, you learn to love and accept yourself for all parts of you — the good, bad, and the ugly.
Here are 5 reasons why forgiving yourself for past mistakes is key to manifesting love in the future.
1. You come back into integrity with yourself.
Self-judgment leaves you disconnected from yourself, blocking you from connecting with others. You may feel alienated and lonely, judging everyone around you, which leads to further detachment.
This downward spiral can leave you feeling unlovable.
Judging yourself means you're out of integrity with yourself and out of touch with your lovability and your own humanity.
In order to show up authentically in a relationship, you have to be connected to yourself and the truth of who you really are. Holding onto guilt and shame about your past relationship mistakes will block you from connecting to your authentic self.
Forgiving yourself for your past mistakes gives you a sense of feeling whole and complete, which then makes you more available to connect with others.
When you don’t need to be with someone, but rather desire to share your life with a partner, it's easier to be discerning through the selection process of dating.
Self-sabotage and destructive behavior can manifest when you are out of integrity with yourself.
Try this practice taught in the Hawaiian tradition of Ho’oponopono:
- Place your hands over your heart.
- Visualize the earlier version of you who made those mistakes.
- Repeat these phrases as you expand the love you feel for this earlier version of you: "I’m sorry", "Please forgive me", "Thank you", and "I love you."
- Repeat for five to 10 minutes.
- Practice daily at a minimum.
Do this first thing in the morning and last thing before you go to bed for a minimum of 21 days, and you will experience a transformation in how you feel about your past mistakes.
Forgiving yourself puts you back into integrity with yourself, leaving you available to connect with others.
2. You release the energetic bonds to the past.
Imagine that there are strings and ropes of energy attached to you from past events connecting you to those feelings of guilt and shame, holding you back from moving forward in your life.
Forgiving yourself is the key to breaking these energetic ties so that you can move more freely into the future.
Release the negative emotions you’re holding onto from your past experiences. When you do, you’ll be disconnecting a chain that your mind has cobbled together.
Your subconscious likes to clump similar information together saying, "This is like that" to help you survive so that you don’t have to learn similar things from scratch. However, this strategy often gets in the way of your ability to thrive.
Releasing the shame and guilt from your past mistakes allows you to let go of the past so you can be present and more resourceful. There is no reverse in this life, you can’t go back and change what happened.
You can’t go back and change your behavior.
You can change your relationship to that earlier version of you, and the meanings you assigned to those past events. You can heal those feelings of regret and make better choices now and in the future
Forgive that younger version of you who was doing the best they could with the information and resources they had.
When you honor that you did your best and swear that you’ll make the best efforts to make better choices in the future, you release the past and put it all behind you.
A whole new world of opportunities will open up for you to make better choices and have new experiences.
3. You free your heart to love again.
Carrying guilt and shame over past mistakes burdens your heart, closing it off from new experiences.
Forgiving yourself and putting the past behind you allows you to free your heart to love again. A free heart is filled with grace. It is open, light, and ready to love again.
If you don’t take time to heal and forgive yourself when a relationship ends, then you could end up stuck in a rebound relationship, further delaying your connection to your soulmate.
It's the love you have for yourself that is reflected back to you in your beloved’s eyes. So ultimately, you do not get love from another person — you share the love with them.
Rebound relationships are like a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. The wound doesn’t heal and instead, festers and creates cyclical patterns causing you to choose similar circumstances again and again.
Forgive yourself and free your heart to love yourself. This love becomes a magnetic attraction for your soulmate.
4. You move forward on your path to lasting love.
As you grow into the person you are capable of being, you learning from your past mistakes and don’t repeat them.
Take time to journal about the past experiences that still haunt you. See if you can discover what those situations showed up to teach you.
The Universe is always presenting us with situations where we can either step into our higher selves or fall back into our conditioned behavior.
What were those situations asking of you? How could you have behaved differently?
When you can answer these questions without judgment, take some time to write a letter to that earlier version of you. Let them know that you love them and have compassion for them.
Tell them how grateful you are for the experience to do better and become a better person, that you will always love them no matter what, and that they are not alone.
5. You don’t have to stress about being perfect.
Being human means that you will make mistakes. If you can’t accept your mistakes, you'll have trouble accepting your partner’s errors, making lasting love impossible.
Holding on to guilt or shame about your past mistakes will cause problems in every single relationship, so it's important to find a way to accept yourself as is — flaws, mistakes, and all!
The truth is, you are always doing the best you can with the resources you have. The younger version of you didn’t have the knowledge and experience that you have now and was unable to make a better choice.
We love someone for their imperfections — their crooked smile or goofy laugh. Keeping an unrealistic expectation that you will behave perfectly sets you up to be disappointed again and again.
Release the unrealistic expectation that you'll be perfect, or it will be very difficult for you to create the lasting love you desire. Every single person will make mistakes, including you.
It’s time to love yourself so you can connect with your soulmate.
Acknowledging your mistakes, accepting your humanity, and making a sincere effort to change is really the best that can be expected of anybody.
Forgiving yourself allows you to release the baggage from your past relationships and start with a clean slate moving forward.
Orna and Matthew Walters have been soulmate coaches for over a decade and helped thousands of readers create long-lasting love. Download a complimentary copy of their ebook, Recognizing Mr. Right, along with a guided program on self-acceptance from their website.