How to Forgive Yourself When You Make A Mistake

Eventually, you’re gonna make a mistake. And it’ll just be an opportunity to forgive yourself.

But if you’re a recovering perfectionist like me, more often than not, your mistakes feel fatal.

But feelings aren’t facts. (Thank goodness!)

You can recover from any mistake. You just have to be willing to forgive yourself.

But when you’re a perfectionist, it’s easy to get stuck in the shame of your mistakes.

If that sounds familiar, here are four steps to the process of forgiving yourself.

Stop over-identifying with the mistake.

You are more than the mistakes that you’ve made.

No matter what the shame might be telling you, your personal record of success and failure doesn’t determine your worth.

Take the time to cultivate a self-concept that is rooted in your potential to be more, rather than one that’s based on the mistakes you’ve made.

If you believe that there’s more inside of you, you will always have the capacity to forgive yourself.

Accept that mistakes happen.

When you realize that mistakes are an unavoidable part of life—not just for you, but for everyone—it’s much easier to move on.

Fumbling around and failing your way forward is just a normal part of the human experience.

Even the most successful person you can think of has made mistakes. If they’ve moved on, you can forgive yourself and move on, too.

The mistake doesn’t have to be the end of your story.

Plan your next move.

You have to make an effort to restore whatever has been damaged in order to truly forgive yourself.

If you’ve been having a hard time forgiving yourself, it might be because you haven’t taken any action to fix whatever if your life has been damaged by your mistake.

It’s easy to forgive yourself when you have a plan to get back on track and are moving toward your goal again.

Love yourself to forgive yourself.

More specifically, treat yourself like someone you love.

Perfectionists and high achievers often struggle to find the balance between kindness and accountability when it comes to their own mistakes.

So it’s important to remember that showing yourself compassion isn’t the same thing as letting yourself off the hook.

Self-compassion is actually a necessary for self-forgiveness.

But it can also be the hardest part of the process.

Fortunately, helping people forgive themselves is part of my expertise as a professional life coach. I’ve helped lots of clients do this, so I know I can help you, too!

Get support with one-on-one coaching.

Too much of your future lies ahead of you for you to stay stuck in a past mistake. Book a call with me to sign up for my 1:1 coaching program and learn how to forgive yourself.

No matter what kind of mistake you’ve made, you can recover and finally move forward. 

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