Disclaimer: I didn't know what image to use, so I chose this because it's pretty and why not
New day, New post. Today's topic is not apologies, at least not in the way you're thinking. Forgive, don't forget is a great mantra and personal slogan. Forgiveness, for today, is not about apologizing to others but rather yourself. Sounds crazy, I know. When you understand that when you hold onto your fears of failure from the past, the disappointments you brought upon yourself, and the lies you said to make yourself feel better are what's holding you back in life, you can start doing something about it. Today, if you don't leave this post without feeling some sense of clarity in your feelings, my job is not done.
All right, that introduction is heavy stuff. The past is the past, and nothing can be done about it (unless you have a time-traveling machine). What you can change is the future (unless you believe that your fate is sealed). Anyway, enough of my inner Doc Brown, and let's get back to today. It's important to realize that forgiveness is vital to moving forward in life, even if it's as wild as forgiving yourself. I'll give you an example from my life to help you understand.
Let's time travel to the past. The year is 2011. I'm 11 years old, and this is my first time in the gym. I started this journey of trying to grow myself, physically, not mentally (not yet, at least). I never saw any progress and started blaming my genetics (as we all do) and started eating anything and everything, you name it. Mcdonald's, yup; Wendy's, yup; anything. I grew pretty quickly, and fast-forwarding to my junior year of high school, I ended up weighing nearly 200 pounds on a 5'9 frame. I looked in the mirror and realized I needed to lose weight. So, I started the diet. Oh, I hated this part. For the next four years, I failed over and over again. Losing 5 lbs, putting on 10 lbs, and the cycle continued. I kept hating myself every time I tried and never saw any progress. I simply could not forgive myself for getting this big.
All right, back to the present. This is depressing as I'm reading this, but it's a part of me, and it'll never go anywhere. Enough self-loathing and let's learn a little bit now. For four years, I failed, never got anywhere, and saw the weighing scale go up, month by month. Why? Was it cause I never gave dieting a proper chance? Maybe. But the more significant reason was because I never forgave myself. Hating everything I was doing, loathing the mirror and my biggest enemy: Stairs (if you don't get this reference, go watch Kung Fu Panda). The point is, I never was able to move on because I never forgave myself for getting big, I never forgave myself for pushing me so far past where I wanted to be, and only after doing this in my junior year of college did I grow (Ironically, grew mentally, shrunk physically).
Back to the past now, but only to the fall of 2023. I decided to forgive myself, but this was not easy. It was not as simple as saying, I forgive myself, and I dropped 40 pounds (spoiler alert). I wish I could tell you that's all it took. No, I had to go back in my mind and find the root cause for getting that big, and only after that was I able to lose the weight. See, we all have childhood memories that cause us to be the way we're wired today. In this situation, for me, it was childhood bullying. Having moved from India to the US as a young kid in middle school, I attracted bullies like Winnie the Pooh to a pot of honey. Beaten up, name-calling, and humiliation were everyday experiences, and no one ever helped me. If you think this is a sob story, think again. See, I never wanted anyone else to go through that, not my kid (future kid, I don't have one now), sister, or anyone. So what did I do? I got big, really big (OK, the right word is heavy, but let's feel a bit good today, so I'm going with big). After finding the root cause, I decided to let it go. I realized the goal was to be strong, not big, and after that realization, I started to get back on the dieting horse to lose my fat and keep as much strength as possible. I forgave myself but did not forget the failures and the bullies. I used it as motivation.
So, what do you take away from this? To forgive yourselves, you must reflect (as we talked about yesterday) and find the root cause. Find the cause for the way you are today and whether its good or bad once identified, find the impact. How did it change you, and how have your life goals changed because of those events? For me, it changed my goals to become big and heavy, but I realized the point was to be strong, just like John Wick. Ok, I didn't become exactly like John Wick, but you get the point. You need to reflect, find the root cause, and adjust your current self to achieve the goals you actually intended to achieve and not the ones you ended up with (unless they're good, then keep them; This is just for bad goals). The point though, is once you forgive yourself, you can remember the bad root causes and use them as motivation to get further in life. Here's where I am today.
After a long journey, today I weigh 180 lbs at 18% body fat and am on track to be down to 12%. Was it hard? Yes. Would I change a thing? No. Without those events, I would never have understood the value of forgiving myself and the power of not forgetting them. Remember, forgiving yourself will allow you to start the car to move, and not forgetting will serve as the gas (or petrol if you're not from the US) to keep you moving. This idea of forgiving and not forgetting will be a hard path and that my friends will give you an arduous journey or in other words an epic journey. And as always, remember, an epic journey is worth a lot more than just the destination alone.