Throughout our lives, we all encounter situations in which we are provided with trivial, but seemingly difficult choices to make. A good number of times the decision made is either black or white, seldom gray. At times, we make the decision that tends to steer us down the wrong path and once we realize what we have done, we are shocked. Our self-esteem and self-respect go down the drain as we see ourselves make one bad decision, which leads to another and another, following the domino effect. It is most frightening for the person to see himself or herself make these series of bad decisions. After some time, it seems as if these horrible decisions are being made almost in a dazed state of mind or on ‘autopilot’ as some may call it.
The next time the person is faced with a situation where another decision has to be made, emotions and fear of making the wrong decision will cloud the mind and judgment, often resulting in making the wrong choice yet again. This ‘habit’ of making the wrong decision will have gained so much momentum that eventually the person will lose complete faith in him or herself.
Every time the person makes the so-called ‘wrong’ decision and realizes this, he tends to go into a deeper state of self-pity where he loses self-confidence and feels that he is losing control of his actions.
So what can the person do to stop this pattern of constantly making the wrong decision?
I could be completely wrong, but I feel like the best way for one to go about this would be to first forgive oneself. No matter how intense the mistakes and despite how much it may hurt others, the only way to be ever forgiven by others and move on is to first forgive yourself. We all make mistakes — the only way we can rise above these mistakes is to acknowledge that we make mistakes and do what we can to learn from it.
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2 Comments
The paradox of self-forgiveness:
Your idea is true and correct in its own premise. It is impossible to move on from one failure unless the individual forgives oneself of wronging, and learns a truth from it and applies it in future endeavors.
But consider an alternate premise, where the error committed by the person directly influences other individuals in a negative way. In such a scenario, the ‘erroneous’ individual’s self forgiveness has no value unless they are forgiven by every individual they directly affected with the error.
To forgive yourself is to attain peace with yourself, which leads to being at peace with your society and converge to cause happiness in your environment. Without being forgiven, the offender is not at peace with the offended. This points to lack of happiness and in turn, would reverse any self-pacifying and the idea of forgiving the self crumbles.
Tom, I really like the point you brought out in your comment — as I was reading this post, I hadn’t really considered that point…I guess there are extremes of people — some that are far too hard on themselves (and thus exaggerate the small negative effects their errors might have had), and some that are far too easy on themselves (and don’t consider the effects their actions have on others) — this post seemed to be directed toward the first type of person, so I’m glad you pointed out that the second type of person exists as well!
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