Forgive yourself

I wrote this speech on forgiving yourself and I honestly believe it can help someone out there.
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In many incidents, we can easily forgive other people for their mistakes. An example of this is if someone is doing a big dab and accidentally punches us in the face, a few apologies and ice bags later and everyone is forgiven. However, no matter how forgiving each of us are, there is that one person in our lives that we always struggle to forgive no matter how big or small the incident is. The person is ……… Ourselves.

Good evening, adjudicators and audience members, I need you to think back to the last time somebody apologized to you about something. Did you forgive them? Probably. Now think back to the last time you hurt a friend or was in a situation where you felt inadequate, like you got a bad test mark or got rejected for a team. Have you forgiven yourself? Probably not. When I say forgiving I mean a lot more than simply pushing the memory to the back of your brain. Forgiveness is a tool with which we face what we’ve done in the past, acknowledge our mistakes and move on. It does not mean that you condone or excuse what happened, it also does not mean that you forget. At all.

I remember early in my “professional” basketball career; my team was in a tight game where we needed one more basket to win and we had only one more chance from the sidelines, the ball was passed in to me and I shot it over the backboard and it hit someone in the crowd. I remember feeling like a complete waste of space at that moment, I was ashamed that I thought that I would have to give up basketball FOREVER. I thought my teammates were never going to forgive me. From this situation I learnt that. I was dramatic and also that the only person that I had to ask for forgiveness from was myself. None of my teammates hated me just like if any of them missed the last shot I would never hate them. But we all have this tendency to hold ourselves more accountable than we do others. It is unfair and unhealthy that we expect pure perfection from ourselves while constantly forgiving everyone else for their mistakes. It has in fact been scientifically proven that difficulties with self-forgiveness are linked to a host of mental and physical problems like suicide attempts, eating disorders, and immune dysfunction.

So how do we work towards self-forgiveness? It is a strange concept to have to change your Own mindset and your own thoughts. If you think that you are good at dealing with stubborn people. wait till you have to deal with yourself.
The two steps that I learnt to work towards self-forgiveness is to firstly own up to the incident. Without the recognition of what we did wrong, how can we possibly forgive ourselves for it? The second step is to make amends because there's often no way to undo past mistakes, but you can make amends with them

Most importantly, self-forgiveness doesn’t need to be all-or-nothing. It’s a slow process that may not result in a full release of negative feelings or an exclusively optimistic view of oneself. self-forgiveness should be seen as an act of humility, an honest acknowledgment of our capacity for making mistakes.

Albert Einstein once said, Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep you balance you must keep move. Well you what I say to that? Don’t ever be afraid to use training wheels. Let self-forgiveness be the wheels that allow you to roll through life smoothly. Let it build you self-confidence. Let it drive you to brighter days. Let it heal you from pain the you unnecessarily hold on to and most importantly let the wheels be the forgiveness that allows us… to keep riding. Thank you.