How to Forgive Yourself

How to Forgive Yourself
Dr. Phil's 5 Steps to Forgiving Yourself
by Dr.Phil McGraw
Don't be miserable for the rest of your life. Dr. Phil reveals his 5-step plan to create a new relationship with yourself.


Dr. Phil says that you have the power to be miserable the rest of your life. Or, you can say, "I'm going to give myself the permission to heal." You have to decide whether you're going to define a new relationship with yourself and remove the roadblocks that are blocking your path to living your best life.

Step One: Reopen your heart and mind again.
When you are faced with terrible pain, your heart and mind slam shut. Opening yourself up again is a choice in terms of how you contextualize what happened to you. It allows you to say, "I am willing to consider that there is another way to adjust."

Step Two: Choose to love yourself again.
Guilt is a wastebasket term that we use to cover everything negative and bad. One defining factor of guilt is that we commit the ultimate betrayal: abandoning ourselves. If you can't love yourself, you won't be able to heal yourself.

Step Three: Confront and demystify your guilt.
Most people have the misconception that our depth of grief reflects the level of love for the person we've lost. It's not a betrayal of your loved one to go past the pain and deal with it in a different way. Demystifying the guilt means understanding the fear.

Step Four: Give yourself permission to heal.
Part of forgiving yourself is understanding that you don't have to be punished. Give yourself permission to let go of the pain. If you have a wounded heart, you can't give good and pure love to anyone else.

Step Five: Actively create new relationships.
If you've been unable to forgive yourself, it's possible that you've been holding yourself up to unrealistic expectations. You need to decide whether you want to continue living in pain. Once you've made that decision, you need to create a new relationship with yourself.


Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Rituals-for-Forgiveness/3#ixzz1UmURXXig