Today is a time to remember who you really are: A beautiful child of God and the Universe. And now is the time to really embrace it!

You may have made mistakes along the way, and that is okay. Because now is also a time to forgive yourself for mistakes from your past.

There are many decision points in life. We may think back and ask what if we’d done something differently at a certain point. Would our whole lives be different?

Someone might ask: “What if I had packed up my car and left that dysfunctional relationship years ago in that moment when I had the gumption? Where would I be? Who would I be?”

Another might wonder: “What if I had pursued my dream instead of listening to the negative feedback from others, allowing it to hold me back?”

There are no answers to those questions. Because you are who you are right now and where you are now.

Start Where You Are

All you can do now is focus on the potential within you and recognize what tools are at your disposal to achieve your dreams (and open yourself to believing you can attract more).

It may seem challenging at first, letting go of the past and forgiving yourself for what you have perceived as mistakes.

But that letting go can become easier once you recognize that those mistakes contribute to the sum total of who you are now.

As motivational author Louise Hay says, “Healing means to make whole and accept all part of myself – not just the parts I like, but all of me.”

Life Plan

You wouldn’t be who you are in this moment without those experiences that you may potentially regret or feel resentment about. Those experiences may have been fundamental lessons you need to learn in this lifetime – a part of your life plan.

One spiritual principle concerning acceptance and detachment reads: “Whatever happened is the only thing that could have happened.”

Other principles of detachment are: “Each moment in which something begins is the ‘right’ moment….Whoever you encounter is the ‘right’ person….What is over is over. We tend to hold onto people and events that are in the past.”

Lessons Learned

When reminded of past difficulties, can you focus on the lesson learned instead of the pain? You can instead remind yourself that you are now a different person than when you were at a particular crossroads in the past.

In the practice of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, it’s believed that: “Everyone does the best they can with the resources available to them.”

That can be an enlightening way to look back over your life’s journey. Missteps along the way that might make you groan now may have been the best you could do at certain points in your past, given the level of awareness you had at the time and the tools at your disposal.

Sweet Forgiveness

That perspective can also help you move into a space of forgiveness of others. People may have hurt you or disrespected you at times. But given their personal limitations, perhaps that was about the best they could do.

Many of my clients who suffered emotional or physical abuse growing up recognize that their parents were raised in a similar fashion. In some way, were those parents’ intentions still good in some twisted way? Perhaps they felt like they were preparing their kids for the seeming unfairness of life or protecting them from sorrow by limiting their view of their potential.

Is that how they believed that children should be raised? It’s likely that was their level of awareness at the time.

That doesn’t excuse people who have harmed us. There is karma we will all face along our soul’s journey, after all.

Breaking the Cycle

But we all have the potential to break cycles of abuse. And the best place to start, in this moment, is to stop talking to ourselves in abusive ways, being our own worst critics. Would you be willing now to free yourself of disturbing echoes from your past and speak to yourself with more loving, kind words?

If you catch yourself thinking, “I messed up a long time ago and now my life can never be right,” stop yourself right there!

Choose a new thought. “I’ve had some hard times and made some big mistakes, but I forgive myself. I now have the growing awareness to make better decisions. I believe am worthy of attracting greater good into my life. All I can do is my best.”

As motivational writer Don Miguel Ruiz says, what is your best is going to change all the time, so you can release the need to be perfect.

“Your best is going to change from moment to moment,” according to Ruiz. “It will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”

Copyright 2014, Wellspring Rejuvenation Center