Letting Go of Shame After Failure
- Nicole Maaguo
- Jul 16, 2020
- 2 min read
This post was originally published on July 16, 2020, on Instagram as part of Her Growth Collective.
Last week I talked about failure and how important it is to re-baseline our expectations and mindset around failure. This week's topic is intimately related...forgiveness.
Failure always stings, but it stings so much more when the responsibility for that failure falls on our own shoulders. How do you show your face again when you have screwed up royally?
The answer is simple in word and hard in deed: forgive yourself.
This is why I talk so much about giving yourself grace. If you are trying to live up to perfection, if you are comparing yourself to unrealistic ideals, then there is no room for forgiveness.
Grace forces us to acknowledge our own humanity. It forces us to sit with the fact that we are not perfect and we WILL screw up royally at times because we are human.
Grace creates a path to forgiveness.
When we move forward without forgiveness we make a decision to live in shame. We surrender a piece of our soul to the darkness. We might stand up and get back at it - determined to prove something, but we do so as a little less than. And we carry that pain with us into the future.
Forgiveness allows us to heal. It reclaims the lost pieces of our soul and brings us closer to whole. It is an acceptance that we are the sum of our life experience - the good and the bad. That every misstep and screw up shaped the person that we are today.
We are stronger and wiser because of the mistakes we made and the lessons we learned along the way. The only way to truly own your awesome, is to forgive yourself and step out of shame.
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This post is written in partnership with #HerGrowthCollective, encouraging women to walk the path of self-development together.