Stop Making Yourself A Martyr

I had a conversation with my cousin the other day and she made a bit of a mistake at work. Honestly, who hasn’t? She was really worried about the outcome and as  someone who has been written up, laid off and fired I know exactly how she was feeling. The moment you mess up it feels like the world is on your shoulders, all eyes are on you, you’re the biggest loser, you’re such a bad guy, you’re incompetent, everyone can see your flaws, blah blah blah. She hadn’t gotten in trouble yet and she was still uncomfortable with the potential outcome. To bring her back to the present I told her, “Don’t make yourself a martyr before you even get killed. Pick yourself up off that cross.” 

We all make mistakes. We all have shortcomings. Thing is, when we know better we do better. And in knowing better we either have to be taught or experience failure to operate in success. Knowing that we are not exempt from setbacks, we often struggle with not getting everything right. We beat ourselves up and even worse, we allow others to judge us so harshly for our mistakes as we heavily criticize others for their imperfections. 

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made was allowing people to constantly punish me for harmless things I’ve apologized and forgiven myself for. It made me miserable trying to prove to them and myself that I wasn’t my mistakes, I wasn’t my shortcomings and I wasn’t this horrible person. It took me a while to realize that people will over punish you when they over punish themselves, are jealous of you, and project onto you to hide who they are. So often, in attempts to be good people, we listen to harsh criticism with no room for grace for ourselves. 

Extending a little grace to yourself goes such a long way in becoming the person you want to become. I get it, we all want to hold ourselves accountable and be well meaning adults. But, once you recognize your flaws and transgressions, move forward in a new direction. Don’t let your past define you. People with low self esteem constantly review their mistakes and subconsciously find themselves unworthy of a new way to live. Their low self-esteem stops them from the job they want, the car they’d like to drive, the person they desire and the love they want to receive. It keeps them stuck in the past and so nervous for the future. It makes them envious, hateful and overly critical. And you can see it. 

Have you ever noticed that the person who is overly critical of others is always seeking outside validation and assurance? They want to make sure that their flaws aren’t visible. Them being so uncomfortable with themselves,  they have to shine light on others’ failures to prop themselves higher. They think, if I tell everyone that this person is dumb, incompetent, lonely, or a bad person that they would be distracted from my weaknesses. And it’s so sad because the shit never works and it drives them into a deeper depression, anxiety, narcissism, obsession or addiction. They mask with other people and habits instead of giving themselves the freedom to be flawed. 

Being flawed is such a beautiful thing. Given the opportunity to grow while you still can is a blessing we take for granted because the lessons are challenging. For many people, it is like World War III trying to get them to see their blind spots, admit it was there and apologize if/when it caused harm to someone else. What a prison that must be? To be wrong and refusing to give yourself the courage to acknowledge it and make it right. We get blessed when we realize how far we’ve come from the person we used to be. We receive new blessings after overcoming obstacles that we didn’t think we’d get over. And we allow ourselves to exhale when we are honest about who we are and what we’ve done. 

Being fully aware of things you’ve done or “allowed” yourself to happen to you and forgiving yourself for it makes you so much more powerful than the people that hide and secretly beat themselves up. When you own your mistakes, it makes it so hard for people to throw it in your face to bring you down to their level of misery. In forgiving yourself, you can easily recognize when people try to use your pain against you as if that weapon can hurt you again. Truly forgiving yourself takes the weight of your past off your shoulders because it is no longer a deep dark secret you kept from yourself. 

Allow yourself to breathe. Allow yourself to forgive yourself and others so you can experience life with less baggage, “shoulda, coulda, wouldas” and expecting the next shoe to drop. Once you level with knowing everyone is doing the best they can, you can sleep peacefully at night you are not alone in figuring it out like the rest of us. Once you really forgive yourself you can finally move on to something new. 

What are you going to start forgiving yourself for? Comment down below. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to be notified of the next post.