2011 - The Year of Un-doubt

A friend asked around for people's New Year's resolutions, and there were some very interesting intentions.

Not surprisingly, they mostly fell into the ideas to improve one's own happiness, and those to give more of one's time/self to others.

My own? To trust myself more. To not constantly second-guess my actions, not to over-analyze, and to believe that I am capable of making good decisions. And if I make a choice that doesn't have the hoped-for consequence, I promise not to be so hard on myself.

I have read a few self-help books that say that in order to forgive someone else, we may need to first forgive ourselves. This stuck in my craw, why would I need to forgive myself for someone else treating me badly?

But I am understanding this concept a little more clearly, now. I am not letting someone else off the hook - I am helping to let myself off. To forgive myself for making the mistake of getting into a relationship that was wrong for me, for misreading signals that could have indicated a potential friend was bad news...for just being human and falling into one of the many pitfalls that go along with that status.

It isn't that you *can't* forgive someone else until you forgive yourself...it's more that once you let go of any guilt *you* feel over a situation, the other person's actions loom less large. In the end, I've found that another person's guilt, or innocence, or negligence, is so much less important, once I've come to my own terms.