Part of taking responsibility of ourselves is understanding that we all have a light side and a dark side. It won't do us any good to try to hide either side from ourselves or deny they exist. If we really want to heal we have to acknowledge all aspects of our self. Pretending we have never done anything "wrong" or will never do anything "wrong" isn't being honest or authentic with ourselves or with others. Beating ourselves up and hating ourselves for the mistakes we feel we've made or the "bad" things we feel we've done isn't beneficial, it's destructive. Not giving ourselves credit for the "good" things we've done or denying there is any light or goodness in us serves no purpose. Being humble does not mean denying our gifts or dimming the light within us so others feel lighter around us. Hiding who we are or feeling guilty about who we are really only hurts us and isn't a very wise choice to make.
If we want to grow and heal, being authentically real and being ourselves is part of what it takes. Being ourselves means not being afraid to show the world who we really are inside. Being authentic means realizing that we do have a darker side and we do make mistakes and "bad" choices, but we also have a lighter side and we do many great things and make a lot of "good" choices. It's accepting all of who we are.
Our choices help us to learn and grow, sometimes in very painful ways, some times in a more joyous delightful manner, both ways serve a purpose and are beneficial. When we realize this it becomes easier to let go of the guilt we feel for our "bad" choices or inappropriate actions. When we are able to see that even our worst moments served a purpose and we can learn from them, rather than beat ourselves up about them forever, it frees us and helps us to learn from ALL of our experiences, let them go and move forward.
Does this mean that we should intentionally choose to continue to display "bad" behavior or constantly making choices that cause pain for ourselves and others? No, this means we become more aware of who we are and the choices we have made and how they have affected our lives and the lives of those around us and we begin to seek to choose ways that are more beneficial to everyone and less painful or difficult.
Life does not have to be full of pain and suffering, we do have many choices to make that can help to alleviate a lot of the difficulties we may have experienced in our life time. We can choose to look at all of our difficulties and see what there is for us to learn from these experiences and then let them go, while also remembering to look at our life to find the gifts within all of our experiences and hang on to those. Instead of focusing and clinging to the dark, difficult, "bad" times to create how we see ourselves, we can use our lighter, less stressful, "good" times to define who we are. If we are willing to take an honest look at ourselves we can embrace all of us and then choose who and how we want to be in the world while letting go of who and how we don't want to be.
It's our choice what memories and experiences we use to define who we have been, who we are and who we'd like to become. It's up to us to decide, do we want to choose positive experiences and build on those or do we want to chose negative experiences and cling to those, recreating them over and over again in our minds and lives, refusing to learn from them and let them go. Neither choice is really right or wrong, they just create a different way of living in the world, they simply create either a positive experience or negative one. It's all in how we choose to look at ourselves and our lives, what we choose to focus on, what we want to build our lives and what we base our perception of ourselves on.
Do we want to focus on pain, suffering and darkness creating a negative painful experience or do we want to focus on love, happiness and light creating a positive experience? It's our choice whether we are positive or negative regardless of what our circumstances are. Whatever we choose our lessons will be learned and we will move on, it's up to us whether the journey is a forward moving joyride or repetitive march of doom.
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