Guilt is a terrible emotion; I think everyone in the world has experienced this emotion at least once in their lifetime. Guilt can be so strong it can destroy a person. I think I have experienced guilt most of my adult life. Guilt has several forms, according to me: 1. Minor- being late for work, forgetting an item at the store, not keeping a promise. 2. Moderate- lying for personal gain (not damaging), disappointing a friend, not paying bills on time. 3. Major- being verbally or physically abusive, cheating on spouse, disappointing your children.

As I said these are according to me and only a handful of the things you could feel guilty for in your lifetime. To me the minor category may be things that you would feel guilty about and get over, moderate may linger for a while but you eventually move on, and major tend to stick with you for a long time and affect most every aspect of your life. I truly believe some human beings have a knack for making someone feel guilty. They seem to be able to take something so simple (well it may be simple to you) and blow it out of proportion.

Everyone handles their guilt in different ways and depending on the severity may think they can never let it go. The person affected by your actions may or may not choose to forgive you. That is something you have no control over. The one thing you do control is forgiving yourself. Depending on the severity of the guilt you may have you may feel it is more difficult to forgive yourself. I have read many books about happiness, people, being perfect (if we only were), relationships, etc and all of them at some point talk about forgiveness. Well it sounds good and that it should be an easy thing to do. Well I can tell you (as I am sure you already know) it is not easy in any way shape or form.

There are also three aspects to forgiveness, forgiving yourself, asking for forgiveness, and forgiving others. For me the forgiving others has been way easier than forgiving myself. My Mother has told me I am way too hard on myself. I suppose I am but I have standards of how life (my life) should be and when those standards are broken by a mistake I made well that’s just not acceptable and hard to forgive. But none the less I have begun the process of forgiving myself and it is a day to day endeavor. But it is not impossible, it is easy (well maybe) to say I forgive myself, but it is ever so hard to forget. But this too may not be a bad thing in the hope that you don’t make the same mistake again. Forgiving yourself can take time and the hope of doing this is to become a better person.

Now asking someone to forgive you is in itself a whole other thing. This can be very stressful all depending on the severity of the mistake you have made. It may have been something so bad they don’t even want to speak to you any more. They feel they are better off without you in their life, and this may be true. But this does not mean they will not forgive you. This is where it comes into play that they must decide to forgive you for them self but to save themselves from letting it happen again they would rather move on without you in their life. If you are given the opportunity to ask for forgiveness, don’t take advantage of it. Truly be genuine in asking and make every effort to keep form hurting that person again. Because no matter what they will not forget what has happen. Being given a second chance is an opportunity to show them you learned form your mistake and will not make it again.

The third aspect to this is you forgiving others for what they have done to you. When you do this keep in mind not to make the person feel guilty about what happen or think they may owe you something, just forgive them and move on, they will feel their own guilt they don’t need any help.

No matter what aspect of forgiveness you may be or have been a part of please keep this lesson in mind. We all do and say things we usually do not mean to do, mostly due to stress in our life; it never pays to hurt someone emotionally or physically, even if they do it to you. Forgive them, forgive yourself. You will never forget what happen, mistakes you have made but don’t dwell on them move on and don’t make the same mistake twice!