Forgiving yourself is more difficult than forgiving others

Forgiving myself has been the most challenging thing I've done

Forgiving myself has been the most challenging thing I've done. I'm not sure I've done it, but I try every day. As of the writing of these words, I've got 12 years of sobriety.

This isn't enough time to forgive myself, as I still feel guilty for my behavior under the influence and beyond. But each day is a new one I approach with humility and gratitude for my luck and second chances.

The main idea I remember when forgiving myself is that the past isn't real. Understanding this concept is crucial to forgiving yourself and others.

I'm not implying that what happened in the past is a figment of your imagination, nor am I suggesting that past events don't affect present and future events.

More specifically, the past is something that you can't interact with. Just like your imagination takes you to a future location that does not yet exist, your memory takes you to a past that no longer exists. The only difference between memory and imagination is that the yet-to-exist future can be modified by what you do now, but the past can not be changed.

Consider the implications of this idea as it relates to yourself. You are not the same person who made mistakes in the past.

Unless you continue to think and behave as you did before, you are a different person. People often struggle to forgive themselves because they believe they should have known better.

They feel guilty because they see themselves now as they were when they made a mistake. However, you are not the same person; numerous physical evidences support this claim.

A surge of hormones floods your body at puberty, changing how you interact with the world. Your brain doesn't fully develop its ability to plan for the future until around age 30. All the cells in your body regenerate every 7-10 years, but there is tremendous variation. Skin cells are replaced every few weeks, while skeletal muscles can take up to 15 years to regenerate.

Muhammad Ali once said, "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." New experiences and information can instantly change an opinion you held for decades. As you change your perspective, you will inevitably see your old behavior in a new light. You didn't know better then, but now you do.

That said, it's important to take ownership of your past behavior and mistakes. Just because you didn't know better or thought differently does not absolve you of responsibility for your actions. Although I'm making the point of accountability through the lens of self-forgiveness, understanding it will also help with any reservations about forgiving others.

Justice and forgiveness are not mutually exclusive.

Justice holds a person accountable for their actions and is carried out as a punitive and preventive measure. Just because we can forgive people doesn't mean we invite them to harm us or others. The purpose of justice is to dissuade people from committing the most severe injustices and keep them from harming others in the future.

But sometimes justice feels beyond reach.

For example, consider Patrick Crusius, the shooter who murdered 22 people in an El Paso mass shooting. The state can only execute him once, and it will be in a more humane manner than the way he killed his victims. Even the "prison justice" he will likely receive won't equal the pain he's caused the families and the fear that he's infected society with.

One less psycho is on the streets, but that does nothing for the emotional loss and damage the loved ones of the victims suffered. For that, they will have to forgive the emotional debt he caused them. Otherwise, the unchangeable past will always have power over them.

Justice prevents him from doing it again, but forgiveness helps the victims release the hold that negative emotions have over them.

When it comes to forgiving yourself, this is the tricky part. How do you enact justice on yourself to ensure that you won't make the same mistake again? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you do this without tightening the grip negative emotions have on your self-worth?

This is accomplished by taking accountability because if you never accept that you made a mistake, there's nothing you can do to prevent it from happening again. There is also nothing you can do to emotionally move past it.

While writing "Sober Letters To My Drunken Self," my book to help people navigate the emotional turmoil that accompanies sobriety, I felt immense guilt and shame over my previous behavior.

I didn't try to ignore or suppress those feelings. Instead, I wrote messages that took ownership of my behavior and apologized to every person I hurt or offended. Some of them responded. Many of them didn't. Their response wasn't necessary. All that mattered was that I took responsibility for my actions.

In talking with other recovering alcoholics, this guilt appears so often that I gave it a name: "Angelus Syndrome," after the character Angel from the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who is cursed to have a soul.

Angelus Syndrome is an apt name because you only experience guilt once a fundamental change has occurred. Angel did not feel remorse until he became, at his core, a new being. Only then could he consider the effect of his past actions with a new conscience.

This guilt is a good thing.

It will make you vigilant in the future toward behaving in a way that requires self-forgiveness. It can also motivate actions to make the world a better place. Angel hunts other evil supernatural creatures who harm the world to atone for his past actions. Similarly, I began to speak at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and rehab programs and to coach anyone who needed help. While these actions make the world a better place, they help me to forgive myself.

I can't change the past or undo what I've done. The guilt and shame will never go away. However, instead of stewing in the guilt and feeling sorry for myself, I've taken steps to forgive myself and use my experiences to help others avoid a similar path.

Taking responsibility for my past helps me live better in the present and create a future where I'll need to forgive myself less.

All of the lessons in this book are important. However, I saved this lesson for last because it's the most important and hardest-earned. I wanted you to know the details of my life – the abuse, the alcoholism, the poverty – so you could see that I had a lot to be angry about. Even still, though, I was able to forgive the people who were most responsible for putting me in that position in the first place.

If victory in boxing is clear – determined by whether the referee holds your hand up at the end of the match or if he holds the other guy's hand up instead – then victory in life isn't quite so simple.

But I can tell you what victory in the hurt business of life looks like, and it's forgiving those who hurt you the most. It's one of the few fights in which you have complete control of the outcome. It's not a fight you win just once – you have to keep fighting it your whole life. But if you can keep fighting that fight, you'll always be a contender.

This has been an excerpt from the final chapter of my new book, "Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business: Boxing And The Art of Life." The release date is less than 2 weeks away on Aug 5th, 2025. If you'd like to read the entire book, you can pre-order it at the link below.

Pre-orders not only help the book get traction in the press, but they also come with bonus content and a group Q&A call where you can ask me anything.

Just send a screenshot of your receipt to ed@edlatimore.com to ensure you receive your bonuses on launch day.

Learn the Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business