How to Let Go of Hardship and the Cycle of Self-Punishment

Why do we make life hard for ourselves?

That’s a good question, and one I’m going to try and answer in the next few thousand words. I don’t think we’re consciously punishing ourselves, which can seem a little extreme, but we can get stuck in the cycle of believing that life should be hard, for one reason or another.

I wanted to write this post because I often come across clients who subconsciously believe they deserve hardship in their lives. I also went through a long-time belief that I needed to suffer and struggle in order to grow and learn spiritual lessons (which I’ll dive into shortly).

Quite often, we can think one thing with our minds, but we embody an entirely different thing in our being. What I mean by this is that we have the subconscious drivers that create our outer reality, and the conscious mind that is often in resistance to that reality.

We do not create all that we see (yet another spiritual cliche that can feel really invalidating), for fate also throws us many swift, and deep, blows. It is too redundant to believe that we are the only creators of our life. In truth, we are the co-creators, and much of what we see playing out in our external reality is far more complex than just our innermost patterns and beliefs.

But, sometimes we need to bring both parts of ourselves into harmony, in order to understand the truth of what’s really going on within us, which is exactly what I’m going to dive straight into now.

Stuck in guilt, regret and shame from the past

The first reason why we sometimes make life harder for ourselves than we need to is all to do with guilt and regret from past decisions or actions we’ve made.

This is a really powerful one, for nothing lingers quite as long, or burrows quite as deep within us, as guilt from the past. It’s one of the most redundant emotions, only serving to remind us of past pain and the accompanying shame that blocks us from being able to move forwards.

It could be to do with hurting someone, letting them down, abandoning them, betraying them, or anything else. It could also be to do with hurting ourselves, letting ourselves down, abandoning or betraying ourselves, which may feel even more painful.

When we feel guilt from the past, we have a choice of holding on or letting go. It sounds simple, but the process is a little more complicated that it seems. Letting go involves bringing the shame up to the surface, and anything it decides to bring with it - whether it’s fear, unworthiness or anything in between.

And for some of us, letting go can feel the hardest thing of all.

When we lean into our emotions, rather than letting them hide within us, we step into our power, and our creative potential - for it is only when we release the emotions that have been holding us back, that we can begin to gain momentum again in our lives.

As we feel all the emotions associated with that guilt, we can also invite in forgiveness and self-compassion. The emotional healing and spiritual awakening journey is all about love. The more we can love ourselves, despite our flaws, the darker shadow aspects within us all, and our past shame, the more we can feel at home, and at peace with life.

We are all too hard on ourselves (especially for the perfectionists amongst us), and this is to our detriment. The more we can witness our wounds and shadow, from a place of self-acceptance, and then love, the more we can transmute them and integrate them back into us, back into wholeness.

We do not need to continually punish ourselves for the past. We all make decisions that do not serve us, or others. There is really no such thing as mistakes - there is only an action taken from a place of love, or a place of fear, and we often take the path of fear, because this is what often feels the easiest in the moment.

All of us do this - you are not alone and you can let go of the burden you’ve been carrying, one I’m sure that feels heavy and tiring to carry around.

If you feel ready, can you begin to look at the decisions or actions you took in the past and all the emotions associated with them, and start to bring them out into the light? You may be surprised at what you find, and how ready you are to finally free yourself of it, and let it lovingly go.

Believing in karma and tough lessons in life

The second reason why we sometimes make life harder for ourselves than we need to is linked to the belief that we have to learn hard lessons in order to grow spiritually.

This is something that I experienced for a long time. I really thought that in order to ‘be more spiritual’ I had to learn tough lessons that would somehow make me better. This is a very misguided belief and I’ll explain why.

First of all, one person cannot be more spiritual than another, for we are all Spirit in motion. Some of us are more aware of it, but that doesn’t make us more spiritual. Spiritual growth is all do to with coming home to the truth of who are; sparks of Source having a Divine human experience. We do not need to suffer to remember this truth, especially not in this time of great ascension and awakening!

Secondly, we do not need to suffer to grow in consciousness.

We’ve probably all suffered enough, and our belief in karma, and ‘having to pay our dues’ is all part of the matrix programming that we are here to break free of. While we have karmic lessons in our Soul Contract, it is important to understand that the karmic energies aren’t here to punish us or force our growth, they are here to invite us to lean into the lesson, the path of least resistance, and to grow from the challenge.

They are powerful and pure in their intent, and in no way placed there in order to limit or block our spiritual expansion.

There’s also a second part to this, and it’s all to do with survivor’s guilt. I know, and work with, a lot of people who’ve had a really tough time on earth. They’ve experienced extreme trauma, hardship and suffering, and it continuously surprises me how gentle, loving and graceful these people are, despite all they’ve gone through.

I know it’s not necessary or needed to compare one person’s trauma with another, we’re all completely unique, but I do feel very lucky in comparison, for the childhood and experiences I had.

I grew up in a happy home, with very loving parents, and while I’ve had my own struggles in life, the foundation of my childhood has served me beautifully well, and for that I am eternally grateful. As a result, despite some bumps along the way, I am in a very fortunate place in my life.

However, this sometimes makes me feel that I’m due some bad karma. I know this is only a programme, but it feels pretty strong, especially considering how lightly I feel I got off in life.

So, I write this as a reminder for myself, and for those of you reading this who also feel lucky in life - if we have love, joy and happiness in our lives, this is to be cherished, not feared that it might one day disappear. No one is due bad luck, bad karma or bad fortune, this is just survivor’s guilt at play, and there is no need for it in our lives.

It’s also a reminder to acknowledge what we’ve gone through in our lives, even though it may not feel as extreme, there’s still be challenges that have made us all who we are today. We can recognise and validate the work we’ve done to get us to where we are, and enjoy the view, knowing there’s always more mountains to climb, and more people to help along the way.

Not recognising what we really deserve

The third reason why we sometimes make life harder for ourselves than we need to is all to do with not knowing or recognising what we truly deserve.

This is all linked to our self-worth, and how worthy we truly feel to be living the life we’re living. This is often something that’s misunderstood, so I’ll do my best to compact the wisdom I learnt from this wonderful book, in order to untangle what self-worth really is.

There are three levels of the pyramid. At the top we have our confidence, which is how good we feel about who we are, which we project out into the world.

We then have our self-esteem which sits underneath and feeds our confidence. This is all to do with how good we feel about who we are, purely from what we do. It is based on merit - so when we do something well, whether it’s winning, succeeding or achieving, it feeds our self-esteem.

The bottom part of the triangle is our self-worth. This is the foundation of our self-esteem and our confidence. We are all inherently worthy, just by being born, yet we all forget this as life wears us down. If we don’t believe we’re worthy of all we desire, we cannot receive it.

If we don’t have a strong foundation of self-worth, we can fall into crisis. This happens when what we do doesn’t receive praise, success or achievement. Suddenly, we lose our confidence because we are not feeding our self-esteem from what we’re doing.

This is why it’s so important to understand what our self-worth really is, and how to begin to acknowledge it. If we don’t we can make life harder for ourselves because we are subconsciously limiting ourselves, due to what we feel we deserve to receive. It’s all about releasing the limitations we unknowingly have put in place, that are keeping us stuck in our life.

If we don’t feel good about ourselves, we often don’t believe we deserve good things, whether it’s a loving relationship, joyful work, a healthy and vibrant body, a wonderful home, possibilities and opportunities, and anything else.

We may consciously want these things, but subconsciously there may be programmes, patterns and limiting beliefs running that are in direct contradiction to our conscious desires. This is why the inner healing work is so powerful - it allows us to go deep diving into what’s really going on under the surface, so we can gracefully uproot all the conditioning that is keeping us stuck in unworthiness.

The more we lean into any feelings of unworthiness, the more we can start to see life shift and change before our very eyes. The more we move through our inner landscape, releasing, freeing and processing, the more our outer reality can tune into that new frequency that we are birthing within us.

Letting go of the need to struggle and suffer

We do not need to struggle and suffer in life, whether it’s due to guilt from the past, a belief in needing hardship to grow, or not recognising what we truly deserve. We all deserve love, joy and grace in our lives, as much as the next person.

I’d also add that we don’t need to be a martyr for our suffering - this is something I’ve definitely experienced and has kept me stuck for a long time. We can all too easily stay trapped in a prison of our own making, purely out of spite, resentment, jealousy and the secondary gain that comes from struggling.

It may be that we want our hardship to be validated by someone, anyone, and until this happens, we stay in that place of hardship, quietly seething and resenting that no one has noticed or acknowledged our pain. It may be that we gain sympathy from our struggles, which drip feeds our self-worth, without us realising that there is a far quicker and easier way to feel loved, appreciated and valued beyond sympathy (which is really so limiting and ungiving in its essence).

So, while it needs to be acknowledged that there are other factors at place when it comes to breaking free from the cycle of self-punishment so we can allow ourselves to truly receive, these feel like a pretty good place to start.

If you’d like support and guidance on your spiritual and emotional healing journey, you may like to book a Soul Contract Reading, book a Divine Healing session, or sign up to my newsletter to stay in touch for more similar posts.

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Carry on exploring