Forgiveness - Why & How

"As long as you don't forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy rent-free space in your mind."  — Isabelle Holland

Many people find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to forgive — whether themselves, a parent or other family member, friends or acquaintances, a boss or co-worker, or even a total stranger  — for doing or saying something which created pain for themselves or someone else.

"Whatever we have done, we can always make amends for it without ever looking back in guilt or sorrow."  — Eknath Easwaran

DO NOT confuse forgiveness with approval for bad behavior. You don't forgive yourself or anyone else for them — it's for YOU. Refusing to forgive only continues to hurt you!

"I can change. I can live out my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past."  —  Stephen Covey

Forgiving the inappropriate behavior of either yourself or someone else has important benefits and absolutely no disadvantages:

Get off the emotional roller coaster of anger, resentment, and desire for vengeance. Admit out loud to yourself all of your intense feelings about a painful experience. Allow all of your hidden thoughts and feelings to finally surface in order to set them free.

"Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an essential lifetime skill."   — Joan Borysenko

Stop living in the past and peacefully move onto to living your life. Accept that whatever happened can never be undone. When you start to relive a bad experience, imagine grabbing you mind with your hands and physically turning it in another direction. Focus on and be grateful for the good things in your life NOW. Emotionally refuse to continue being a victim of someone else's bad choices.

"The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one's life."  — Dalai Lama

Accept bad behavior (both small, insignificant or major, immoral situations) as an immature, desperate, or ignorant choice; and/or seek legal justice. Take action to ensure a bad situation will not occur again, but then just let go of trying to change something which has already happened.

"To attain knowledge, add things every day.  To attain wisdom, remove things every day." — Lao Tzu

Learn to stop taking everything someone else says or does personally. Life always includes both injuries and healing, so view life and situations in perspective. Understand that — just like you — everyone is doing the best they can to protect themselves from being hurt. Essentially, that means YOU are seldom the most important person in anyone else's life, just as few others are more important to you than you are to yourself.

"Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present."  — Roger Babson

Blessings and Balance

"Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be"  — Abraham Lincoln

Your perspective of the world and your relationships to all the people and things within your view creates whatever happiness and peace you feel.  When you see each moment of your life as being blessed, centered, and balanced, with love and understanding, acceptance and tolerance, you have no need for power and control. Controlling your own mind, emotions, and behavior is the ONLY POWER YOU HAVE! 

"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." — William James: Was a psychologist and philosopher

Without expectations, you no longer experience disappointments or resentment. Your contentment no longer hinges on any specific event, and you can enjoy the ups and downs of the adventure of life which appear as unexpected gifts from outside your own expectations.

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it." — Chief Seattle

You can stop taking everyone else's behavior personally — as if someone or the entire world is concentrating on making your life miserable.  Sorry, you're really not that important to most people, especially strangers, so stop taking yourself so seriously!

There is a saying that "happiness is nothing more than good health and bad memory",so promote good health and choose what you remember and think about.

Your fears of abandonment, failure, inadequacy, or weakness are all conditioned responses — created by a shortage of love — from even well-meaning family and friends. When a loved one looks at and treats you in a certain way, you unconsciously behave as if that person's perspective is an unchanging, undeniable truth. As unpleasant as it is, identifying and healing these wounds which diminish your confidence and self worth is critical to being able to tap into your real inner strength and energy. When a painful memory surfaces, feel it completely and compassionately to dissipate it's energy.

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly." — Buddha: was a spiritual teacher and founder of Buddhism

Anger is a secondary emotion, useful only to get your attention and prompt immediate action.  Afterwards it is simply concealing hurt feelings. Hanging onto to past anger and hurt requires an enormous amount of your energy. So even if you can't quite manage to forgive someone's past painful actions against you, at least let go of wanting revenge.  Accept and trust that everyone pays for their mistakes sooner or later!

"I don't forgive people because I am weak — I forgive them because I am strong enough to know that people make mistakes." — Unknown

Enjoy life now — it has an expiration date!

Dispelling Haunting Memories

Your opinion of yourself is the most important opinion, so accept your faults and forgive your failures and mistakes. Learn the lessons of your mistakes so you don't repeat them. Identify and maintain your values so the conversations you have with yourself remain the most important. Since you are the only person you can control and change, replace bad habits with good habits by daily repetition and routine.

"To have your life 'look good' but not 'feel good' is not living; it's existing. That's not success and in your heart, you know it. To not honor yourself, to choose not to do what you know is right for you, is a crime against yourself."  — Julie Fuimano, "The Journey Called YOU"

If you are continually haunted by a past experience, resistance is futile because the energy used to PUSH the thoughts out of your mind actually increase their power and influence on you.

 

That which you resist persists

 

In addition to painful memories, you may also be using energy to keep a secret. The worry of having a secret exposed can not only make you physically sick, but prevent you from enjoying a full life. A bad choice does not mean you're a bad person or undeserving of happiness. It does mean that you can choose at any time to discontinue the behaviors, habits, and thought patterns which are preventing the peace you want in your life.

"To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you somebody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."  —  E. E. Cummings

You can't accept and cope with bad memories and secrets until you can explore them and learn the lesson they provide. Just like grief, you must surrender to the emotions in order for them to disappear. Once you've experienced coming to terms with one negative experience, your increased courage and confidence will make expunging additional issues much easier.

 

Enjoy life now — it has an expiration date!

 

Control, Beliefs, & Reality

Once you become aware of and accept all the things in life that you cannot control — those things that are not your job — you can start appreciating all the good things in your life. Your perception of your reality changes even if your life doesn't, and your journey shifts course effortlessly.

The beauty of reaching this point is that now you no longer need to work nearly as hard at feeling happy and content. You can relax because you finally get it, once and for all — you no longer need to try to control, defend, protect, or guard against risk. It was never your responsibility anyway, but now it's not even tempting. You've let go, stopped hanging on to your old ways of thinking, and you can just go with the flow!

You are not always right — but it's not always because you are wrong.

You are not doomed nor fated to have a bad life — nor are you a BAD PERSON. Your reality is simply clouded by those early beliefs which you absorbed which are no longer true, acceptable, nor applicable. Identify and discard old beliefs and replace them with acceptable beliefs. Just relax, accept, and allow your new reality to unfold.

Be your own best friend

Too often people treat other people better than they treat themselves, or even expect to be treated. How is it that you can excuse failings and weaknesses in others but not in yourself? Bad choices are made when you don't have compassion for yourself or a good sense of self-worth.

"Stress occurs when the mind perceives you're not enough or don't have enough,"  — Eva Selhub, the senior staff physician at the Benson/Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of The Love Response (Ballantine).

Increase your ability to absorb and survive negative events by focusing on what YOU do that's worthwhile, good, likeable, and unique. 

• Stop concentrating on the negative thoughts and learn to actually like yourself.
• Finish the sentences "I deserve to. . ." and "I'm worthy of. . ." frequently throughout your day. 
• EVERY DAY, write down four new things about yourself and four new things about your life that you appreciate.
• Reward and calm yourself often with healthy and positive activities or snacks.

Fw: Blame, Freedom, & Forgiveness

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." — Sigmund Freud

Freedom comes in many forms: physical, emotional, financial, religious, etc.  All require accepting the responsibility for acquiring and maintaining that freedom. Emotional freedom — from guilt, pain, shame, insecurity, resentment — all require you to do the work to identify and then to let go of the emotional baggage you've acquired over time.

"In order to live your freedom, you must first accept reality. 'These are the choices, and given those choices, which do I choose?' Whether the option you select is pleasant or painful does not alter the fact that, given reality, this is your preference. . .ask yourself, 'Why am I doing this?' and then notice whether, given the options, you are choosing what you really want, or whether you want to choose something else. Sometimes the exercise of freedom involves naming your poison — all choices may lead to outcomes that are in some way painful. But the real pain is that of feeling powerless — denying your freedom." — Christopher J. McCullough, author of Nobody's Victim

No one but YOU can change how you feel — about anything. . .because you always have a choice about how you feel. This is your responsibility, freedom, & right — to take good care of yourself. Learn to love yourself and to at least feel peacefulness if not happiness in all situations. In order to move forward in creating the contented reality you want, you've got to let go of the hurtful, guilty, or resentful feelings you've stuffed deep inside for years. YOUR reality won't be what you want if you leave it to others. 

"Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves." — Dr. Rollo May

First, realize that the opposite of taking responsibility is blaming others or yourself. Guilt and shame go along with blame, so regardless of your childhood, romantic, social, or employment situations, you can choose to get rid of those feelings by forgiving yourself and others. You can recreate or re-image your image of yourself by honoring your life and the lives of others. You can go beyond understanding, acceptance, and even an apology to become the person you want to be.

"As long as you don't forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy rent-free space in your mind."  — Isabelle Holland

Although some past experiences may be so horrific to you, you always have the choice to change how you feel about the event. You definitely can't change what happened, but you CAN stop your bitterness. It only continues making you feel like a victim. All those negative feelings are a constant burden, holding you (and your life) in one spot. Forgiveness requires nothing in return and offers only positive results.

"Whatever we have done, we can always make amends for it without ever looking back in guilt or sorrow." — Eknath Easwaran

You can start to forgive once you stop identifying yourself with the pain from an event. This doesn't mean in any way that you're condoning or making excuses for someone else's bad behavior. You're basically forgiving yourself and acknowledging that you weren't to blame for what happened. That acceptance allows you to then get in touch with and process your hidden feelings. Forgiveness is what you do for yourself — not for anyone else.  Ironically, allowing yourself to feel and let go of your pain creates a new understanding of the pain also felt by those who have hurt you.