By Dr. Mara Karpel
“Forgiveness opens our hearts to self-love….That person who is the hardest to forgive is the one who can teach you the greatest lessons. When you love yourself enough to rise above the old situation, then understanding and forgiveness will be easy. And you’ll be free.” ~ Louise Hay
In my last blog, 11 Tips for Increasing Self-Love Now, Tip #6 was: “Forgive others and forgive yourself.” As I mentioned in that blog, forgiveness is an important factor in loving ours selves. It is also a critical element in living joyfully and experiencing joyful loving relationships.
This is easy to say, but often difficult to put into practice. Most of us, myself included, have had times when we have held resentments toward people who may no longer be in our lives, as well as people who may continue to play important roles in our lives. In order to create positive relationships with those who are still in our lives, we must forgive. If not, then these relationships will continue to bring us pain and we will continue to bring pain to those people. What would be the point, then, of continuing any sort of relationship, if we were just going to create more pain and hurt? Equally important is to forgive those who are no longer in our lives. Without doing this, we continue to create pain for ourselves by holding onto the burden of anger and resentment and weighing ourselves down––essentially punishing our selves. Oprah Winfrey wrote, [Forgiveness] “is letting go so that the past does not hold you prisoner.” Furthermore, we will find it difficult to create positive, satisfying new relationships. “If you carry the bricks from your past relationship to the new one, you will only build the same house,” writes an anonymous author.
You may feel that you don’t want to forgive someone who you perceive to have wronged you. Perhaps you believe that, if you were to let go of the resentment and actually forgive that person, you would be condoning the behavior and making yourself vulnerable for someone else to hurt you. You need to know that there is a big difference between forgiveness and approval of poor treatment. Just because you decide to forgive someone, doesn’t mean that you need to ever see that person again. On the other hand, you might have decided to stay in a relationship with that person. Perhaps, the hurtful event happened long ago and that person has changed their ways. Or, maybe, you realize that the hurt was mutual, and the two of you have repaired those dynamics in your relationship. In that case, forgiveness doesn’t mean that you will not set limits about how you are to be treated from here on out.
Forgiveness is all about you. It’s about making the decision to release the anger and resentment that burns up your energy and keeps you stuck, increasing your own ability to feel joyful and peaceful, and improving your health, as holding onto anger has been linked to many health issues, including cardiac problems and chronic back pain. George Pransky tells us, in his book, The Relationship Handbook, “People think of forgiveness as a generous act, but it is actually very self-serving. If you have painful memories, you suffer. They’re like burrs that rub your skin every time the memories are stimulated. Getting rid of the burrs so your wounds can heal is really being nice to yourself.” I have seen for myself that, as soon as I can forgive, I feel like a weight is being lifted off of my shoulders, and I’m free to move forward in my life. On the other hand, when I’ve held onto anger and resentment, it has just kept me living in the past, re-living old hurts. And that is not the place where I want to live my life. So, how do we forgive?
Here are 8 tips for making the journey of forgiveness:
1. Set the intention, take responsibility, and acknowledge your pain.
Just having the intention to forgive is the most powerful step toward moving forward in releasing pain and enjoying your life. Take responsibility for your own healing. Then, acknowledge the negative results of holding a grudge, such as emotional pain, even physical illness. It might help to find someone you trust to talk to about it, such as a friend or a mental health professional. Write about it in a journal. Recent studies have shown tremendous benefits of writing emotions in a journal on reducing stress and improving health.
2. See the humanity of the other person.
Be willing to see where the other person is coming from in their own life. This is not making excuses for their hurtful behavior, but, instead, realizing that people hurt others when they’ve been hurt them selves or when they don’t know better. Oprah Winfrey has been known to say, “When you know better, you do better.” It’s likely that the person was doing the best they could with what knowledge or internal resources they had at the time, even if their best wasn’t very good. “When we forgive, we come to peace with ourselves and the painful thoughts that have been sitting in our minds tormenting us. Forgiveness is the act of seeing those thoughts with understanding. Understanding lets us see the humanity of the other,” writes Pransky. When we understand that “every misguided action is accompanied by an insecure state of mind….the more misguided the action, the greater the insecurity and fear,” then we move closer to forgiveness and to “peace with ourselves and the painful thoughts that have been sitting in our minds tormenting us.”
3. Create a ceremony to release resentments.
Some people find it helpful to have a ceremony for releasing and letting go of the resentments. Try this: Write a letter to the person whom you feel has hurt you. But, don’t send that letter. This is a ceremony for you to release your feelings. Sending the letter will only keep the resentment going. Then, bury or burn the letter as a symbol of letting it go.
4. Learn from your pain.
Learning from your pain is an important part of forgiveness. What did you learn about yourself and about relationships from the hurtful event? Perhaps, what you learned was that you can survive being hurt.
5. Acknowledge your role and then forgive yourself.
Acknowledge your part in the hurt. Perhaps, there were things you could have done differently at the time to bring about a different outcome, even if that was to let the other person know that their behavior was unacceptable. Then, forgive yourself for your part. Forgiving yourself is a critical piece of the forgiveness puzzle. You need to forgive yourself for choices you’ve made. Make the decision to do better every day. The most that we can ask of ourselves and of people in our life is that we all do the best that we are able to do at this moment.
6. Seize the opportunity for growth.
Recently, something triggered a memory of an old resentment for me. I was very surprised by this because I believed that I had long-ago let go of the remembered event and that I had forgiven, happily moving forward with my life. On this day, however, I noticed my thoughts and emotions spiraling down a negative course. The result was that I felt low in energy, moody, and lost desire to do some things that I normally enjoy doing. This lasted for a few hours, until I noticed what was going on. At that point, I began to look at the situation with curiosity. What I discovered was that, although I thought I had already forgiven all involved in the incident of question, I had not forgiven myself. I saw that I still felt angry at myself for not having better protected myself from hurt. This was an “ah-ha” moment for me. I hadn’t known that I still felt that way. When I shed light on it, I realized that we really can’t always protect ourselves from hurt. Sometimes hurt happens and then we heal, if we allow ourselves to. The next realization was that everything that has happened in my life, good or bad, is my story and it has led me to all of the great things that are in my life now. I have grown from my experiences and they have brought me the confidence that I can grow from all future experiences. In addition, my past experiences have all added to my ability to have compassion. Dr. Wayne Dyer writes, “With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.” I decided that I choose growth.
7. Ho’oponono.
There is an ancient Hawaiian ritual for forgiveness, which is especially effective for self-forgiveness. It’s called, Ho’oponopono. This ritual includes four simple steps, each of which consists of silently repeating specific words to yourself over and over again. The first step is “repentence,” that consists of saying “I’m sorry” for something that you feel responsible for. In fact, after we start to take ownership of our own thoughts, we begin to see that we’re responsible for everything that occurs in our own mind. The next step is to say “Please forgive me.” The third is gratitude, saying “Thank you.” The last step is to say “I love you.” Although simple, this four-step practice has been found to be extremely powerful.
8. Practice.
Now, practice. Practice forgiveness with other people and with yourself on a daily basis. Forgive the driver who just cut you off on the highway or the less-than-helpful person on the other end of the phone at a company’s customer service number. Forgive people close to you, people who press your “buttons” with their comments or habits. And don’t to forget to practice forgiveness with yourself, constantly. When you decide to let go of the resentment, notice how much lighter and freer you feel. “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody,” wrote Maya Angelou.
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