Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness but because you deserve peace
jonathon Lockwood huie
We are told forgiveness is never easy, however that don’t mean we shouldn’t try!
Forgiveness ultimately benefits you! It isn’t actually for the person(s) that has done wrong, despite them feeling the benefit of being forgiven. Forgiveness doesn’t mean to make a mends, in contrast it means that you are deciding to no longer carry the pain or burden it caused.
BENEFITS OF FORGIVENESS
1. Improves health! How forgiveness can improve your health
Holding a grudge can cause you to occasionally harbour negative thoughts. This will undoubtedly causes the body to feel tense and stressed, especially when thinking about the situation or seeing the person(s). These feelings can then effect our mental health such as anxiety and depression. Forgiveness alternatively helps in reducing stress levels and offers considerable mental healing. Like a weight lifted!
2. Being able to forgive will make your stronger and more resilient
Forgiveness is not a weakness it is in fact the opposite. It can cause feelings of empowerment! Especially knowing that you have been able to rise above the situation at hand. More importantly being able to forgive shows levels of understanding and acceptance, it is making a choice to move on
3. Free yourself from the Pain
On my personal spiritual journey I learned to accept life for what it is, in all its glory and flaws. I had to train my mind to understand that it is important that I accept things that were out of my control! Accept that it has happened and that you can not change it. Let it go.
A major part of forgiveness is acceptance we have to accept that people are the way they are and without a doubt they will make mistakes, including yourself, you will and have made mistakes. Humans in general are flawed.
It is impossible to change the past so makes little sense obsessing over it. We have to accept that bad things happen and life isn’t always unicorns and rainbows. It is what creates a balance. Once you learn to accept you will absolutely feel freer. If you believe that everything happens for a reason you already have a head start.
4. Become a more compassionate person
Forgiveness can make us look at things differently, but a common benefit is compassion. Depending on your circumstances it can increase compassion in 1 or 2 ways and it a lot of cases both ways.
- You become more compassionate towards people that have experienced a similar situation as you have experienced and therefore you can relate. As a consequence your outlook life situations will broaden.
- Being able to be compassionate towards the person that has hurt you takes courage and strength. Either you can look at life through their eyes and offer understanding towards why they did what they did, or you can feel sorry for the person with the knowledge that they are in a low vibrational state. Alternatively you may just accept that no one is perfect.
Compassion is to look beyond your own pain, to see the pain of others
yasmin mogahed
5. Cleanse the Soul – Open up New Beginnings
Learning to forgive and forgiving things that have sat deep inside us gives us a sense of relief. When people say they feel lighter there is truth to this.
I had held a grudge against my granddad for years; even when he passed away I still felt a sense of anger towards him and decided he was unforgivable. In the middle of practicing Eckhart Tolle’s ‘Power of Now’ it created a clearer mind space. One day for no reason at all my granddad popped into my head, I handle the situation with compassion and understood that whatever had happened in the past had nothing to do with me and was out of my control although it may have effected me and my family, but my granddad was nothing but loving towards me. I felt myself let go and forgive him. It had been the hardest thing for me to forgive, but once I had done it I was able to forgive everything that I had harboured a grudge for. I felt instantly lighter, I felt like my walk was lighter my mind was lighter and I was happier about life.
Once you have mastered forgiveness, you will be able to see the world with new eyes. I started to understand there were reasons behind bad actions, everyone has had different upbringings. Some people who have been treated awful as a child, are likely to become a bad adult themselves. We have different paths to walk, different lessons to learn.
Being able to forgive and accept life for what is will undoubtedly open your mind to learn all sorts of things.
I would love to hear some of your stories on forgiveness in the comments!
WAYS TO FORGIVE!
Now we know what benefits us from forgiveness, but as we have mentioned previously, it is not easy!
Below are 5 ways that have helped me to forgive others. I have used different methods for different situations you can use one or all depending on what works best for you.
1. Write them a letter
Not a letter that you plan to send. But a letter that you can freely write down everything you want to say. Why they hurt you? Why you have found it hard to forgive? Put everything down on paper and let it all out. If you feel like giving them the letter afterwards you can. Alternatively you can burn it, it is totally up to you. Being able to write everything down will help to free yourself from the situation.
When we have things stored in our heads only it can become overwhelming where as having everything written down helps to simplify the situation. Offering a different perspective that will help you to make better choices.
2. Analyse your own emotions
We have to look at ourselves from time to time! Ask yourself, why it effected you so much? Are you being reasonable in your reaction? What do you want to happen now? Do you need to let go of anyone? Or is it time you forgave them?
Being able to reflect on yourself is also eye opening, You may find that you have over reacted, on the flip side you may result in forgiveness for a person , with the consequence that they can no longer be apart of your life. Looking at yourself in addition bring clarity!
3. Put yourself in their shoes
Much like Compassion you need to take a moment to consider what was it like for the other person. Do they feel bad for hurting you? Did they do it intentionally? How would you have handled it differently? How do they feel now?
Note: In Traumatic situations it is not the person you need to forgive. But the situation itself
4. Practice letting go
We all go through things that are not what we desired and these situations can cause us years of pain and suffering as a result. If we get stuck thinking over what should have been or shouldn’t have been, we are equally holding ourselves back by not allowing ourselves to grow from what has happened.
5. Broaden your thinking
Look at it for new angles. Has worse happened? Did you learn anything? Can you use your journey to help others? Is not forgiving holding you back? Is there a possibility that everything was supposed to happen exactly the way it did?
AUTHORS NOTES
Forgiveness for Trauma based events may differ in advise, in this case I may consider doing a post for that separately. Let Me know in the comments.
Thank you for reading Love and Blessings! x
