“Forgiveness is crucial to living a healthy life, both mentally and physically.”
There are so many experiences, feelings, and wounds that we could hold onto forever, hoping and wishing that they would be different. However, when you live in the “I wish” mindset, you are already resisting what is. This is the gateway to denying your reality and ultimately holding yourself accountable for things that cannot be changed.
Instead, imagine you could have peace. You could accept and forgive. Most times, when people think of forgiveness, they think it’s just for other people. “If I forgive this person, they will think what they did wasn’t wrong.” However, forgiveness is ultimately for you.
By forgiving, you are freeing yourself from holding on to those negative feelings and resentment. You are freeing your mind and allowing for new experiences to come to you. You’re honoring your peace.
Note: You don’t always need to verbally forgive other people for the way they treated you or what they did to you but, you can try to detach yourself from the emotions caused by whatever had happened, and hope for the best for that person. Energetically, we all have love inside of us. There wouldn’t be bad if there weren’t good, we wouldn’t know the difference if we haven’t experienced both.
More times than not, someone hurt you because they didn’t love themselves enough to be able to love you. Or, maybe they were never shown the type of love that you may have been shown, and they were just unable to meet you at your level. Guess what’s better than hating people, loving them.
I understand that choosing self-love and kindness can be the most difficult decision in highly emotionally charged situations. However, that is where your real growth shines through. It’s all in your hands to make that decision for yourself. You have the option to choose not to argue with someone when they hurt you, you can choose to be easy on yourself and forgive. Those are the hardest decisions to make when you have extremely heightened emotions. It would be much easier to blame and to stay mad. In the end, those negative emotions and thoughts are only going to affect you later.
Honoring your peace begins by simply making that decision that you want to be happy. Allow yourself to grieve and to feel the emotions that haunt you, but remind yourself why you’re choosing to forgive — you want to be happy, you choose peace.
You can also forgive yourself for the ways you’ve handled certain situations before, or things that you have done in the past that you are not happy with. By forgiving yourself, you show gratitude for yourself – you recognize that you did the very best you could in that moment.
Forgiveness and resentment go hand-in-hand. With resistance comes suffering. When you are unable to find the peace in your heart for yourself, you will never be able to find it for others.
I just finished reading The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz and I would love to share the 3 steps I have learned to enhance my life through love and letting go of resentments.
- First, is to uncover the truth.
- Be honest with yourself about the emotional wounds that you have.
Emotions are meant to be felt, not held on to.
- Second is to forgive
- Do not punish yourself or judge yourself/others for the things you have been through.
Make the choice that you no longer want to suffer.
- Last but not least, let the love in
- Start making smaller acts of love each day and see where it can take you.
Returning to self-love is what will ultimately heal your emotional body.
Emotions are beautiful, the chaos of the emotional body can be absurdly disrupting and dangerous, but absolutely gorgeous all at the same time. Emotions are what shape our human experience. Healing the emotional body through forgiveness will re-shape your whole human experience.