Willing to Forgive? - The LGP Group

Willing to Forgive
by Dawn Breslin

I often think of this negative energy force resulting from anger, bitterness, resentment and shame as being like a great big vacuum cleaner that gets under your skin and begins to suck out any positive thoughts and happiness that you ever felt. Then it begins to suck up all your energy, creativity, and vitality for life until it has totally consumed every part of your joy, and all you are left with is a mind full of negative thoughts and perceptions about life. This is where the problems begin.

When these thoughts take over, they can begin to dominate your life in such a negative way. When they take hold, it’s like a big magnet that attracts even more negative situations, pushing us into a relentless negative downward spiral. The only way to stop this process is to first become aware of it and then learn to clear out our negative thoughts and let go of the negative experience from our mind. So how do we do this?

If we don’t learn to forgive and let go of the pains that happen to us in our lives and we choose to hold on to the past, it is very possible that the joy that we deserve to experience in our futures will be limited. Somehow we convince ourselves that it’s the other person who suffers from our ties with the experience, but believe me — IT’S NOT.

IT’S YOU. Once you accept that you are WILLING to forgive, you then need to consider nursing your bruised and tired soul back to life again. This is a call for SOUL MEDICINE. To do this we need to fill you up with loving thoughts and affirmation, to relax and relieve your mind, and then get you to begin to feed your spirit with some of the things that your heart and soul loves to do—things that you haven’t been doing in a while like feeding yourself nurturing food, lighting candles, taking soothing bubble baths, and revitalizing long walks, doing creative hobbies, and laughing with friends.

It’s not the snake bite that kills us, it’s the venom that runs through our veins after the bite that kills us.
– Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

It’s not the actual event that causes the most pain when someone is betrayed, hurt, abused or let down—it’s the endless holding on to the experience in our minds that wears us down, and it’s the resulting impact on our thinking and perspective about the future that stops us from moving forward. So how do we let go of our thoughts? Here is a plan to help you move towards forgiveness.

Be willing to forgive. Your ego is fighting this battle. It is saying that you should stay offended and hurt and you should continue to fight. However, your willingness to be happy is your key to your future happiness. Therefore, the first step to letting go is to choose to be happy instead of being right, resentful, angry or bitter. By accepting this you open yourself up to healing your spirit and soul.

Drop your sense of perfection. People make mistakes; we are human. I hear about people’s guilt every day—the guilt from people who have hurt others and also the pain from those who have been hurt. When you deal with these emotions every day and you realize how inevitable they are in life, day by day you begin to realize that it is all part of life’s rich tapestry. We may not intend to hurt someone, as much as we don’t think we will get over the hurt of our past.

Excerpted from Dawn Breslin’s Power Book – 7 Steps to a Life Makeover.