Forgiveness

As a Health and Life Coach, I talk about life’s balance and how health is much more than just nutrition and exercise. For true health, and a balanced life, we need to take care of our other needs as well. We must never forget that we are holistic beings, and balance across our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual lives are important to help us achieve true happiness!

Outside of nutrition, one of the biggest is our connection to others. Whether you consider forgiveness to be spiritual, part of your relationships, or tied to self-esteem, it is an important part of emotional health and thereby physical as well.

The following is borrowed from a man who has been sending out love to everyone for a long time. His blog is called “The Daily Love” and his name is Masten Kipp.

“The joy that comes from realizing that suffering in our lives comes from the meaning we have given it is unlimited.”

I am not saying that painful things in your past didn’t happen, but what I am saying is that they no longer have to be as painful. It’s not as easy as changing your mind once or twice. It takes work, and reps, like in the gym. Though if you try and try enough over time, new life and new meaning can emerge.

One of the best ways I know how to do this is to take ourselves out of our own story and step into the thoughts, feelings and beliefs of the person who hurt us. Not so we can make right what they did, but so we can begin to understand the painful event from their point of view.

As I have guided clients through this process, the outcomes have been amazing. Forgiveness shows up on a whole new level for themselves and others as well as from VERY traumatic events.

The point of forgiveness is not to make right what happened, but to bring a new sense of empathy and compassion to all involved – this includes you.

The best way to balance the ledger with people who have hurt us is to forgive them, because that is how we break the bond over the painful event. From there, when we step into their shoes and consider how they must have been thinking and feeling, we begin to understand that their actions were not truly against us, but a request for Love or Significance in a very messed up way; that was the best way that they knew how to at that time.

From a spiritual perspective, we can claim ownership over the meaning we give that event, and no longer make it about how it hurt us, but about how they were hurt and our job is now to step into more Love and compassion and empathy, for them and for us. This takes us deeper and helps to bring clarity, resolution and forgiveness.

The words I am writing in this blog are easy to say, and I realize they are also extremely hard to do. I get that, and have lived it many times in my life. It’s definitely not as easy as reading The Daily Love. My hope is that this blog can be a beginning point for you to start the journey of forgiveness, of empathy and of compassion, so that one day soon you will be set free of the chains that bind you to the past.

When we see things from the point of view of others, we realize that what they are doing is not against us but as an action to make up for the love they didn’t get. It’s that simple. In this realization, we can transcend the hurt and the pain because we realize it was never about us in the first place, and so the victim story can be replaced with the story of the hero who overcame the darkness in another with Love.

I love what Mastin says. I believe that there is unbelievable healing in forgiveness. Forgiving someone can take years of burden off your shoulders not to mention your soul. It restores relationships, enables new beginnings and allows us to move on to better things.

How can you start practicing forgiveness right now? I’d love to hear you share with me in the comments below.