You know people can get angry, lose control, tongue-lash others without thinking of the consequences, screw up at work, participate in self-destructive behaviour and even lie and cheat. You name it; people do it!
You probably already know it’s easy to say, “Let go, forgive and move on”, but it can be considerably harder to do for many people.
You’ll discover that holding on to grudges and resentments is just another type of mind virus that prevents you from living at your full potential and experiencing regular happiness.
This type of mindvirus is created by finding [comfort and familiarity] in being stuck in the past. Often wasting precious mental energy and time fantasising about revenge.
Learning to let go and forgiving yourself and others is a crucial key component of mental and physical health. You can’t expect to be forgiven by others or yourself until you learn first to let go and forgive others.
"A life lived without forgiveness is a prison."
― William Arthur Ward
These powerful negative emotions, guilt, self-condemnation, humiliation, shame, and resentment [can create] bitterness in your life. Further, these mind viruses can be the underlying cause of stress, anxiety, cardiovascular issues, depression and many more unwanted [symptoms/manifestation]
In many years of life coaching, I’ve discovered that people who are unwilling to let go and forgive experience a significant toll on their emotions.
Why do most people hold on to past pain? Simply because they have a fear of forgetting and letting it happen again. So they don’t want to let go. They continually relive and reinforce that pattern of negative emotions.
Rather than remember what they learned not to repeat it, it’s probably not a great strategy to continually relive that negative experience.
A more useful strategy might be to remember “what you learn from that experience” and let those unempowering emotions go…
Some people are even hoping that if they feel bad enough, not only do they protect themselves but also some bizarre why they will get even with the pain someone caused them in the past.
Obviously, for some people learning to let go and forgive can be really scary because it requires you to step out of your comfort zone and start looking at things differently [or reframe your memory]
If you learn how to forgive [yourself and others] and let go of guilt and resentment. You can then much more easily side-step or defuse those patterns of negative emotions and begin to live a happier, healthier life. It’s up to you…
Of course, realising forgiveness does NOT mean you let people walk all over you and abuse you.
People sometimes say to me, "If I let go, it could happen again!"
Remember the adage, "Once bitten twice shy."
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
But what forgiveness does mean moving on with your life now.
My mother used to say, “Change the things you can change, accept the things you can’t change, relax and move on with your life.”
A trick to helping you let go and forgive is to stop those mental loops. They act like a generator of negative emotions. Those loops are feeding off of past recordings. Those recordings play over and over in your mind until you decide enough; STOP!
Of course, you could learn to replace those mental loops with awesome memories you’ve experienced. They don’t have to be a [negative/traumatic] [system/pattern]. What you are changing is the base/foundation of that mental loop, positive or negative.
Wanna feel good or rather feel terrible?
It really is that easy once you learn or someone helps you learn to master your mind. You will [learn here how] to stop those negative mental loops that haunt so many people and make them suffer unnecessarily.
I call this mental habit of reliving the negative past a mind virus because, basically, it infects the core of your being, and every aspect of your life in some way is affected.
So much so that it is scientifically recognised that negative emotions often create mental disorders and “dis-ease”. Think about the word disease: it’s a lack of ease. You know stress wreaks havoc on your body in so many ways, especially long-term stress.
According to Dr Fredrick Luskin at Stanford University. “Forgiving mistakes and wrongdoing are incredibly important for your mental and physical health. Learning to forgive helps people hurt less and experience less anger, stress and depression. People who learn to forgive report significantly fewer symptoms of stress, headaches, muscle tension, dizziness, and stomach issues. Even more impressively, people report improved sleep, energy levels, appetite and overall well being.”
There’s a well known parable about a man who owed a great debt to a king. The man presented himself to the royal court begging for clemency from the King. The man fell down on his knees before the King, saying, ‘PLEASE have patience with me, and I will repay you!’
The KING, being moved with compassion, decided instead of throwing the man into prison, the King forgave the man’s debt.
A few days later, the man found a servant, who owed him a lot of money, grabbed him, and took him by the throat, said, ‘Pay me what you owe!’
“So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Please have patience with me, and I will repay you!’ The man would not wait and cast the servant into prison until he paid back his debt.
When the King discovered what the man had done to his servant, the King called him in and said to him, ‘You wicked man! I forgave your debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had compassion and mercy on your fellow servant? Didn’t I have mercy on you?’
So the King became very angry and sent the man to prison to be tormented until he paid his debt in full.
Point here at times, we all mess up and make mistakes. But how can you expect others to forgive you if you won’t let go and forgive others?
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
Mahatma Gandhi-
If you accept and learn to forgive?
You know, as a life coach, I frequently encounter people who have a lot of difficulties forgiving themselves. Oftentimes they experience more difficulty than forgiving a broken heart, divorce, friend who backstabbed you or a parent who wasn’t there.
If you let go of the past, then you will be lighter, freer, and happier
People frequently punish themselves for past mistakes by creating mental loops of negative emotions, like guilt, resentment, regret, and shame. It’s as if people feel that if they’re-experience the pain for enough time, that will solve the guilt and misdeed.
It’s like self-flagellation and “hoping” it’ll feel better this time (how crazy is that?). If you stop to think about it rationally, that’s insane logic or at least very twisted!
A person is able to replay these negative mental loops over and over day to day, week to week, month to month, year in year out, all the while punishing themselves over and over for something or some event that occurred a very long time ago!
Sometimes people need professional life coaching to help them let go of those negative loops and replace them with positive loops.
If you stop to consider the amount of energy and time you waste mentally and physically punishing yourself over the past, then you easily recognise/realise you could use all the power for productive and constructive use and purposes.
"The lesson is that you can still make mistakes and be forgiven."
Robert Downey, Jr.
Why is it so hard to self-forgive?
Because as humans, we love to hold on to the “known” our comfort area. Unconsciously we think everything outside that area can be scary, maybe even dangerous.
Further, self-forgiveness can be complicated because of the difficulty in recognising and accepting our own personal shortcomings and faults.
Sometimes self-forgiveness might result in difficulty accepting or recognising something that can’t be changed.
Or perhaps the consequences haven’t all been [born-out/played-out]
Lacking closure because you don’t know how things might turn out.
Why is it so crucial you learn to forgive?
Because learning to forgive frees up lots and lots of energy and emotional resources. Which then can be then redirected to constructive projects, goals and positive emotions.
Think of yourself as a battery; you have a finite amount of energy to use per day. You can choose to either spend waste that energy on worthless things like reliving and holding onto the past, Or you can choose to use that energy to propel you forward to be more creative and constructive in both your projects and relationships. Resulting in positive outcomes.
Although it is valuable and vital to learn from past mistakes, it’s equally important to let go and not dwell on past failures.
Everyone’s experienced failures. In fact, the more successful someone is, the greater the failures they’ve experienced!
What can you do to begin to forgive and let go?
Forgiveness begins with a sincere desire and intentional decision to let go of those memories that create negative emotions for you. Once you’ve made that decision half, the battle has been won.
The next step is either learning to apply the techniques you’ll learn [HERE] or seeking a professional life coach [explore help here] such as CBT, gestalt, NLP and even better hypnosis with a qualified professional.
Life Coaching
You know forgiving isn't always easy but essential for your personal mental and physical well being. Sooner or later, you may need help letting go of the past. The latest research shows the more you learn to let go and forgive the stress you experience. The fewer headaches, backaches, less stomach experience, and you sleep better. Further, less stress benefits you with more productivity at work and leisure. You can imagine the benefits of more productivity, can you not?
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