Has anyone ever broken your heart, betrayed your trust, or disappointed you in any possible way?
I bet that at least one of these questions has brought you one or many bad memories. If so, please accept my sincere apologies, but the process has just begun.
Now! I want you to pause for a while, take a deep breath, clear your mind, calm your heart, and consider how these recalls make you feel.
Are you feeling angry, frustrated, anxious, scared, or maybe resented?
No matter what it is that you feel, never tend to suppress these feelings. On the contrary, make sure to acknowledge them, embrace them, and notice how they affect your body, your mood, and your behavior.
Our emotions, mainly the negative ones, are designed to be super valuable messengers. They exist for a very good reason! They are here to help us pay attention to the events that created them in the first place.
Avoiding them, denying them, or even ignoring them can create extra stress, eventually leading to many health issues once it becomes chronic and weakens your body’s immune system.
If you choose to bypass your emotions, you are choosing to experience them over and over again. Any similar event, situation, or conversation can easily trigger them back because you haven’t truly dealt with them at the right moment. Instead, you have allowed them to hack your system.
That being said, I need you to consider the following statement: “Only Hurt People Hurt People”.
Now! Take another deep breath and consider how does that makes you feel. What thoughts does it bring into your mind?
By giving yourself enough time to think about it, while trying to put yourself in the offender’s shoes, you realize that most of the bad actions, wrong behaviors, or misjudgments that you have faced in your life were not exactly directed towards you as a person. For these wrongdoers, you are simply a mean to vent and express their buried pain.
Put differently, you are being victimized by another victim.
Do not get me wrong. I am not giving them the right to behave the way they do. I aim to help you perceive these hurtful events differently so that you can interpret them objectively, by putting yourself in a strong position, instead of a helpless and hopeless one.
Once you reach the stage where you acknowledge, accept, and approach the past mindfully, you will be ready to forgive and let go.
Practicing Forgiveness is your path toward Spiritual, Mental, and Physical Healing.
To forgive doesn’t mean to forget. You should always remember the bad experiences, accept them, and use them to learn, grow, and evolve.
To forgive means to give yourself time and permission to accept the imperfections in this world, release yourself from the past grudges and bitterness, brings peace back into your life, and look forward to the new opportunities that your future days have to offer you.
Finally, keep in mind that we all commit mistakes, no exceptions found; so:
Forgive yourself and don’t let your past define you.
Forgive others and don’t let their past define them.
