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One of my favorite quotes is:
‘Anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die’ -Buddah.
It’s so simple, but so true… Over 5 years of 1 to 1 coaching sessions, It so often comes up. I believe it with all my heart and see how for many people, their anger or lack of forgiveness is holding them back. It stands in their way, stops them moving on and creating better things in their lives.
After my 1st mentor week with Jack Canfield, I really felt like I was being ‘guided’ to forgive… the message I got was clear and simple ‘To move into the space you want to occupy, there is some forgiveness that needs to take place.’
Forgive, hmmm as the idea percolated, what could that possibly be about ;)… The answer came very quickly… a situation that I had been ‘pretending’ no longer affected me and that ‘I didn’t really need to give any more energy to’ – sounds healthy right? Well unfortunately not this time…
This ‘situation’ was a sad, unfortunate series of events with my husband’s family, that’s been a big, ugly, hairy wart on an otherwise picturesque landscape of life. It went on for 5 years, involving a lot of expensive lawyers, courts, stressful phone calls and broken relationships, it finally concluded last year in September.
To even consider ‘forgiving’ this situation felt plain WRONG… It felt like I was letting them off the hook, by ‘giving them’ my forgiveness.
In my mind…
They’d done wrong…this meant I would feel anger and hatred towards them as ‘their’ punishment…
The irony was…I no longer have anything to do with them, the only person suffering by holding on to this anger was me… but for the longest time that didn’t matter.
The truth is I really do know better! In so many less complex situations in my life it has been soooo much less challenging to take my own advice, but I had been grasping on to this one for 5 years!
I reached out to my network to see if anyone had any tools. One of the recommendations was a Ho’oponopono cleaning meditation and prayer:
I am sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you
WTF…I thought as I looked at it the first time, literally nothing could feel farther from the truth than this! ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you, thank you… surely this was a cruel joke??’
I have to be honest, this represented a serious challenge and was not something I rushed straight out to do… it sat with me for at least a couple of weeks, whilst I considered if I was ready to let go. As I did this, a funny thing started to happen. As my awareness was brought to the idea of forgiving, I felt like it was showing up everywhere. Have you ever noticed when you decide you want to buy a certain type of car, you then start to notice it everywhere, when it never really stood out to you before. It was exactly like that, by the end of the 2 weeks I had a whole list of things, that warranted forgiveness…including myself.
During this time, I had a couple of discussions with ‘in the know’ friends…one of the helpful questions that came up and allowed me to process this better was ‘Who would I be today if it weren’t for these events?’ As painful as they were, some of the greatest lessons of my life had arisen from these very events… they had helped me grow into the person I am.
It was a total epiphany, like I had been walking around like a horse, with blinders on and suddenly, this one realization had removed them… and now I could ‘really see’.
With my now longish list of items to forgive…I felt like, it would be ‘silly’ and ‘totally out of integrity’ with what I teach, to not at least give it a try. So one afternoon, I went down to the beach, I sat with my eyes closed…I brought, each individual to my mind and tried the question followed by the prayer.
Just to clarify, some of the individuals involved in this situation have repeatedly and vindictively hurt me, my husband and my children over and over again, this was the kind of situation that had me randomly bursting into tears whilst doing the supermarket shopping on any given week, it truly rocked me to my very core… so as a protective mother and wife up until now it had just felt ‘wrong’ to even contemplate forgiving.
I was determined to trust the guidance and as i brought each person to mind, initially the words caught in my throat… it was a struggle to even say them. But I persisted, I felt some very strange physical sensations as I went through this process, first an incredibly heavy aching in my chest, followed by a sharp pain in my throat…. but I persisted.
It took over an hour, but eventually I could bring everyone to mind and say the words without faltering. A sense of calm came over me…. I physically felt lighter.
So who or what in your life is waiting to be forgiven? You don’t have to tell them… you do NOT have to ‘let them off the hook’ but let yourself of the hook because…
‘Whatever you hate will always be with you.’ ― C. JoyBell C. and ‘The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.’ ― Steve Maraboli,
ANGER IS LIKE DRINKING POISON
Natalie Alexia is an author, speaker, blogger and life coach. She believes that no matter what your life looks like right now, you can choose to ‘Design a life you love’
visit www.lifeletloose.com