Today is International forgiveness day, a day which has been created to make you more conscious of what you have to forgive but why should you forgive another? Why should you forgive someone who has wronged you? In this blog post we discuss 10 reasons why forgiveness is powerful, liberating and shows sheer strength of a magnanimous person.

Forgiveness is the renunciation or cessation of resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offence, disagreement, or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines forgiveness as ‘to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offence or debt’. This text has been taken from www.cute-calendar.com.

1. Forgiveness gives you power over the wrongdoing

 

When you forgive someone for hurting you rather than reacting angrily or vengefully it gives you power over the wrongdoing. If you react angrily, vengefully, or aggressively towards any problem you only carry around negative feelings and tend to react with bitterness, which eventually, will end up just causing yourself more pain and agony. Forgiveness gives you the power to remain calm and shows the wrongdoing or wrongdoer it has not affected your life negatively.

2. Forgiveness releases painful emotion

When you forgive you are releasing the rage, shame, frustration and despair that the wrongdoing caused you. When you forgive you are making peace with not only the person or thing that caused the problem but you are also choosing to not let those emotions fester in your body. If you forgive the wrongdoing it is less likely to affect you emotionally.

3. Forgiveness brings peace of mind

When you forgive the past you learn to let the experience go and it lets you live life for the present moment. If you don’t forgive it is like holding onto a bad past experience that you keep thinking about, again and again. This is not healthy and will only cause you negative life experiences, you don’t have to forget what happened but you do need to let it go in order to keep living a happy life.

4. Forgiveness makes the wrong-doer question their actions

It is important if a person(or persons) has done you wrong by bullying you, putting you down, calling you names, feeling like they tried to ruin you, beating you, or affecting your life in any negative way you must in time learn to forgive them.

Forgiving a ‘wrongdoer’ is extremely powerful and shows that you have control over your emotions which makes the wrongdoer question what they have done rather than seeing that they got what they wanted by affecting you in a negative way.

You don’t forgive out of wanting to win an argument with a foe, you forgive because you know being angry will do no good for either of you, sometimes, this action can even make your wrongdoer into a friend.

This video clip from Les Miserable shows how a man who has been being chased for all his life by a policeman for stealing a loaf of bread when he was starving forgave the man who has made his life difficult in being able to move forward…he reacts as how we all should…

5. Forgiveness lets you control your future and let go of the past

 

If you hold onto something that happened to you that was a bad experience it will stop you moving forward in life. Constantly thinking about the past and what happened freezes you in time and instead of looking forward you are looking back. By forgiving the past experience you are allowing yourself to live life again.

6. Forgiveness for yourself is just as important

Sometimes we make bad decisions, we do things we know we shouldn’t or we realise we did something to hurt someone else and end up regretting it.

Carrying the guilt and worry of thinking you might have hurt someone else by mocking them, bringing them down or hurting them can hurt you more deeply than hurting someone else, it can sometimes be even worse than being hurt yourself.

Likewise, you must also forgive yourself if you have been hurt by someone else. Realizing that you are not fully to blame for what happened to you can bring some balance back to your mind.

7. Forgiveness helps you see the world differentlymeditation improves your focus

When you stop hating, regretting, speaking negatively about someone, a situation, or a past hurt then your world will begin to change from a place of darkness to a place of lightness. You will find things that used to bother you, bothers you a lot less.

Forgiveness helps turn your world around and brings happiness back into your life.

8. Forgiveness releases tension in an argument

forgiveness is more powerful than anger

Keeping control of your emotions when arguing with someone is very difficult, we all know we regret saying things out of rage once we have cooled down later.

By considering the argument you have just had with someone and then reflecting maybe you were in the wrong or the person you argued with said something that had the intention of hurting you you can realize that maybe they said what they said out of rage and you can forgive them.

Likewise, if you know you said something that was spoken in a fit of rage then apologize, you’ll totally defuse the problem and create an opportunity to talk about your disagreement calmly and maturely.

9. Forgiveness takes strength and is stronger than anger

We can all lose control of our emotions, it is so easy to do. Someone upsets you, puts you down or disagrees with your point of view, you feel your rage boiling inside your heart like a volcano about to erupt, but do you let the volcano erupt?

What would it resolve? Nothing.

By coming from a place of forgiveness you remain calm whilst the person in rage begins to lose control. Remaining in control of your emotions and thoughts shows a person that is strong of mind and character.

Some may say a man who forgives, is calm and walks away from a fight is weak but it is in this action that shows a man’s true strength.

The power of walking away from tension.

10. Forgiveness liberates you and teaches you lessons

It’s quite clear to see that forgiveness is extremely powerful at letting yourself find peace again in your life, it helps you let go of spiteful feelings and move forward in life and it also teaches you lessons.

It teaches you lessons as you begin to reflect on the past experience and you analyze why it happened, what could have been done differently and how it taught you something about yourself, it can strengthen you and also learn more about the world in which we live in.

Forgiveness teaches you life lessons and strengthens your character.

What are you going to forgive today?

So, what are you going to forgive today? A person? Yourself? A past bad decision?

Task: Make a decision today to forgive something, write down 5 things you are unhappy with about your past experience, now consciously think about each of those things one at a time, keep it in your mind and visualize it, also feel how it makes you feel inside…choose to forgive it, imagine yourself walking away from the situation and telling yourself ‘I forgive XXX’ (replace xxx with your problem). Repeat the process for each one and then, in a controlled environment, burn the paper so it no longer exists.

If you need further help with this then please contact a qualified hypnotherapist who will be able to help you further in the process of releasing past emotional hurt. 

So who are you going to forgive first today?

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