Forgiveness

Learning to forgive can feel like one of life’s harder lessons. So many seemingly-logical objections arise such as "why should I, after what they did to me?"

However, long lasting bitterness, resentment and hate is so damaging, not only to your enjoyment of life, but to your health. Bitterness chews you up inside and spoil your time on this Earth.

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean tolerating or excusing the bad that was done. But the shock, even horror of what happened needs to register only for a while. After that you need to move on from it for your own peace of mind.

Don't let resentment color all of life

The worst kind of bitterness is when a person is treated badly by one person but then starts to resent all people. This kind of negative over-generalizing is called ‘globalizing’ and you need to be aware that you don’t start to unfairly ‘tar everyone with the same brush'.

And as for thoughts of revenge there is a wonderful old saying: ‘Do unto others what is worthy of you, not what is worthy of them'. This encourages us to treat people in accordance with our own values and character regardless of what they have done.

Imagine when you can think about the events in question and feel calm and even indifferent. What a relief! How much more space you’ll have in your mind and life. When you truly forgive and move on you can put the past behind you and get on with life.