“Forgiveness is not a feeling; it’s a commitment. It is a choice to show mercy, not to hold the offense up against the offender. Forgiveness is an expression of love.” - Gary Chapman

They say that a true indicator of maturity is when you are able to forgive someone for pain they may have caused you at one point of your life. It is not always about forgiving them for their own benefit, but more for your own benefit. It requires taking a step back and looking at the scenario or situations from a different point of view. Sometimes, forgiveness is the only thing left to do before you can finally let go of the pain that someone may have caused you.

We have all encountered a person who has done something that has caused us pain at some point in our lives. It’s easy to feel resentment, anger and to want them to feel a way similar to the pain they caused you to feel. It’s easy to hold a grudge, to be angry, to say and do mean things in return. Those things are all things that emotionally mature people do not do.

Today’s topics that I want to discuss are humility, overcoming resentment and forgiveness. Forgiving others is an important part of letting go of things in order to move forward and grow. It is also important to learn how to forgive yourself. Now, let me preface this by saying that there are people in the world that have wronged others who do not deserve forgiveness. However, you deserve to be set free from the emotional trauma and pain that they may have caused you. That does not mean they deserve forgiveness for their actions, especially if they did something with the selfish intent to harm someone for their own personal gain. To each scenario is its own.

We have all made mistakes. We have all thought selfishly. We have all been in states of mind where our thinking is not clear  and we are not in the right headspace to be making decisions rationally. I will be honest, I’ve been in this place before. I’ve hurt people unintentionally. I do feel bad about the pain I’ve ever caused to someone else and the only thing I hope to see for those people is that they live a happy, fulfilled life without holding onto the pain I’ve ever inflicted onto them.

The first step to forgiveness is to recognize any events in your life that someone else caused you emotional pain or trauma. You cannot forgive someone for something if you don’t understand or can recognize it yourself. For me, something I had been holding onto for a while now had affected me very personally. I think talking about these things can help impact others with developing their understanding in order to cope with their own personal stories.

We all have people we believe we can trust. We find those who we feel very close to and we open up our vulnerability to them in ways we had not done before. For us empaths, we can feel and find those people in particular. Sometimes, we are guided by our hearts and not with logic and we open up too much to those people. I want to say, when I was not in the right headspace. I do feel in a way that I was taken advantage of in the emotional state I was in. However, I do not believe, in my heart, that it was done intentionally. Something I really had to ask myself was this: although I was not in the right headspace, was the person who I felt had taken advantage of my emotional vulnerability or had inflicted emotional pain in the right headspace at the time either?

Forgiveness is a cognitive choice. It is one of the most free-feeling things you can do for not only yourself but for other people as well. I have held onto things with this person for a while now but something that happened recently made me really think about how I could allow these painful memories and resentments to go. The turning point for me was when this person had sent a message asking how I was doing, and I responded to tell him I was doing well. When I had asked how he was doing, he responded to me and said that things were improving for him in his life and that he was doing well. You know, I have to be honest, in my heart and soul, I felt a sense of joy to hear that.

How is it that even I could feel overjoyed to hear that a person, the same person who caused me emotional pain and trauma, was doing well? I can tell you that for a minute, I had to take a look from another point of view. This person has not had an easy route throughout life, and especially in the last couple of years. This time, I had to stop thinking about myself and think of someone else. I asked myself, could this person have not been in his right mind at the time? Was he suffering too? Was this person struggling in silence, afraid to reach out, and did things they did not intentionally think would cause pain or harm? 

I reached out to this person because I wanted to ensure that I told them how I felt. I wanted to make sure that they knew that even though I had been angry, hurt, or even frustrated with their actions, that I was not angry anymore. I think the thing we all do when people hurt us is automatically assume that they are doing it intentionally. What I did instead was reach out to this person, allow them to know they hurt me, but that I truly felt that they did not do it purposefully. I wanted to ensure that they knew that even though they had done things to myself, and others that most would not forgive, that they were not a bad person, but they were in a bad headspace at a bad time.

I know most of us are willing to forgive others, to empathize with others, and to try and see from their point of view. Being an empath can be such a blessing and can also be a curse. While you can understand other people and can have compassion for the simple fact that you cannot understand what someone is going through at the time, you have a hard time forgiving yourself for the things you’ve done when you’ve been struggling. You focus your healing energy on righting your wrongs to others rather than righting your wrongs within yourself. You are willing to give everyone else a chance for redemption but you are unable to give yourself the same. Chances are, you are much harder on yourself and you expect more from yourself than you do other people. You can have compassion for even the worst of people, but you do not have much for yourself.

Forgiving yourself for things you did in the past that might have hurt someone is different than making excuses for your behavior. Forgiving yourself requires three things: 1: You are willing to accept and take accountability for your actions. 2: You condemn the behavior you presented.  3: You are seeking opportunities to grow within yourself. Remember, in order to give to others, you must give to yourself first.

We are all human. At the end of the day, what makes us all the same is that we are all trying to find ways to cope with life, with pain, disappointment, and with the demons that live inside all of us. Sometimes we find constructive ways to cope and there are other times we do not. The only thing we can hope for is that others have humility and can understand that. We have to sometimes take a step back and see the situation from an outside point of view in order to heal. Maybe if we can see things in a different light, we can find a brighter side within the darkness.

Forgiveness for yourself and for others can be the best thing in your life if you allow it to be. Forgive others because you grew from their mistakes, forgive yourself for you became stronger because of your mistakes, and forgive your future self for the mistakes that you will make, for that they will catapult you into self-growth and not hold you in self-pity.

We need to allow time to heal, time to process, and time to grieve. Accept that healing is not an overnight process. Forgiving others and/or forgiving yourself will happen with time. In order to heal, we have to accept the things that others have done to us, change our mindset from ungrateful to thankful for all of the good/bad things that we have done and that have been done to us. Growth does not happen without pain. Pain becomes potential. Exploring your true potential requires patience. Remain patient in discovering new possibilities. Possibilities require perseverance. Allow your perseverance to become your passion. Remember that your passion may not always bring you perfection, but the only perfection you should seek in your life is inner peace. Peace within yourself can change your perception. Use your newfound perception of the ones around you to become your greatest power to change the world.

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a blessed day.