When someone has hurt you, offended you, or disappointed you – whether intentionally or accidentally – the pain may last long after the incident. Often the pain turns into resentment, that acidic indignation that slowly eats away at relationships. Or sometimes the resentment bubbles over into full-fledged revenge, compelling you to “get even”, seek retribution, or inflict harm on your transgressors.
Throughout the journey of life, upsets are likely going to happen along the way. So, how can you accept them without letting resistance, resentment, and revenge taking over your life?
By practicing forgiveness.
It’s easy to resent someone and hold a grudge. Forgiveness, however, may take effort. The more you practice it, the easier it becomes to develop an attitude of forgiveness, and move through the process of forgiving those who have hurt you.
Here are 3 keys to guide you in forgiving:
1. Understand that forgiveness does not excuse or condone your transgressor’s behavior. Many people don’t want to forgive because they feel as though it validates the words or actions of those who have hurt them. On the contrary, forgiveness frees you from the negative feelings associated with those words or actions. Forgiveness does not make the other person right; it simply release’s that person’s hold over you.
2. Consider the prices you’ve paid by not forgiving. What has it cost your relationships? Your health? Your finances? your time? When you look at the price you pay for holding onto resentment, you realize that resentment isn’t poisoning your transgressors, it’s poisoning you. This can make it easier to release the power those who have hurt you have on your life.
3. Forgiveness is for you. Different people have different ways of forgiving. Some people want to express it to those they are forgiving, either by writing it or speaking it. Some people do not wish to verbalize it in any way. They may choose to consciously, actively forgive, yet not express it. Some find solace in writing it in a diary, singing it in a song, or by any other means of artistic expression. The point is that you get to decide what it looks like based on what feels right for you.
Forgiveness is not always easy. The benefits of forgiveness, greater peace of mind, improved health, and happier relationships, however, do make it worth the effort.