Forgiveness – A Key to Prosperingtimes

Beginning with the Best Intentions

A significant part of my philosophy of life is that Love is an essential energy for the sustaining enjoyment of living. Without Love, life loses its savor and vibrancy. Let’s consider this in the context of interpersonal relationships. So much of our enjoyment of life is contingent on our ability to connect and interact with others.

When I meet someone new, my intention is to automatically think the best of the person. It does not matter what a person wears or looks like; they are beautiful in my eyes. My friends feel safe to be themselves around me because they know I think they are wonderful, just as they are. Of course this is the ideal and I am not always successful in living up to my ideals and I dare say that you will not always succeed in expressing your ideals either. When this happens we are blessed with the gift of Forgiveness, the forgiveness that is based on the energy of unconditional love.

Applying the Golden Rule of Forgiveness

Unconditional love is the Love that God is. God is Love according to scripture. Is it reasonable to believe that Love is God in action? Can you imagine the highest and purest form or expression of love, which is conveyed in the word agape, the Love of God? It is this Grace of God that we emulate when we practice the golden rule, to do to others as we would have them do to us.

I am gracious toward people because I am real enough to admit that I sometimes make mistakes. Good people make mistakes. I show grace to others the same way I would want them to show grace to me.

Sustaining Relationships

My intentions to forgive are a natural out growth of my love for people. All of us want to love and to be loved. That is why we humans tend to come together in community. It often feels as though our need for connection is “hard wired” into our electrochemical circuitry. By intending to see the best in people, I am attracted to others and they are attracted to me. When problems arise, as they do in virtually all relationships, through forgiveness, they become opportunities for us to expand our capacities to love, grow spiritually and to enrich our interactions.  Our positive attitude draws friends, customers, co-workers and even family closer to us. Eventually we will find ourselves surrounded by smiling, happy and helpful people because those around us are attracted by our positive high regard for them. The better we think of people, the more positive our interactions become.

In conclusion, join with me today and affirm, “I choose to perceive everyone as the person I want them to be: loving, caring, and trustworthy. The way I feel about my friends and family empowers them to become better people”.

Deep down you know that there is simply nothing you can do to change the past. No matter how many times you wish you’d done something differently, what happened in the past will always remain in the past.

Most of us want to find a way to, once and for all, be done with our regretful feelings. When we continue to fret over the past, we allow negative feelings to consume more and more of our life. Once we’ve put a stop to it, we can think positively again and our future will be brighter. What we need to do is to change our reaction to the events of past.

Getting Caught Up In The Past

It’s easy to get caught up in the past. Nobody’s perfect and, no matter how hard you try, you’ll still continue to make mistakes. It’s how you handle the mistakes, yours and another’s, that will make the true difference in your life.

If you’ve made a mistake or suffered a tragedy in the recent past, don’t allow the tragedy to replay in your head over and over. You’ll continue to relive the negative feelings as if you were continually going through the tragedy. No one deserves this! Instead, you can do one or two things, preferably both; you can actively work on correcting your mistake, or you can change the decisions you made about what happened. What happened can not be changed but how you feel about what happened can be changed. You can control your feelings.

Learn From Your Mistakes

There are lessons to be learned in every mistake you make no matter how minor it might be. The goal is to work on discovering what these lessons are.

When negative feelings surround you regarding your past, focus on the lesson learned. Maybe you would have never learned that lesson without the mistake. And now that you’ve gained this wisdom you can avoid making that mistake again in the future.

You can take everything one step further and do more with the lessons you’ve learned. Perhaps you can raise awareness by telling others about your experience. If you can help others avoid the same mistakes, you’ll be doing something great for the world. It’ll also help you feel better about the situation.

Avoid Resentment

What if you did not make a mistake? Since you can not change the facts of what happened, what can you change your thinking that will help you to feel better now? You need to do your best to avoid resentment and all negative emotions. Resentment is a poisonous emotion that can go out of control if you don’t deal with it. You’ve probably heard of people who have had a falling out with a family member and resentment keeps them apart for the better part of their lives. Think about all the good times they’ve missed because of this bitterness!

Let It Go

Depending on what you’ve gone through, there may be a mourning period associated with your situation, but you’ll eventually need to let it go.

Since you know that nothing can change the past, letting go can prove to be very liberating.

When you let it all go, you learn to forgive yourself and forgive others. Forgiveness is such an important thing to promote in your life. It allows you to grow as a person and move forward to enjoy all that life has to offer. You weren’t meant to sit around stuck in the past no matter how tragic it’s been for you.

How Negative Thinking Hurts You

When it comes down to it, sometimes you keep telling yourself you’re over it but the negative thinking keeps creeping back into your life. You need to fully realize that the only person you’re hurting is yourself.Let’s say you’ve hurt someone’s feelings. You may think about this day and night until you can’t take it anymore, and you have to seek this person out to apologize. The person might not even remember what happened, or they may just accept your apology. The point is you suffered with negative thoughts until you sought forgiveness.

There’s no need to cause yourself severe suffering because you or someone else made a mistake, instead seek peace and resolution, then move forward with your head held high!

Resentment and Other Unforgiving Attitudes Block Energy
It seems obvious that chronic, negative emotions will tend to produce negative experiences and conditions. However, we often don’t recognize the toxicity of our negative attitudes because they feel normal. This may certainly be true regarding the economy, especially if we are facing financial challenges or we are fearful about our financial future. All of us are affected by the economy but not everyone has responded to it the same way.

Steven Covey’s 1st Habit of Highly Effective People is to Be Proactive.
This habit is founded on the principle that we have the power to choose our responses to outer stimuli. It appears that we don’t have a choice when we are being driven by conditioned responses. However once we choose to forgive, we begin the elimination of our conditioned responses.

The Free Flow of Energy Shows Up as Prosperity in Many Forms
Exercising choice empowers our ability to forgive and allows us to consciously direct our creative energy. When we don’t forgive, most of our vital energy is used in holding on to resentments, animosity and other emotions associated with unforgiving attitudes. Think of trying to keep a large beach ball underwater indefinitely. You would always be resisting the beach ball’s natural tendency to rise to the surface. It is just as tiring to suppress the guilt, shame, animosity, resentment and alienation of un-forgiveness. Our goal is to release this energy through forgiveness and use it to create the experiences we want.

“When you can forgive both another and yourself… you move from the law of karma (action and reaction) in to the law of grace (resolution) – that effulgent state that transmutes and heals.” – Brugh Joy

Let Go, Forgive and Move On
By Darren L Johnson

Have you ever lain awake at two o’clock in the morning, feeling guilty, stressed, and overwhelmed because of a loss you have experienced? Do you have trouble letting go of past mistakes? We have all experienced being stuck in a rut, even when we are doing all the right activities to let go and move ahead? What is the “stuff” that keeps us stuck in a rut? Where do we begin letting go?

Jim Rohn said, “You don’t get in life what you want, you get in life what you are.” We are the sum of our thoughts. When we don’t focus our thoughts effectively, they can become scattered and fixated on “stuff” that can lead to negative notions, toxic relationships, and fear of taking risks. How can one begin to learn to let go?

One of seven steps in developing the art of letting go of stuff is to acknowledge that you have “stuff.” Acknowledgment leads to acceptance and acceptance can lead to self-forgiveness, and eventually to a conscious change. In 1992, after the death of my Mom, I was distraught, angry, and frustrated over why she died at such a young age. For a long while this “stuff” interfered with my ability to be effective on the job, in my relationships, and in better understanding who I was as a person. Once I took inventory of my internal dialog and acknowledged my feelings, I was able to begin letting go of the notion that she was “gone too soon.”

Taking inventory of and acknowledging what you want to let go will help you to bring about acceptance of the “stuff” in your life. One can’t let go until one has accepted, or realized there is a need to let go.

To accept our “stuff” we must be willing to do something else that is critical. We must forgive. In the space between acknowledgment and acceptance is the opportunity to forgive. By forgiving one’s self, and then others, that space between acknowledging and accepting becomes smaller and smaller until they eventually become aligned. Once there is alignment, it becomes easier to continue the process of letting go and getting unstuck.

Forgiveness allows you to begin moving from a place of pain and suffering to one of peace and harmony. Though much more may be involved, below are three steps to get you started on forgiving yourself.

1. Make a list of those you need and would like to forgive (include yourself)
2. Give yourself permission to forgive those listed
3. Ask them to forgive you; and accept their responses even if you disagree

Congratulations for being willing to let go, forgive, and move on – and for beginning today.

Darren L Johnson is the Nation’s leading expert on Letting Go of Stuff. He is author of the book Letting Go of Stuff: Powerful Secrets To Simplify Your Life. Learn more at about letting go at http://www.LettingGoOfStuff.info.

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