Welcome to Week 3 of our series on The Power of Forgiveness! You may have heard the saying, “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die” — which is exactly why this week we’re diving into how to forgive someone who has hurt you.
In Week 1, we shared a powerful guided visualization, The Power of Forgiveness — get it now if you haven’t already, and this week we encourage you to use it to zero in on forgiving someone who has hurt you in the past. (You can also catch up on Week 2 — Self-forgiveness if you happened to miss out.)
But enough recapping. Let’s start with what forgiveness is not:
Forgiveness is not condoning bad behavior. Forgiveness is not becoming best friends with the person who wronged you. Forgiveness is not even (necessarily) telling the person that you forgive them. Rather, forgiveness can mean accepting what has happened and letting go of the negative feelings attached to a person or event. Forgiveness can allow you to step into your present rather than being anchored to the past.
Here’s one thing that forgiveness is. Forgiveness is something you do for you.
Dive into the video below and hear Emily talk through why holding on to hate or anger is only hurting you. Forgiving is all about taking our energy back from a person or event — there are a million better ways you could be spending your unique and valuable energy. Check it out:
So, if you haven’t already downloaded The Power of Forgiveness, you can get it here. And even if you have already listened to it, I encourage you to use it again this week to work on forgiveness for someone who has hurt you. It can be for something big or small, something recent or far away. It’s never to late to forgive and take your power and energy back.
To dive even deeper, Emily hosted a Facebook Live in our Ziva Community group Thursday, December 14th. She shares a personal story of forgiveness, and offers help on how to move through this challenging exercise.
And remember, we practice forgiveness for ourselves, not for the person we are forgiving. You deserve this.