Here's an Easy Method to Help You Achieve Calm Mid-Crisis - Part 2 - Forgiveness

Yesterday, I shared an easy practice you can use to help you achieve some relief from the turmoil around you.  A calm mind can help you show up more productively at work. And also simply help you feel better as you weather the crisis.

Today, I’d suggest that the word you focus on during your morning walk be FORGIVENESS. 

Maybe a colleague out-manoevered you last week and won a project you expected to win. Maybe you relied on your ex-wife and she let you down.

You have a lot of negative judgments about that person. You feel totally justified. And perhaps you are.

But notice also how terrible if feels to experience resentment and judgment. Notice how much time you're spending ruminating about it. How often thoughts about your experience are distracting you from the task at hand, what you want to create in your life.

I used to think forgiveness was something I needed to do for someone else. To help the person I believed had wronged me. I thought I needed to be forgiving to be a good person. So I’d try to repress my negative feelings about something that someone had done that I’d felt was not right.

That never worked. It would only layer on the bad feelings.  I’d feel terrible about not being able to forgive them.

It didn't work because my assumptions were wrong. I was making an effort to forgive for all the wrong reasons.

In fact, not forgiving someone else doesn’t hurt them at all. We’re the ones who get to feel the burning pit in our stomachs, the resentment, the sadness, the stress caused in our bodies by refusing to let go.

As Nelson Mandela once said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemies.”

Here’s what I’d suggest. As you walk, first allow the actions of the other person to be what they were. Acknowledge that, no matter how much you don’t want them to have happened, holding onto your resentment now won’t change anything. You can’t make what was done go away.

Allow yourself to feel the hurt. Allow yourself to feel the distress in your body.

When you’ve allowed the feelings for a bit, you might find that they ease a little bit. That’s when you can start breathing in the word forgiveness. 

Tell yourself that you’re willing to feel good again. You’re willing to allow yourself to feel at peace with what happened. You’re willing to not give your power away to this other person by holding onto the past. 

Allow yourself to contemplate the humanness of the other person. Even if what she did was terrible. Acknowledge that she’s just another person who sometimes loves and sometimes hates, sometimes feels good and sometimes bad, sometimes does her best and sometimes her worst. 

Notice that, in these ways, she is like you.

Allow yourself to notice that the past doesn’t exist anymore. It exists only in your imagination. Is this something you want to keep reliving?  You can step into your power and decide to release the past.  

Today, allow yourself to forgive. DO THIS FOR YOU.  And see how much calmer you feel, how much focussed your mind, how much better is your general state of well-being.