The Wellness Edition No.46 // Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a topic many people struggle with, me included. To the more people I speak, the more I realise that forgiving places a big burden on the majority of people. Forgiving yourself seems even harder than forgiving others for having treated you bad or doing you wrong. Forgiveness is a major step to happiness and to create balance - even though it is probably one of the hardest steps on your journey to happiness. I never really thought about forgiveness for the majority of my life. I did not want to think about it. But that is the wrong approach, if you want to feel free and become happy, you have to be able to forgive - yourself and others.

When you forgive somebody else you don’t do it for that person, no - you do it for yourself, so you can find peace. This is something that took me a very long time to actually understand - in the past I always thought forgiving someone is for that person and not for me and I think that is where most people get stuck. Of course you can forgive someone for his or her sake but in the end most people don’t even care about that but when you forgive and take it as an action you do for yourself, then you can finally move forward and leave lots of pain and struggles from the past behind. And that is a crucial step to gain freedom and to become happier than before.

Forgiving yourself is probably the hardest part but also the one that is most liberating. Sometimes I still struggle with lots of self-blame but overall I really improved here a lot simply through learning to forgive myself. Now every time when I catch myself playing the self-blame game, I tell my mind to stop, to take a step back and to forgive myself for whatever went wrong or for situations where I certainly did not treat myself with self-love and self-respect. At that time I just did not know any better because I was not aware of the patterns I subconsciously followed. So I call that back into my consciousness now, then I stop the blame, forgive myself and just promise myself just to do better from now on. And that works quite well.

So, if you realise that forgiving is something you struggle with, I’d suggest you investigate this issue a little further and start forgiving yourself and others and believe me it will take a big weight from your shoulders.