Forgive Someone - The Global Forgiveness Initiative

Forgiveness sets you free. Download Free Forgiveness Ebook

You benefit immensely when you choose to forgive and so does everyone around you. Whether you need to forgive others, or need to forgive yourself, doing so sets you free from the past and enables you to fulfil your true potential. Forgiveness allows you to break free from limiting beliefs and attitudes. It frees up your mental and emotional energies so that you can apply them to creating a better life.

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When you forgive someone who has hurt you, you enable yourself to let go of a lot of the pain that you feel they caused you. Imagine that every time you think of someone (say, “John” or “Jane”) you hit yourself with a stick. This would seem aburd to you. Yet, it similar to what we do when we don’t forgive someone. However, forgiving them does not necessarily mean that you will stay in a relationship with them (see Tough Forgiveness).

It can be a very big challenge to forgive someone who cheated on you. Thought it is more accurate to say that it is a very big challenge to reconcile with them; as forgiving them is not difficult when you use The Four Steps to Forgiveness. You might need to see some honest remorse, or an attempt to make amends, before you are willing to reconcile with them. You might even want to put conditions on a reconciliation, such as seeing a therapist or couselor together. However, first go through a process of forgiving them, via The Four Steps To Forgiveness, then you can more clearly decide what to do about the relationship.

If you want to let go of him or her and truly move on with your life, then it is good to forgive them. Forgiveness helps you let go of negative attachments likes bitterness and resentment. It also helps make sure that you are not carrying a lot of emotional baggage into your next relationship. Otherwise, you might find yourself having fights with your new partner that are really about a previous partner.

If you have not forgiven then a part of your inner life energy is trapped in resentment, anger, pain, or suffering of various kinds. Having trapped life energy will limit you, as it is like trying to ride a bicycle with the brakes partly on all the time. It slows you down, frustrates you and makes it difficult to move forward.

The choices you make and the things that you believe are possible will all be influenced by the ways you have not forgiven. As you learn to forgive the energy which was going into unhappy thoughts and feelings gets liberated and can flow into creating the life you want rather than limiting you, or creating more suffering.

When forgiving others often we have to forgive ourselves as we may be partly blaming ourselves for what happened, “How could I have been so stupid!”, “I should have known that they would do that!”, and so on. Learning to forgive yourself is one of the most generous and unselfish things you can do. As you learn to forgive yourself you benefit everyone you are in contact with. Your thinking will be clearer and more positive than before. You will have a lot more to give and you will more readily enjoy sharing what you have. You will naturally and easily become kinder, more generous and more caring of others – without having to struggle to achieve this. You will have a happier and more positive attitude to the people in your life and they will respond more positively to you in return.

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Is a forgiving person easier to be around than an unforgiving one? Yes, of course they are. A forgiving person is always much easier to be around than an unforgiving one. The quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships. All your relationships can change for the better, as you learn to forgive; whether in your family, your work life or your social life. Learning to forgive will improve all your relationships, because your attitude will improve. As your relationships improve, then all aspects of your life will also improve.

Hurting yourself, by refusing to forgive yourself, hurts others also. If you do not forgive yourself then you will punish yourself by denying yourself the good things in life. The more you deny yourself the less you have to give. The less you have to give the less you can benefit those around you. When you stop limiting what you receive then you stop limiting what you can give. Everyone benefits when you forgive yourself as you then allow more good into your life, and have a lot more to share.

When you forgive; you become a better husband or wife, you become a better student or teacher, you become a better employer or employee and you become a better parent or child. When you forgive you are more open to success in whatever ways are meaningful to you. As you learn to forgive, what seemed impossible not only becomes possible, but can even become easily achievable.

If you are a religious, or spiritually minded, person then learning practical ways to forgive will enhance and deepen your experience of your religion or spiritual practice. It will help free you from guilt about not being as “good” as you feel you should be, because it will help you become the type of person you would like to be. Practising forgiveness strengthens the goodness within you so that it becomes more active in your life. You will naturally feel less inclined to do the things you know you should not do, but have not been able to stop yourself doing. You will start to do more of the things you know you ought to do, but have not been able to get yourself to do. Download Free Forgiveness Ebook

Learning to forgive can only help you; it cannot hurt you.

Forgiveness is immensely practical and helpful. There is nothing vague, or impractical about it. Forgiveness sets you free. As you learn to forgive many problems (possibly even health problems) will gradually disappear. It will be as if you can view your life from above and can see the easiest way get to where you want to be. Life will open up in front of you. New opportunities will emerge as if from nowhere. Happy coincides will occur where you meet just the right person at just the right time. Ideas or answers will come to you just as you need them. A friend may make a comment, or you flip open a book or a magazine, or you may overhear a conversation which gives you just what you were looking for. Why is this so? It is because by practising forgiveness you become more open to the goodness of life, so that goodness is more able to find its way to you.

As you learn to forgive, abilities which have been dormant within you will emerge, and you will discover yourself to be a much stronger and more capable person than you previously imagined. Parts of yourself which could not thrive in the frigid soil of unforgiveness will start to grow. You will begin to let go of struggling and striving. You will find more of an easy flow and life will be a lot more pleasant and a lot more enjoyable. If this all sounds like exaggeration, then let that be for now. Simply practice the Four Steps to Forgiveness that you will find within these pages and you will be very glad that you did.

Written by: William Fergus Martin