Forgiveness isn’t easy, it can even feel downright impossible. What you may not know is that forgiving someone that has hurt you deeply is the best way to heal a broken heart. It’s also essential for your health. I know it seems counter intuitive, but it’s true. Here are 20 reasons to forgive someone that has hurt you.
20 Reasons To Forgive
1. Forgiveness is enlightened self-interest: Forgiveness frees up physical, mental, and emotional energy that can be put to better use elsewhere.
2. To continually hold onto hurts, grudges, and offenses, robs you of the best possible version of yourself: Unforgiveness is an unflattering way to live, diminishing your potential and ability to truly shine.
3. Forgiveness frees your heart from negative emotions: Who wants a heart filled with negativity? I’m confident none of us would willingly choose this. Open your heart to new ventures and horizons, releasing the past and embracing the future.
4. Forgiveness is not an emotion, but rather a decision: This is good news because we don’t have to feel forgiveness in our hearts in order to forgive. Decide to forgive and then do it. It’s a function of the will, not of the emotions.
5. The act of forgiveness leads to self-healing, self-liberation, and the empowerment that follows: Anger, pity, disgust, and contempt deprive you of the emotional, mental, and physical resources you so desperately need for healing and liberation.
6. Forgiveness is the martial arts of consciousness: It’s virtually impossible to raise your consciousness if your mind and heart are resonating with unforgiveness.
7. Forgiveness informs the way you view the world: Do you want your perspective clouded from bitterness or a heart radiating with the joy forgiveness brings?
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8. As Ghandi said: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong:” A strong character is infused with humility, and the willingness to forgive.
9. Forgiveness has a curative power greater than any medicine: With forgiveness, the ache of remorse is eased, and the wounds of bitterness soothed. The words “I forgive you” are able to heal and set free.
10. Unforgiveness warps your thinking and inhibits your mental stamina: It’s tortuous to be ridden with hateful and unkind thoughts towards another human being. It zaps your precious mental reserves that could be put to much better use.
11. Forgiveness drives away fear: A mind riddled with anger and stubbornness is not a mind at peace.
12. Forgiveness eases the pain of being unloved: because it expands not only the capacity to love, but also to receive love.
13. Forgiving another person doesn’t make them right, but it frees you: Forgiveness is the road to freedom. Lovingly releasing the past with all its wounding, enables a future filled with hope, healing, and understanding.
14. Forgiveness fosters gratitude and mindfulness: It’s hard to feel truly grateful when your mind is preoccupied with feelings of hate or even revenge.
15. Forgiveness lead to humility and teachability: Unforgiveness stems from a prideful and willful heart. Surrender leads to humility, and a willingness to learn. The undercurrents of unforgiveness are cynicism and suspicion. Forgiveness breaks the bonds of these negative thinking patterns.
16. Forgiveness acknowledges vulnerability: We forgive because we want to be forgiven, not only from past mistakes, but from future ones as well. We’re all human. We make intentional and unintentional mistakes throughout our lifetimes. What a shame to be held hostage forever for our misdeeds. Extend and receive grace.
17. Conflict is a prison that becomes more dangerous the longer you’re in it: Unforgiveness keeps you entangled in past conflicts. It’s confining and limiting, holding you back from a life more in tune with your authentic nature.
18. Forgiveness infuses the future with hope: Unforgiveness holds it captive by unrelenting feelings of malice and mistrust. Release the past so the future can live.
19. Forgiveness reframes past events: Could the realization that what you remember happening may have a different meaning that better reflects reality?
This gets into the issue of intent. Many past hurts you endured may not have been intentional, but more a function of your own emotional state or immaturity at the time. Forgiveness corrects long-held distorted perceptions.
20. Forgiveness releases you from making every petty situation a matter of life and death: Make an overarching decision that you won’t make everything a federal case, replacing resentment and arrogance, with patience, and empathy. Extend the understanding to others that you’d like to receive.
I highly recommend these two books on forgiveness:
Forgiveness: How To Make Peace With Your Past And Get On With Your Life
Key Points
If you’re harboring unforgiveness in your heart, please make the choice to forgive. Your health and happiness depends on it. Forgiveness is not an emotion, but rather a decision. Make that decision today…
In your opinion, why is it so hard to forgive? Let me know in the comments:)