At Choice Network one of our goals this year is to have a holistic approach to training and supporting families. I cannot tell you how many times I left a family’s home after a training or an audit, thinking that the family I had just met with had inadvertently given me a bit of wisdom that I could pass on in my own home. A small bit of peace. A tiny piece of introspection.
From our holistic approach, we decided to create a series of blog posts on self improvement. For the first of the series, we will discuss living life peacefully and meaningfully through forgiveness. Although peace can be defined in a variety of ways, for our purposes we will define peace as living happily, in harmony and in a positive manner.
A social worker I used to work with often said; “happiness is not dependent on whether the sun is shining or it is raining outside, happiness is something you create from within.” Similarly Constellation Therapy would say peace is a feeling you build- like a house. Peace, Gestalt therapists would further say, comes from unconditional acceptance and forgiveness. From these principles we broke down a few tips for achieving this:
Peace through Forgiveness- Although this can often be the hardest thing to do, forgiving someone who wronged you, a negative life circumstance or an unfortunate experience is a great way to achieve peace. Forgiving yourself and others is ultimately a freeing act for the forgiver. When you forgive, you automatically give yourself the power to accept a situation and move forward with new wisdom.
Forgiving yourself- forgiving yourself means that you accept that you made the best decision you could with the limited resources you had at the time. It is so easy to analyze situations and recreate scenarios where an outcome could have been different but the truth is time can only move forward. Forgiving yourself and embracing your life experience means that you will not use the experience as a crutch for why you cannot live your best life and instead will use it as a beneficial experience.
Forgiving others- have you ever heard the saying “resentment is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die?” This sentiment is true also for forgiveness. Forgiving others means that you accept that sometimes people do not have the skills, sense, or thoughtfulness to avoid hurting others. There are times in life when you will come across people who cannot or will not apologize for their negative actions. What’s worse is these people can often be defensive or seemingly unfazed by the negativity their actions cause.
I was counseling a husband and wife once on a negative family member who continuously became involved in their lives. Although the family had set appropriate boundaries and limited negative interactions, their frustration peaked when the family member sued them in court for time with their children. The family members were sick with anger and frustration at having to lose work time, provide child care for their children to go to court and rearrange their lives to deal with this family member, who clearly could not respect boundaries. The anger was eating them alive.
Instead of forgiving the family member for their misguided attempt to be wanted, they turned inwardly. They blamed each other for the misfortune and their lives began to revolve around the rogue family member’s actions. Hatred became a cancer that ate and decayed their marriage. When they were able to forgive and accept was when they were able to sleep at night
You will not often receive a bouquet of flowers or tears of apology from someone who has wronged you. The good news is, you do not need that to forgive them. Forgiveness, fortunately, comes from inside. What the above family did was set a date on their calendars. After a specific date they were done speaking in anger about this particular family member. Instead of anger, they felt compassion and empathy. It was a simple moment of clarity to learn that this person was flawed in their own way but the former methods of banishing and ignoring were not effective and in fact were destructive.
Acceptance- In constellation therapy we ask ourselves- who is the person acting out the most? Go to that person and include them, if not physically, then spiritually. To accept and forgive is to spiritually tell yourself that you will take anything good that person gave you physically, emotionally or spiritually and leave all the bad. In this case the family member gave the family a recipe they loved. Every time they made the recipe they reflected on positive times. Any time the family member did something negative they brought themselves back to the mantra that they are only accepting the good and not taking on the burden of the bad- they could leave that burden with the wayward family member.
Without the ability to forgive another person, we are silently injuring ourselves. Anger seeps into every part of our lives. Studies have even been done to show when we are angry subtle physical changes occur such as raised blood pressure levels, and stomach issues- our bodies physiologically remain in fight or flight mode all day and night.
Another down side is, when we are labeling ourselves as a victim we silently give ourselves permission to live below our own expectations. We allow ourselves to eat poorly because we are stressed, fight with our spouse because we are anxious and raise our voices to our children because we are consumed with angry feelings.
Having the ability and power to forgive is a foundation for living a beautiful, fulfilled life. As Gandhi once said:
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong." Gandhi
Look out for Post 2 of our 10 post series on Living a More Meaningful Life
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