The Unwritten Love Poem: Why True Love is So Hard to Express
How To Forgive Yourself and Others
Pain, resentment, guilt, anger, and fear… all of these feelings bubble up inside of us when we think back on our mistakes or the mistakes of those dear to us. Sometimes the only healthy way to move forward is to look back at our past and inject forgiveness into our lives.
Some say “forgive and forget.” Others say “forgive, but never forget.” No matter which path you choose, the act of forgiving is the first step. Here are three simple ways to bring more forgiveness into your life.
Forgive Yourself
In general, we tend to be harder on ourselves than we are on others. If you’ve made mistakes in the past, it’s time to let your spirit heal by forgiving yourself. We all do things we aren’t proud of. Understand that you were doing the best you could at the time, with the experiences and knowledge you had accessible to you.
Self-forgiveness tips:
- Pick an area of your life you would like to work on. It could be failed relationships, family problems, or business mistakes.
- Make a list of all of the people you might have hurt along the way. This is the toughest part because we tend to bury some of these stressful memories. So be honest with yourself and take your time.
- After you’ve compiled your list, systematically go through each person on the list. Think about the situation, validate the circumstances, and forgive yourself for hurting them. As odd as it may feel, apologize aloud to yourself, “I forgive myself for hurting this person,” and take a deep breath. Once you’ve completed this practice you’ll instantly feel a slight sense of relief.
Remember, the simple act of acknowledging your mistakes is always half the battle.
Ask for Forgiveness
Once you forgive yourself, it’s also important to clear the air with others. A face to face apology is always the most effective approach. Depending on the situation, you might be afraid to ask for forgiveness. But if you don’t ask, you will never feel the relief of being pardoned for your mistakes.
If you absolutely can’t bring yourself to ask for forgiveness in person, I still recommend writing a letter of forgiveness. The reason writing a letter works so well is that the process of writing the letter actually assists you in forgiving yourself by reducing pent-up, internal feelings of guilt. It lets you express your thoughts and process all of the internal drama that has bottled-up in your mind.
Tips for writing your letter of forgiveness:
- Don’t do it out of spite, or because you think it will elevate you to higher moral ground. No good ever arises from deception.
- Realize that a letter can’t undo the damage. A letter of forgiveness might not be enough to change your relationship with the recipient, but it’s a significant step in the right direction.
- Explain your rationale, but don’t make excuses for your behavior. Own up to your actions and take responsibility. Offer to fix the situation, or find a way to make it up to the person.
- Make a sincere wish for the well-being of the person you hurt. After many years of festering emotions, you may have come to hate the act of thinking about this person. Stop being selfish! It’s time to be honest and compassionate.
Hopefully, just writing the letter will allow you to move closer to a positive resolution on all fronts.
Forgive Others
If you’ve been hurt in the past, you don’t need to keep suffering. Whether or not you’ve gotten closure is irrelevant. You have the ultimate power to clear the air by simply forgiving those who have hurt you.
You should make a list of all of the people who have done something that still troubles you to this day. The list might start out small, but as you unwind your memories you are bound to find more people and incidents than you were previously aware of.
Your mind represses these memories in an effort to preserve your conscious sanity. The drawback is that you probably haven’t processed these events properly. So while you aren’t actively thinking about them, they are quietly tugging at your consciousness and robbing you of mental energy.
Tips for forgiving others:
- Close your eyes and picture the person standing in front of you.
- In your mind’s eye, explain to them how you felt then, how you feel now, and what happened during those hurtful times.
- After you’ve stated your views, let them acknowledge your pain. Watch their reactions and wait for a response. There’s a good chance they will understand your point of view.
- Then hug them and tell them that you forgive them. Yes! Really do this with all of your emotional might, it’s a powerful process! Release them from your troubled past and let your thoughts come back to the present.
After completing only a few of these processes, you’ll find yourself breathing deeper and interacting differently with these people. Regardless of whether or not they are still a part of your daily life, you will forever see them in a more positive light… which will ultimately make your future brighter.
Photo by: Kalandrakas
How To Walk On Water
This past Sunday I was relaxing at the water’s edge of a local beach when a young boy ran full speed right by me and into the shallow surf. He continuously hopped up and down as he was running forward, kicking his little legs in the air and across the surface of the water before inevitably falling face-first into the waves. He got back up and repeated this act several times, each time with more determination than the previous attempt. It became obvious that he was trying to run across the surface of the water. I couldn’t help but to laugh. His combined levels of determination and exertion were priceless.
After several attempts, he noticed my laughter and walked over to me. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You remind me of me, and it makes me smile.” I said.
“Do you know how to walk on water?” he asked. “Like a superhero?”
“Well, I think I can help you out.” I said. “Let me give you a few pointers.”
Curious, the boy sat down on the sand next to me. His mother scurried over, worried… but I reassured her that her son wasn’t bothering me. Relieved, perhaps, to have her son sitting safely on the sand instead of flying face-first through the air, she went back to her beach chair 20 feet away and continued a conversation with another lady.
“So, you want to walk on water, eh?” I asked. He nodded his head anxiously.
A Rough Summary of What I Told Him
- Make sure you were born to walk on water. – You must follow your heart, and be who you were born to be. Some of us were born to be musicians… to communicate intricate thoughts and rousing feelings with the strings of a guitar. Some of us were born to be poets… to touch people’s hearts with exquisite prose. Some of us were born to be entrepreneurs… to create growth and opportunity where others saw rubbish. And still, some of us were born to walk on water… to invent the capability of doing so. If you’re going to walk on water, you better feel it in every fiber of your being. You better be born to do it!
- Decide that nothing can stop you. – Being born to walk on water isn’t enough by itself. We must each decide to accept our calling. Unfortunately, most of us make excuses instead. “But I might drown trying,” we say. Or, “But I have a family to think about first.” Walking on water, or doing anything that hasn’t been done before, requires absolute, unconditional dedication. The only person who can control your level of dedication is you. If you’re serious about walking on water, you must decide that nothing… not gravity, not a group of naysayers, NOTHING… can stop you!
- Work on it for real. – While many of us decide at some point during the course of our lives that we want to answer our calling… to accomplish our own version of walking on water, only an astute few of us actually work on it. By “working on it”, I mean truly devoting oneself to the end result. The rest of us never act on our decision. Or, at best, we pretend to act on it by putting forth an uninspired, half-ass effort. But to truly walk on water, you’ll have to study physics, rheology, hydrophobic substances, etc… and then you’ll have to define and redefine next-generation theories and complex hypotheses, which must be tested relentlessly. When the tests fail, you must be ready to edit your theories and test them again. This kind of work, the real kind, is precisely what enables us to make the impossible possible.
- Let the whole world know what you’re up to. – When you’re trying to walk on water, or do anything that nobody else has done before, life can get lonely pretty quickly. To keep your motivation thriving, it’s important to let others know that you’re attempting to defeat the formerly impossible. Don’t be shy! Let the whole world know that you’re trying to walk on water. No doubt, it’ll place a bit of extra pressure on your back, and you’ll almost certainly hear some laughter in the crowd. But this kind of pressure fuels motivation, which is exactly what you’ll need to accomplish such a colossal undertaking. And when you finally do succeed, the last bit of laughter heard will be your own.
- Value the people who value your ambitions. – When most people hear about your “mission impossible” aspirations, their natural reaction may be to roll their eyes, call you crazy, and tell you to quit being foolish. But fortunately, the world is also inhabited by pioneers and believers who see the value in your dreams. These people understand that achieving the formerly impossible is one of the greatest gifts human beings possess. They’ll likely give you tips, bits of assistance, and the extra push you need to succeed. These are extraordinary people, and you’ll want to surround yourself with them, because they will ultimately assist you over the hurdles and across the surface of the water. Think of them as an influential, personal support team. Without them, walking on water will be a far more difficult feat, if not completely impossible.
- Ignore the negative naysayers. – No matter how much progress you make, there will always be the people who insist that walking on water is impossible, simply because it hasn’t been done before. Or they may incessantly suggest that the idea as a whole is utterly ridiculous because nobody really cares about walking on water anyways. When you come across these people, don’t try to reason with them. Instead, forget that they exist. They will only waste your time and energy.
- Prepare yourself for the pain. – Even though you’re no longer mindlessly running face-first into the oncoming ocean surf, but instead forming complex theories based on the studies of rheology and fluid viscosity, it doesn’t mean you won’t experience your fair share of pain. You’re in the business of walking on water, of doing something that has never been done before. You’ll likely get a waterlogged, lungful of water on a regular basis. But the pain will seem like a small price to pay when you become the first person to jog across the rapids of the Mississippi.
- Enjoy the pain of your greatest challenge. – Superheroes aren’t real. In real life nobody has ever walked on water. But lots of people have achieved formerly impossible feats, and continue to enjoy the possibilities of new challenges. These people will all tell you there’s nothing more gratifying than the thrill of your greatest challenge. The inherent pains along the way are simply mile markers on your trip to the finish line. When you finally do finish, you may actually find yourself missing the daily grind. Ultimately, you’ll realize that pleasure and pain can be one and the same.
- Never give up! Never quit! – The reason nobody has walked on water isn’t because people haven’t tried. Remember, you just tried several times in a row, and I’m sure many others have too. The reason nobody has succeeded is, simply, that within the scope of modern science and physics, it’s currently impossible. But this doesn’t mean that with your help it won’t become possible in the future. If you were born to do it and truly dedicate yourself to the end result, anything, including walking on water, is entirely possible!
Just a Chance
When we were done talking, the young boy got up and ran back over to his mother. He pointed over to me and I smiled and waved back. Then he said to her, “Mommy, mommy! That guy just taught me how to walk on water!”
A few moments later she walked over to scold me for supposedly giving out reckless advice. She told me I was giving her son a false sense of hope. I told her all I was giving him was a chance.
Photo by: Murilo
Why Everyone Likely Agrees on the Meaning of Life
Katie, a close friend of the family, is just 21 and already publicly out of the closet. “I am deeply attracted to women. I’m a lesbian,” she admits openly. She has been involved in two long-term, intimate relationships in the last three years. Both relationships were with women her age. When I asked her why she lives this lifestyle, she said, “Because I feel like myself, completely alive, when I’m with another woman. I can’t feel this way when I’m with a man.”
Ryan, one of my grade school buddies, is now a Roman Catholic priest. He has chosen to follow a life of abstinence, instead devoting himself wholeheartedly to God and the principles of his faith. When I asked him why he chose to follow this path, he said, “Because I find peace and abundance through my faith. It keeps me connected and allows me to make a difference.”
Another friend, Courtney, an amateur bodybuilding competitor, is addicted to working out. “I can’t go a day without it,” she says. So she enters to the gym every morning at 5AM, performs a solid hour of weight training, and follows it up with another hour of cardio before heading off to work. When I asked her why she partakes in such a rigorous workout routine, she said, “Working out makes me feel alive, energized and at peace. It’s a way of life.”
A fourth friend, Antony, is a remarkable chef. He currently works at a fine Italian restaurant, but plans to open his own café in the near future. Antony struggles with an obvious vice; he enjoys eating as much as he enjoys cooking. His doctor recently told him he is nearly 60 pounds overweight. When I asked him why he isn’t more concerned with his weight as it relates to his health, he said, “When I cook, I feel free… free to be human, free to be creative, free to be me. When I eat what I cook, I experience the fruits of my labor. There’s nothing more satisfying than that.”
How fascinating. Human beings draw on sexuality, faith, exercise, and cooking to achieve the same thing, a feeling of being alive, free, connected, self-fulfilled and at peace.
The Meaning of Life
Personal development gurus, psychologists, politicians, philosophers, bloggers and various members of my social circle have frequently concluded that the future of humankind as a whole is in jeopardy because we all pursue life’s meaning in fundamentally incompatible ways. I firmly oppose this conclusion.
Life’s meaning, in my experience, is about the feeling of being alive, free, connected, self-fulfilled and at peace. Whether we use sexuality, faith, exercise, or cooking as the means to attain this experience, we’re all in pursuit of the same thing.
Human Beings Overshadow Their Labels
When I asked my lesbian friend if she could relate to a Catholic priest, she said no. And when I asked my exercise-obsessed, athletic friend if she could relate to a chubby, Italian chef with no desire to maintain a healthy bodyweight, she said no. In both cases, I wasn’t surprised with their answers.
I then conducted a little social experiment: I invited all four friends over for drinks at my condo this past Friday evening without informing them that the others were coming. The outcome was rather insightful.
When they transcended their informal labels (e.g. lesbian, priest, athlete, and chubby chef), and instead became real, live human beings occupying the same room together (e.g. Katie, Ryan, Courtney, and Antony), they all discovered powerful similarities among themselves as human beings that vastly overshadowed the vague differences they experienced as informal labels.
A Universal Struggle
I believe the worst thing we can do as human beings is to interpret our own pursuit of life’s meaning as fundamentally incompatible and dissimilar from the pursuits of others. Our basic pursuits in life aren’t that different. Thus, labeling them as different only isolates us from each other, which ultimately stifles the progress we can achieve together as a whole.
The best thing we can do is to accept the fact that labels mean nothing, and realize that the seemingly nonsensical choices of others actually do make a lot of sense if we have the patience and fortitude to uncover the reasons behind these choices. In doing so, we will likely expose the same universal struggle that drives our own pursuit: To feel alive, free, connected, self-fulfilled and at peace.
Photo by: J. Philipson
The Tools of The Mighty
We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.
– Marshall McLuhan
This post has moved to HERE:
The Mighty Art of Being More Resourceful
Photo by: Shoothead
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