Self Care Sunday: Learn to Forgive Others

Forgive people. Even if they do not deserve your forgiveness, you deserve to be free of resentment, sadness, and anger.

These negative emotions feel bad—to you. They are appropriate, at times, but carrying them around forever will degrade your life. Your negative feelings might have no effect on the person with whom you are upset, but they will certainly enslave you to the harm that was done to you in the past.

Each time you think of your anger, sadness, or resentment, you inflict that painful emotion on yourself. Someone else might have inflicted that pain upon you initially, but you are one who continues to inflict it on yourself.

Why keep punishing yourself for what someone else did to you?

Choose a more powerful path. Feel your negative emotions. Acknowledge them. Accept them.

Then, when you are ready, allow them to be a voice of your needs by asking yourself: “What do I need to feel better, and what can I do to get that need met?”

Another good question is: “What have I learned about myself and what I want from my relationships in the future?”

You cannot control the behavior of others, but you can use your experiences to get your needs met and have better-feeling relationships in the future.

When you make your own needs a priority, you realize that allowing yourself to stay stuck in negativity does not serve you.

When you use your negative emotions as opportunities to take care of yourself, you realize that forgiving people is a gift to yourself.