Don’t force ‘Forgiveness’

Forgive people. Forgiveness is not for them, its for you. Forgiveness will set you free. Yes, we have all heard those. But when you ask someone how to do that, the general response is to just ‘let it go’. No real actionable directions there…

I was sitting in meditation just now and came to the idea of substituting the perspective of ‘forgiveness’ with the perspective of ‘acceptance’. Read that again and then let it sit in your brain for a moment before reading on.

I know you didn’t wait to continue reading… lol… but moving on…

Here’s how my brain just saw this… Someone does something to me that hurts my feelings or makes me angry. Lets say, they borrowed my favorite sweater and lost it. After the initial shock and anger that my favorite sweater is forever gone, I may have trouble forgiving that person. How could they be so careless with MY FAVORITE SWEATER. They are so inconsiderate. They are careless with my things. How could I ever put up that behavior?

Now if I look at it in terms of accepting what has happened…  Without diving deep into the emotions of the circumstance, I can look objectively at the situation: I lent my sweater to someone. They have somehow lost it. I won’t be getting it back. Can I accept this? It may be hard to accept it the first time you ask yourself. Maybe still hard to accept it the 5th time or the 50th time you ask yourself. But when you really look at the situation in a completely objective way – no emotions, just facts, involved… your perspective becomes a little more clear and you just may be able to ‘naturally release the negative emotions and move forward. You don’t have to – nor should you ever – force forgiveness. It just doesn’t work that way.

Happy Summer Solstice.

*Am I a licensed therapist, psychologist, doctor, etc? No, please use your own best judgement. Every situation is different. This is just my own thoughts and opinions.