Forgiveness Exercise
Holding on to grudges and not forgiving can destroy our inner peace. This exercise helps us to free ourselves from past resentments and focus on life here and now from a new perspective.
- Take a piece of paper and name all the people (might include you) and the incidents of the past that hurt you.
- Beside each name, describe how the negative encounter affected you. Try to name all the feelings you experienced in that phase (e.g. sad, angry, insulted, hopeless, heartbroken, betrayed....).
- While you are noting down all these hurtful moments, notice how the negative feelings start coming back to you.
- Now, close your eyes, take two deep breaths and relax for a few seconds.
- Next, imagine each name on the list and in your heart, say ‘I forgive you´. Alternatively, if you were at fault, admit it and ask for their forgiveness.
- Notice how this exchange of forgiveness liberates you and makes you feel empowered from the core.
- Open your eyes and on the paper where you had listed all the incidents, write in bold, FORGIVEN and FREE.
Discussion:
Do you think forgiveness is important? Why yes/no?
Let us know in the comments below what did you feel like after this exercise.
Hi @globalBraid3744!
Great exercise!! I definitely felt more mindful of forgiving and walking through the steps helped me think about the concept of forgiving a lot more.
I think forgiveness is important because it's one of the best ways in moving on from an incident (kind of how we move on from other bad events like grief, heartbreak, etc). When we learn to forgive we can bypass the person who wronged us and continue to better ourselves without that burden.
@globalBraid3744
This is a powerful exercise that I have done before by means of meditation. And aside from the obvious benefits towards ourselves in regards to letting things go, I've found for myself that it can be just as beneficial as well to identify those feelings with those negative events or experiences.
Because being able to identify why someone made you feel a certain way from what they said or did, I believe, offers us a glimpse into ourselves and why we tick the way we do. In addition, cataloging these emotive responses to certain people also allows us to maybe adjust our expectations with some people and can give us insight on how to (or not to) interact with them.
