Tolu Falode: Forgive & Forget

Learning to forgive and forget is never easy but it is possible to achieve. When you allow yourself to be free from every situation that has inhibited you in your life, you essentially release yourself from people and pressure. This is important to enable you to forgive and crucially to forget.

When you forgive someone that has offended you, stress leaves your system. As a result, you function at a positive pace with a more relaxed mindset.

Forgiveness is for yourself: it is not for the other person.

Some people fail to digest this information.

Firstly, how is the person going to benefit from your grudge?

Imagine your lack of forgiveness is a boulder. How do you intend someone else to feel the weight of that boulder? You carry that weight; hence you drag yourself down.

As a result, it becomes harder to move forward as time passes because you have become attached to the boulder. You have begun to nurture and nourish it-it has effectively become a part of your life.

This is the same attitude we have when we fail to forgive someone. You are carrying a burden while the other person is walking freely. Your lack of forgiveness does not in any way hinder that person’s progress.

The only one standing still with that weight is you.

Hence it is advisable to forgive.

How do you forgive when someone has hurt and scarred you deeply? How do you let yourself move past the pain and heal from the wounds of an emotional attack?

These are some steps I believe will enable you to release yourself from your own mental and emotional stagnation.
Firstly, admit: Admit that you have been hurt, admit that you are in pain, admit that you are angry. Admit all and every level of emotional distress you feel towards the party that has caused you offence.

In admitting the scar, you have accepted the pain. This is the next step.

In accepting the level of hurt you have been exposed to, you have given yourself permission to move past it.

You have given yourself permission to move forward.

This means you have begun the process of acknowledgment.

In acknowledging the hurt, you have spoken to your pain. You have stripped it of its power over your life and your position. This is because you have confronted it. Hence the pain no longer has power over your decisions.

Now, you have dropped the boulder of lack of forgiveness because you no longer have reason to hold on to it.

These points are important.

In going through each stage, you stop your steps from falling back into the potential to experience a sudden bout of resentment hit you again.

When you have acknowledged the hurt you have suffered, and thus confronted the pain you have been dealt, you can now forgive.

And this will enable you to forget.

How?

When you forgive someone for hurting you, the position they held has been stripped of power over your life. No longer do they dictate your decisions or your actions because they no longer hold any iota of importance in your day-to-day activities.

Hence because they have lost their importance, they no longer hold significance in your life. And you do not acknowledge anything or anyone that holds no significance in your life.

This is why the stages of forgiveness are crucial.

In going through each step, you acknowledge the pain has cost you progress and hence you strip it of its dominion and ability to distract you from your life.

When you have reached this stage of confronting the pain and graduated to a level of releasing it through forgiveness, you have essentially begun the steps needed to forget.

This is because your actions and your words no longer reflect your pain because you have given yourself permission to heal.

Hence, instead of masking a festering wound, which causes more pain over time, you have chosen to pay attention to it. And as a result, you have given it a chance to heal.

And as it heals, you begin to forget the injury because it begins to hurt less and less and less.

This is the same metaphor that can be used for forgiveness. When you acknowledge the pain you have suffered, you have started to tend to it by going through the stages outlined above. And hence you naturally begin to forget because you have begun to heal.

These tips will enable you to forgive and more importantly to forget whatever hurt you have suffered. As you go through this process, you will begin to move forward and live the life you truly deserve!

Allow yourself to experience each stage to ease the process of healing and you will move towards a life that is free of the burden of lack of forgiveness and the boundaries it creates in blocking your progress.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime | Atholpady