Forgiveness, Compassion & Love for yourself and Others.
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
Welcome back to another post for ‘Ways To Live A Happier Life!’
As many wise people have previously said:
“Holding on to Anger / Hate is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die” also “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”
Disagreement is difficult to avoid in life as we are all individuals that have formulated our own opinions and outlooks of the world. However, we always have the power of choice. We can choose how we decide to react or respond.
So there are a couple of contexts we could explore these topics…
Context One - Forgiveness / Compassion / Love for others.
If we fall out / argue with loved ones (or anyone for that matter) and we choose to be stubborn, hold a grudge, or refuse to let the argument go and move on (regardless of who is right or wrong) - then we are CHOOSING to harbour negative feelings within ourselves. Choosing to hold anger, hatred, resentment etc will negatively effect the way we think, speak, and behave. Also, despite what we may wish or think - the way we may feel about the situation doesn’t necessarily directly impact the feelings of the person / people we may be harbouring these negative feelings about. So to keep it short and sweet - Even if someone has done something that has truly hurt you or angered you, then choose to take action. EMPOWER yourself by consciously making the decision to forgive, cut ties, or resolve the situation - Don’t let yourself sit in no-mans land harbouring negative feelings, changing or effecting noones world but your own.
Let that s*** go! It’s serving nobody. Easier said than done I know, but it’s a practice.
Context Two - Forgiveness / Compassion / Love for yourself.
This is something often overlooked, but when we begin to explore this topic many of us come to realise that we are our own harshest critic. We don’t need others to bully us or to fill our mind with their negative outlooks of us, we already do that enough to ourselves. It is easy to fill our world with anger, hate and resentment when we are holding negatives feelings about or for others, and then we add more to the pile when it comes to the way we think and feel about ourselves. It would be easy to assume that it would be easiest to come to terms with ourselves, to learn to love the bits that we struggle to love, to accept ourselves for our best and worst parts. However, as we all know, this is much easier said than done!So as this is a deep topic, and one that can take many years (or lifetimes) of work, I think it’s best to start small. I’m going to offer you three Action Steps / Resources to get you started right away.
Action Steps / Resources:
Never go to Sleep on an argument with a loved one. Resolve (where possible) any arguments / disagreements you may have had during the day, before you go to sleep at night. Make peace with them, so that you can find peace with in yourself.
Google “The Four Agreements” and begin the seemingly simple, but highly demanding practice of “The Four Agreements”. It is actually one of my favourite books of all time, so if you fancy reading the whole book, you can get yourself a copy here.
Research + Experiment with Loving Kindness Meditations. Here is a link to give you a little more information on the Practice to get you started!
Okay thats it for this weeks Ways To Live A Happier Life - I hope you found the action steps insightful + beneficial! As always, if you enjoyed the read - don’t forget to share, comment, like and Subscribe.
Much Love, DCMx