5 tips to forgive anyone and move on
Forgiveness can be a tricky business. Whether it’s an old friend or colleague, a family member or even an acquaintance that things ended badly with, finding the space to forgive and move forward isn’t easy. Our brains often have a tendency to rush the emotions and memories of being slighted/stabbed in the back/embarrassed causing a physical reaction and dubiousness that “forgiving and forgetting” is even possible. The thing is, carrying around anger and resentment isn’t especially good for us. These emotions can have a toxic impact on our state of mind and overall happiness levels meaning that your former relationship can still be impacting your life, years after being eliminated. The act of forgiving and moving forward can turn a negative into a positive, healing life experience. Here’s how to accomplish it.
- Focus on what it means to forgive – Forgiveness doesn’t have to be an apology or acceptance of the other persons’ actions. Forgiveness is all about acceptance or something that you can’t change. Think about it as something you’re doing for yourself not for the person who hurt you.
- Recognise where you’re at – Forced forgiveness is a false economy. Yes, you’ve technically ‘forgiven’ but deep down you know that it’s a band-aid solution. Forgiveness takes time and you can’t rush it. How will you know when you’re ready? Experts recommend visualising a meeting with the person and what you’d say and do. If the scenario makes you feel angry, tense or upset then you may not be quite ready yet.
- Forgive yourself – As the saying goes ‘it takes two to tango’ and while it can be hard to acknowledge, there’s a strong possibility that you said or did some things that you’re not exactly proud of. In these scenarios, the biggest barriers to forgiveness are feelings of shame and embarrassment. If this is the case, you need to forgive yourself before you can shift that forgiveness to the other person.
- It’s not always about words – For some relationships a spoken acknowledgement may just add fuel to the fire. Trying to talk through what went wrong isn’t always going to work and in these instances it can be better to silently acknowledge to yourself that you are ready to forgive and forget and demonstrate through your exterior actions when next in contact with the person in question.
- Establish boundaries – Forgiveness doesn’t have to mean condoning behaviour or actions that have led to the breakdown in the first place. Setting rules or boundaries can help keep your relationship on track. Try and identify where exactly things started to take a turn for the worse and what fanned the flames and eliminate those situations/actions i.e. if political discussions always end angrily, remove that topic from the agenda. It really depends on the kind of relationship you wish to have moving forward as to how you conduct your future interactions but be mindful of how far you’ve come to heal old wounds and try to prevent new ones from forming.
Tell us in the comments below, have you rekindled a relationship after a fall out? How did you manage it?
Related links:
5 steps to help you speak your mind
Why it’s healthy to learn to let go as we get older
How being vulnerable can change your life