— Anthony de Mello, Awakening: Conversations with the Masters [2003]

When you blame someone, it is your ego which passes judgment on that person. You base yourself on information that is extremely limited, highly biased and selfish. This is a common human reaction, because people operate primarily out of self-interest.

Sometimes you, in your self-interest, will be annoyed by someone else’s expression of their self-interest. Fortunately, everyone also has the power to make proactive choices. You can decide to shift from anger to understanding, from blame to empathy. You can look beyond a person’s negative traits to the positive characteristics found at the core of his or her being. You can be forgiving by refusing to see things in black and white and differentiating the various ‘colors’ in each individual.

When you decide to forgive someone, the whole scenario begins to change. Not instantly or spontaneously, especially in the case of serious offenses, but through a process of sifting out vicious thoughts and revengeful emotions. Nevertheless, the moment you make the shift and release your negativity toward the offender, you will feel as if you are on cloud nine—free, self-possessed and master of yourself.

Forgiveness Helps You Transcend Negative Emotions

Forgiveness is your radical decision to release feelings of resentment, frustration, anger or revenge toward a person or group that has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve forgiveness. It is an exclusively personal choice.

“Forgiveness stands on the truth that what happened to me was unfair, it is unfair, and it will always be unfair, but I will have a new response to it,” explains Dr Robert Enright [The Forgiving Life, 2012]. No one can compel you to do so. It is an unconditional choice by which you no longer want to punish or demand compensation in order to get even.

In forgiveness, you not only discard negative-tending emotions, but also acquire positive-motivating ones. You substitute anger, hurt and self-pity with understanding, compassion and service. You transcend your inimical attitudes and and develop a friendly mindset toward the offender. This is an entirely internal matter, a personal choice and does not involve any contact with the offender. The transformation takes place within you.

Forgiveness Liberates You From Hurt

Forgiveness is its own reward; it heals you and restores your sense of wellbeing. Some people are so blinded by hurt that they believe that carrying resentment or grudges will punish the person who has wronged them. But they are mistaken. For, as someone wisely put it, choosing not to forgive is like deciding to go through life carrying a hot coal of bitterness, resentment, blame and anger, just waiting to throw it at those who offend you. While you are holding onto it, your own hands get burned and scarred, as do your heart and body. In a sense, by carrying resentment, you become vulnerable and allow the alleged offender to continue hurting you. Forgiveness frees you from those clutches and helps you maintain your self-esteem. Thus, forgiveness is for you and not for the other.

Three Ways in Which Forgiveness Empowers You

1. Living in the present

Resentment keeps you fixated in the past, over which you have no control. Forgiveness lets bygones be bygones, so that you can focus on the present and move into the future. Forgiveness empowers those who allow themselves to come under its spell to be more compassionate to themselves and others. As Philip Friedman, author of The Forgiveness Solution: The Whole Body Rx for Finding True Happiness, Abundant Love and Inner Peace [2010], says, “Forgiveness allows you to release the past and to cross the bridge from the path of fear and negativity to the positive path of light and love.”

2. Exercising willpower

Thinking over the past unpleasant events generates an entirely new sequence of thoughts, emotions and actions that reopen the wounds. Forgiveness ends this vicious cycle. It provides you the opportunity to prove you have the willpower it takes to be in charge of your life.

3. Managing emotions

Through forgiveness you give yourself permission to feel the variety of emotions evoked by the offense and process them. You become aware of the self-destructive influences of anger, bitterness, resentment, and hate over your body-mind-spirit, and decide to release them freely and convincingly.

Related » The prime beneficiary of forgiveness is the one who forgives

Forgiveness Helps Heal Your Body

In his book Forgiveness: The Greatest Healer of All [1999], Gerald G Jampolsky states that an “unforgiving mind hoards fear, misery, pain, suffering, despair, weariness and doubt—all of which can produce toxic side effects of physical problems, including headaches, backaches, stomach-aches and ulcers, depression, lack of energy, anxiety, irritability, tenseness, insomnia, unhappiness and free floating fear [not attached to anything].” When you forgive, you let go of all this toxicity, and you allow yourself the chance to heal completely.

Conclusion

The post The Wonderful Ways Forgiveness Can Change Your Life appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Then finally, one day, on a blessed morning, I gathered the courage—to tell my newspaper vendor to stop delivering the morning newspaper. I had had enough of starting my day with bad news from around the world [most of which had little to do with me and my life anyway].

For millions of people around the world, the newspaper is an integral part of the morning ritual. Such is the force of habit that on days when the newspaper is not delivered, there is a feeling of incompleteness. [I know people who find no joy in their morning tea or coffee without the newspaper.]

Injurious to wellbeing

What most people don’t realise is that reading the newspaper [or watching the morning news], is injurious to their wellbeing. By their predominant focus on what’s wrong, newspapers create the impression that our world is full of opportunistic, manipulative, and wicked people. Reading [or watching] such news gives rise to a disturbing feeling: an appalling mixture of sadness, disappointment, annoyance, irritation, hopelessness and, frequently, anger. These negative feelings, in turn, damage our physical and physiological health. Early mornings ought to be happy and hopeful—after all, they set the tone for the rest of the day.

By their predominant focus on what’s wrong, newspapers create the impression that our world is full of opportunistic, manipulative, and wicked people

Here are a few quick lessons from my experience of the past few days of living without a newspaper:

1. I notice that I am less cynical and more optimistic
2. I don’t miss anything important. [What I miss are stories of scams, scandals, crimes, cheating, match-fixing and doomsday predictions—all of no use to me]
3. I have more time to myself, which I can now use constructively—exercising, meditating, reading, or just spending more time with family
4. If there’s something important that I must know, I get to know it through others—there are always those who are up-to-date.

I am not alone

Funny thing is, ever since I gave up on news, I learnt about many more who have done likewise, making me realise that it’s not just me who thinks of news as being hazardous. More and more people are recognising that they are better off without it.

A few weeks into my news-free existence, I read a book titled The Four Hour Work Week, in which the author Timothy Ferris explain how ‘eliminating the unnecessary’ is vital to manifesting your dreams. As he urges us to go on a ‘low-information diet’, one of the things he suggests is—you guessed it—cutting out news.

I have more time to myself, which I can now use constructively—exercising, meditating, reading, or just spending more time with family

Then, a few months later, as if to reinforce my decision, I came across an interview of best-selling Swiss novelist Rolf Dobelli in which he explains why he stopped consuming news. Dobelli, who is the author of The Art of Thinking Clearly, credits his decision to another best-selling author, Nassim Taleb—best known for his path-breaking book The Black Swan. Dobelli says that seeing Taleb function without news, he felt he could too. So he gave it up. “I thought it was a very good concept, saves a lot of time and makes a lot of sense. News does not allow you to make better decisions about important things in life. It does not offer any competitive advantage. So I haven’t consumed news since then and it has been a very good journey. News is to the mind what sugar is to the body. It is not good,” Dobelli said. In the rest of the interview, he goes on to explain how one can function perfectly well without reading, watching or listening to news.

Some weeks after that, I began reading Reinventing The Body, Resurrecting The Soul by Deepak Chopra. In his very first chapter, he warns us about how news actually affects our physiology. He writes, “The brain takes in the information, converts it into chemicals, and lets the whole body know if there’s trouble in the world. Quite literally, you are metabolising the news and suffering from the toxins it contains.”

Consume less news

Every time I read about the perils of news, it feels like an endorsement of my decision—as if the universe was reassuring me. Perhaps you too should revisit your long-standing habit and cut down the consumption of news, if not altogether eliminate it. Try it for a few weeks. Believe me, what you will miss is utterly worth missing.

If the morning newspaper [or TV news] is a habit for you, try breaking it by replacing it with something more useful such as yoga, a morning walk or even reading a good book. Give this a shot for a month. You can always go back to reading/watching news if you don’t see your life improving. Going by my experience, what you’ll gain is worth a lot more than what you’ll lose. Believe me: starting the day by reading a newspaper is not a virtue it has been made out to be—if anything, it’s a vice.

A version of this article was first published in the February 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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