Exercise – Five Practical Steps to Forgiveness:

If you are struggling with forgiveness, allow yourself to be human for just a moment and step into your pain. So many of us run from our pain as a natural survival technique. But we want to thrive not just survive. I invite you to find a safe way to respect and honor your pain, allowing it to lead you through an amazing transformational process. Before the freedom of letting go and moving on, you will be asked to release your own judgments and contribution to the pain. Once you can do this for yourself, you will be amazed at what life looks like on the other side…

1. Own It!

Be real with yourself about the situation you need to heal. Ask yourself the hard questions and take full responsibility for your role in how things played out. For example, what role did you play in the situation and how could you have done things differently? Is there a familiar pattern arising in this situation? If there is, there’s probably an important life lesson you are meant to learn. In the short term, it is much easier to blame others rather than to turn the spot light on ourselves. But in doing so we are delaying our healing process. Own it and you have found an important key to healing.

2. Reach out.

Whether it’s successful or not, at least you tried. Say you are sorry. It’s never too late to pay respect to the people you have let down. You can do this in person, over the phone or through a letter. Whatever your muse, the idea is to purge yourself of any un-forgiveness. You may say something like, “This is way overdue but I wanted to send an apology to you. I know that what has happened cannot be undone and that is not my intention with this letter. I’m writing because you deserve an apology and I want you to know that I am deeply sorry for how things unfolded.”

3. Reflect.

Learn from your experiences. Make the most of any perceived bad situation and find out what you needed to learn about yourself. Every situation is an opportunity to grow.

4. Walk the Walk.

Do things differently from now on. If you want a different outcome, then have different actions.

5. Forgive Yourself.

When you get to the point where you are being called to forgive yourself, the experience is coming to completion. Try using the affirmation, “I deeply and completely love and forgive myself.” If you want, you can even describe what you are wanting to heal: “I love and forgive myself for _____________.”

Module 3 Progress:

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