How to Forgive in 5 Steps
“Forgiveness is the blending of spirit and humanity, coming together to lift us up to a higher state of being-ness, a greater sense of awareness, and a freedom that’s beyond circumstance and situation.” Mary Morrissey
Everyone gets wronged at some point in their lives. Someone will do something that will probably hurt you, and you may do the same—it’s part of being human. But sometimes, the pain may get to the point where you feel like you can’t forgive them. Another part of being human is looking at our past, and cringing at our decisions and where they led us and beat ourselves up.
Withholding forgiveness can shackle you to the pain of your past, hindering you from living in the present, and can also negatively affect your health and wellbeing.
Ultimately, this may all lead to significant barriers to you living an abundant, happy, and healthy life.
Discover how holding onto pain and anger holds you back, and how to forgive someone in five simple steps - including yourself.
How Grudges Hold Us Back
The cycle of holding grudges is a vicious one. Initially, we might feel justified in our anger and hurt, but as time passes, these negative emotions fester, affecting our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The longer we hold onto grudges, the harder it becomes to find peace within ourselves and with the person involved. Ultimately, this cycle becomes a self-destructive pattern, holding us hostage to the past and hindering our personal growth. You may find it difficult to forgive some people. Maybe this is because you believe that forgiveness means forgetting. Therefore, you may hold onto the grudge to protect yourself from further pain.
The problem is, you may do more damage to yourself than good. Here are a few reasons why forgiveness is in your best interest.
Emotional Drain: Grudges keep us stuck in negative emotions, draining our energy and preventing us from experiencing positive emotions and personal fulfillment. The ideas, money and insights can’t show up. When you revisit your pain in the form of a grudge, you end up cultivating it. Like a gardener, you help those feelings of pain flourish inside you, and it can start to affect your outlook on life.
Strained Relationships: Lingering grudges can poison relationships with friends, family, and colleagues, leading to isolation and loneliness. People who hold grudges believe that they are “right” because they are the injured party. Therefore, they hold onto those negative feelings and feel justified in holding a grudge against a person who was “wrong.” However, forgiveness isn’t about the other person: it’s about releasing you and your energy from the past.
Limited Perspective: By fixating on past wrongs, we may be unable to see the full picture and understand the complexities of the situation or the other person's point of view. The practice of having a “long view” in any given situation is to hold yourself open to the possibility that there is a good beyond the good that you can perceive through your limited understanding.
Inhibiting Self-Reflection: Grudges can hinder our ability to reflect on our own role in conflicts or misunderstandings, preventing personal growth and learning from past experiences. At the edge of your own becoming, the curriculum for your growth is suited exactly for the lessons that your soul and your intelligence need.
A hardened heart has a cost to it, an increased pain in it, and a dimming down of the light of life and aliveness.
How To Forgive Someone in Five Steps
Step 1: Recognize how you may have contributed to the situation
Did you ever stop to think, though, that perhaps you are not entirely blameless?
We must remove ourselves and our egos from the equation and look at it more objectively in these situations. This allows us to zoom out and reflect on the situation unbiasedly.
You may also wish to try putting yourself in the other person’s shoes to see the situation from their perspective. Can you see why they might have interpreted the situation and behaved in this way?We must remove ourselves and our egos from the equation and look at it more objectively in these situations. This allows us to zoom out and reflect on the situation unbiasedly.
Do your best to show compassion to the other person, and remember that we all do the best we can to avoid pain. This way, instead of viewing the situation as them attempting to hurt you, you may see that this person just wanted to avoid pain and suffering, which you may have been triggering. When you do this, you can take some responsibility for any part you played in the situation and work on forgiving yourself for it, too.
Step 2: Don’t go to sleep angry
Why does this work?
The answer is simply this:
When we sleep, our mind goes over the events of the day. It processes everything from the smallest chore to those big arguments and decides how to file it. When your mind files these emotions, it attaches, or “staples,” associated emotions to your complaint.
Imagine that you had a big argument with your best friend. Maybe it was a betrayal that you feel you may never get over. At the time, those negative emotions need time to process. However, before you lie down to rest, you have a very important decision to make…
Will you forgive and let go of that anger? Or will you let it fester in your unconscious mind overnight?
Remember, forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean that you forget or condone the other person’s actions. However, it does mean that you need to make the conscious decision to wake up the next morning feeling less of the burden and turmoil because you choose to let go of unforgiveness. It also demonstrates that you love yourself enough to let go of this anger and pain and move on. Since we are magnets for everything that vibrate in the frequency range of where we most live … is it worth it to hang on? Is the lack of alignment with your dreams really worth it?
Step 3: Acknowledge how the incident helped you grow
Ask yourself what the experience taught you about yourself. For example, did you participate in the situation because of issues with low self-esteem? Maybe you learned something about your own needs and boundaries?
It’s not about how another person hurt you. That type of thinking keeps you perpetually in “victim mode”—and remember, when you’re a victim, you don’t have power. Instead, turn the situation into a teachable moment where you can turn hurt into a win—for yourself and about yourself.Learning how to forgive someone is a process about you—it’s about how you process your anger and pain, not the person who “wronged” you. A part of this learning process is seeing the lesson in the situation.
Step 4: Allow time to pass
Most people find it difficult to forgive someone in the heat of the moment. Maybe you feel it’s better to let some time pass before you start giving out forgiveness. Or perhaps you don’t want to forgive because you repressed your feelings on the situation or feel like it’s “the right thing to do.” Processing your thoughts and emotions is a human response to a painful situation.
Once you accept what happened and why you reacted the way you did, it may be time to move on. Before then, though, you need to accept the reality of the situation and how it affected you.
Step 5: See forgiveness as a gift to yourself
Remember, forgiveness is not about the other person. They don’t benefit from it. They may not even know about it.
But you do…
You can permit yourself to work through everything you need to grow from the situation, then you work on creating the best version of yourself. The only thing that’s left to do from there is let go of unforgiveness.
The other person may be sorry that they hurt you or they may not be. That’s immaterial at this point and won’t take back all the feelings you processed. Holding a grudge over someone else is simply punishing yourself for the pain that you feel.
Think of it as a gift that you’re giving to yourself.
Allow yourself to let go of the extra weight that unforgiveness can put on your shoulders. Stop casting yourself as the victim in your life and take back control of your emotional wellbeing.
Try to change what you can and stop looking backward so you can start living in the present and have the life you deserve.When you finally forgive someone, you’re setting yourself free. You no longer need to put in the time and energy to keep that grudge alive. Instead, you can start truly living in the present.
Whenever a hurt rises up, it is a moment offered for transformation.
Action Item: When a challenging situation arises, the practice is asking yourself, “How can I hold this as an opportunity? How can I see this differently?” Bring to mind a challenge you are currently facing, whether it is big or small, and write down some ideas of how you can see it from a new perspective that is in alignment with your highest good?