Get Better Not Bitter- How to forgive and move on:

I never really studied the topic of forgiveness in depth before, because for me for the most part, I do not really keep grudges or struggle with conflicts because I have a collaborative and fun personality type. I also move on quickly from the things that seem negative because I enjoy having fun and being positive. But I had an experience with bitterness a few times, where I became sick and bitter because of a few not so healthy relationships. It felt very much hopeless back then.

Being bitter made me very cynical and that made me become more of a feminist- which made me to a degree ‘hate’ the opposite sex. Until I watched a video of TD Jakes expressing how hard it is to be a man. That changed my perspective on a deep level because I have a son which I am trying to raise into a healthy young man. So that made me realize that I had to learn to forgive. The fact of life is that we all get it wrong sometimes, we make mistakes and often hurt other people. We want other people to forgive us and move on rebuilding the relationship with them almost immediately, but we fail at doing this same thing we want from them, for them.

5 steps for forgiveness by R. Klimes:

1. Acknowledge how you feel

2. Stop revengeful thoughts

3. Consider their perspective

4. Decide to accept the hurt without unloading it on someone else.

5. Extend compassion and good will to the offender – releasing them from their offense.

When we forgive, let go of negative thoughts, let bitterness out of our system we become free. But of course, the repeat offender must carry some consequences for their actions. You must still have healthy boundaries in your relationships. If someone continues to use, manipulate, disrespect or treat you badly after you have forgiven them multiple times and set up healthy boundaries with them, there are unfortunately a cut-off space. We cannot allow ourselves to stay in relationships that are toxic, not even if it is a significant relationship with titles such as Spouse or even Parent, Child or Boss.

We have a responsibility in how we manage our relationships and it is more difficult for more impulsive or even giving personality types to maintain it due to lack of boundary setting or other weakness’s. It takes continual work to manage relationships and we train each other how we can treat each other. Other growth points could be living in the present moment to control negative thoughts and emotions as well as stacking values on each other such as stacking Respect to your value of Loyalty or Power exchanges in Generosity, Justice or treating others fairly in adventures etc. What you allow, will continue to happen. Forgive but then create action plans either alone or with the offender to solve the problem and make sure it does not happen again. Both parties must win for the solution to be effective.

Keep Improving

The Ameliorate Team

#Forgive; #Forgiveness; #Bitterness; #Boundaries; #Relationships; #SelfDevelopment