In my work as a reader for California Psychics I regularly connect with callers who are weighed down by emotional baggage from a special someone. Aside from desiring love and affection, the bottom-line dynamic involved in any emotional connection with someone is choice. I have noticed that we often take on a tremendous amount of emotional stress when our relationships are out of balance. This is where awareness and forgiveness become key to the process of personal healing and resolution.
Once we become aware we have a choice in how we respond to situations that are beyond our control, we can begin the process of active forgiving. Contrary to popular belief, to forgive in this sense does not mean to condone or accept, or to “make something okay.” To forgive a person or a situation simply means that we make an active choice: we release what someone does to us, or how someone “makes” us feel. To forgive means we choose not to take on someone else’s burdens. Some steps in the forgiveness process are:
1) Cultivating awareness that while you do not have control over someone else’s behaviors, thoughts or feelings, you do have a choice in how you think and feel about a situation. Awareness brings balance, and allows us different ways of perceiving a situation to serve our highest good.
2) Recognizing that as individuals we think, feel, and act based on our own choices. This means if someone treats you a certain way it is not your fault. Each of us makes a personal choice in terms of how we treat others (and how we are treated), and when someone behaves toward you in an unkind or disregarding kind of way, this is the choice he or she has made – independently of you.
3) Acknowledging that it’s always tough when we’re in a situation where we have not been honored. It’s important once we realize we have been treated unkindly to remind ourselves – we deserve to be loved and respected. Of course, it’s also important to realize that treating others kindly becomes a reciprocal event, and something that takes continuous effort to keep in balance.
4) Remembering that we control how others are treating us. We want to cultivate clarity in relationships by determining our personal self worth, and the boundaries we need to patrol in order to preserve that.
5) Loving ourselves, valuing ourselves, and respecting ourselves. Once we do that, others will naturally follow our lead!
Have you ever had trouble letting go and forgiving someone? Tell us about it here.
