The Simple Truth of Forgiveness to Gain Peace of Mind

Do you find forgiveness hard to do?

Do you believe that forgiving someone means letting them off the hook?

Do you wrangle with forgiveness inside yourself?

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” – Paul Lewis Boese

There is a lot of talk about forgiveness and forgiving people that have hurt you. People tell you to let it go and ‘do the right thing’. They say that you are holding a grudge if you don’t forgive them and that you are causing more problems by holding on to it.

But it can be hard if it is someone that has abused you in some way, whether physically, emotionally, or verbally (or all three). It is especially difficult if that person is still inflicting pain; if they still say things and do things that hurt you.

This is the situation I had with my mother. I had to distance myself from her because she said things that were hurtful – often unknowingly – from off-hand comments about me personally (my weight, my hair, my daily habits, how I pronounce words) to out and out blaming me for events from the past when I was a small child that I couldn’t possibly have been responsible for.

Even though the things she said and did once I was a full grown adult weren’t a scratch on the screaming verbal abuse she subjected me to in my childhood, they could still cut me to the core.

When I talked about it people would ask me if I had forgiven her, and if not, why not? She’s your mother, they'd say, you ‘should’ forgive her, it will make your life better if you do.

But for years I couldn’t see how I could forgive her for all the things she had subjected me to – and sometimes still subjected me to. I struggled hard, and felt anger and resentment deep into my soul.

“Resentment is like drinking poison, and thinking it will kill your enemies.”- Nelson Mandela

But when I looked more closely at forgiveness and what it would take, I realised that it wasn’t about letting her off the hook for the trauma she had put me through as a child, but letting myself off the hook.

I learnt that forgiveness is not about forgiving them for what they did to you, but about forgiving yourself.

Because you are not to blame for being abused by another, no matter what they say, pretend, or try to twist round.

If you have been abused, it is not your fault.

I’ll repeat that: IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT

So forgive yourself for being blamed.

Forgive yourself for ever thinking it was something you did (or are doing) wrong.

Forgive yourself for letting something from the past still affect you.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free, and then realise the prisoner is you.” – Lewis B Smedes

And once you stop blaming yourself for being abused you will feel different: You will release the anger and the resentment. You will be less concerned about what they say and do from then onwards. You will move away from caring what they think, because you have put your feelings first and not theirs. You have given yourself the self-love and nurture that you deserve.

What they continue to do is what they choose to do, and you can choose to no longer be affected by it. When you forgive yourself, you also stop responding to them in the same way you did, to the things they say or the things they do. You can choose to stop letting it affect you.

A couple of years ago my mother observed how much I had changed, how different I was towards her - less argumentative, less defensive. I smiled sweetly and thought to myself, I’m not any different, I just no longer react to you the way I did. I no longer allow the things you say to hurt me anymore, because I forgave myself.

“Forgiveness is the gift you give yourself.” – Tony Robbins

I am not saying that the things my mother says don’t still affect me – she is still capable of getting inside my head, but it is very rare now. I have also distanced myself from her physically, and restrict how much contact I have with her. This is something I feel people should do with anyone who is potentially toxic to them – including family.

                           

The most surprising reward for forgiving myself has been the calm it has brought inside. The peace of mind I have gained, and the confidence I have that I will no longer be upset when I am in her company. I feel sure of myself and less likely to be blindsided by my emotions, and have outbursts that make me feel out of control and judged as unstable by others. And I don’t feel angry or bitter inside anymore. I feel okay as though I have a solid foundation at last.

It didn’t happen overnight though; it started by writing my life story out for my therapist, which took some time to do as it was hard to face the things that had hurt me.

Seeing in black and white what I had been put through made me lose all guilt about feeling angry towards my mother. I finally understood why I was angry. I could see that what I had been put through was not right or fair and that I wasn’t to blame for any of it. 

Once I stopped arguing with my anger and trying to find reasons to justify my mother’s actions, I stopped feeling angry. I accepted what had happened and that I was not to blame for any of it.

It released me from the anger and also from the guilt. In writing it all out I freed myself the past.

“You do not forgive for the other person. You do it for your own freedom.” – Kute Blackson

It still took several years of therapy to sort through it all and find new ways of managing and healing some of the damage. But it was a crucial step in the process of listening to my feelings, trusting myself, and building my self-esteem.

Now on the other side of this, the simple truth of forgiveness is that it's about you and not about them.

Forgive yourself. You’re worth it.

How to be accepting & stop resisting what you don't like about your life

Do you get frustrated by the things you can’t change or control in your life?

Do you get angry when things don’t go the way you want?

Do you waste time and energy refusing to accept the ways things are?

 “Resistance is futile”- The Borg Collective - Star Trek: First Contact 😉

I am a not a Trekkie per se, but The Borg were correct. It will cause you more trouble than it’s worth to resist assimilation.

There are some things that you can’t change or control in life, but resisting them will cause you more pain in the long term and keep you stuck in a negative place for longer than necessary.

My best friend used to repeat to me on the phone, “Accept and allow, go with the flow of life.” It took me years to fully understand and embrace this concept. I could understand it in theory but it felt like an unachievable goal for me. I found everything difficult.

Even though I made decisions to do things – like moving to a foreign country and culture to be with my partner - I resisted them. Often it was because I didn’t really want to do them and I was doing them to please another, but I made it harder on myself by refusing to accept that it was a choice that I had made and not one that was forced upon me.

I was locked in the victim mindset.

In the instance of moving to a foreign country for love, this led me to reject what I found there: the friends, community, and the different culture. And rather than embrace the life on offer, I resisted it. I attempted a few things, but when they didn’t go the way I wanted or didn’t achieve the results I was looking for, I felt stuck and I fixated on feeling powerless.

I longed for the things I didn’t have and only focused on what was missing from my life. I became miserable, tense, stressed, frustrated and very angry. For me this manifested mentally in a breakdown in 2008, and physically in two slipped discs in my neck in 2014.

“Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.” -  Pema Chodron 

But it was during the pain I experienced with the slipped disc in my neck (which trapped a nerve, putting my right shoulder and arm in excruciating pain for 8 weeks at a time – they slipped twice) that I learnt to surrender.

I learnt to accept that I couldn’t do anything. I let go of everything – all the expectations I had of myself and of others, all the things I thought I had to do, all the chores I did to try and feel that my life was worth living. I could do nothing, so I did nothing.

And what I found was that there were people to support me and my husband to pick up the slack. And when you aren’t able to lose your temper over something petty, you respond differently - quietly and calmly, and people respond differently.

Within the pain I found the calm I was seeking.

“You can't calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.” - Timber Hawkeye

I had to surrender.

I don’t like to use the word surrender, because to me it means to give up – but I didn’t give up, I opened up.

I accepted that this was how things were going to be and to let go in that moment. I let others help me; I relinquished control; I stopped and observed the life around me.

In accepting that time (and fortunately recovering) I was able to understand that I needed to accept other aspects of my life too. I needed to look at what I did have in my life and appreciate it and embrace it. I started to take walks in nature and appreciate where I was living. I stopped thinking about my future and where my life was going, and started living in the present.

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

When the noise in my mind would start up about where I wanted to live, what I wanted to be doing with my life, and how I felt like I was stagnating and not growing, I would just let the noise go.

I would hear it, register it, but know that I could only get to where I wanted to step by step, day by day. I took the end goal, the one thing I wanted to do the most, and broke it down into small steps - things I could achieve on a daily basis.

This enabled me to feel like I was moving forward. I would still have moments of frustration, but rather than fight that frustration I would allow myself to feel it – journal it out, or express it to a trusted friend, but then I would let it go.

“Resisting your negative feelings just keeps you stuck.” - Kute Blackson

When I was learning to drive, my driving instructor told me I thought too much about what I was doing to make the learning process easy. He said he could always tell when I started thinking about what I was doing because I would stall the car or crunch the gears. He said, “If you just let go and let your body do what you have trained it to do, it will be much easier. When you think about it, you interrupt the flow.”

By thinking about what I was doing I was letting my brain take over and panic about what I was doing. If I had accepted that I did know and allowed the training to flow through me, I wouldn’t have had a problem.

Often resistance is built up from having too many expectations. If we drop expectation of how something will be, and of ourselves in that situation, and not focus on a desired outcome, we can accept whatever happens organically.

We can release ourselves from the need to control. We become open to whatever happens. And accepting how our life is, in that moment, brings freedom and peace.

“It takes radical acceptance to bring inner peace.”- Kute Blackson

It can be a struggle to accept where you are in life if it is not what you want or where you saw yourself being. You can be consumed with trying to change it. But while you are spending time looking at all the things that aren’t working, you are closed to what IS working.

But how do you stop, if you are truly unhappy with your situation?

Have you ever thought about taking a holiday from your thinking?

If there is something you know you can’t do anything about right now, such as: move house, move job, create more time for yourself, go traveling, then set a date in the future  - a month, 6 months, a year from now, when you can review it again.

And every time you find yourself thinking about it, say, “No, I'm not going to think about that until *insert date*.”

I found this worked to stop me constantly thinking about how to change my situation. I knew I wouldn’t be able to for more than a year, so I set a date to review it the following year. And every time I thought about it, I stopped myself. I said, no, I’m not going to think about that now. I took a holiday from thinking about it. And the more often I stopped myself from thinking about it, the easier it became, until I was thinking about it less and less.

And what also happened, during that holiday, was say to myself, okay, I’m here for the next year, so how can I enjoy and embrace the life I have right now?

It changed the entire perspective I had on the life I was actually living. I was able to engage more with the people in my life and create a better day to day existence.

It broke the habit of the negative frustrated thoughts I was experiencing and allowed me to concentrate on the things that I could change in my life at that moment, and give myself room to work on the things that would help me move forward to the change I did want to see.

By accepting my life as it was I'd freed myself from being a victim in my life, which enabled me to find my personal power over the things I could do something about. It gave me freedom and peace of mind.

“Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” – Eckhart Tolle

Book Review: You Are The One, by Kute Blackson

You Are The One: A Bold Adventure in Finding Purpose, Discovering the Real You, and Loving Fully by Kute Blackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've followed Kute Blackson for a few years now and always loved his style and delivery, and this book was no different. He delivers his message in a clear, succinct, direct way.

Each chapter focuses on a different aspect, from loving/accepting yourself and life, realising how much power you have and how you are able to break through conditioning, and that in fact you are limitless. It covers forgiveness and love, and how to rethink your potential. Each topic organically flows from one chapter to the next, each supporting the last. Kute talks about the people he has taken to India on his Liberation Experience and uses their experiences to support what he is saying and explaining, using gentle repetition within each chapter, his point - and it works.

I found it eye-opening, inspirational and uplifting. It is a book that I feel I could read every year and take something new from it each time - and I just might. This is coming from someone who doesn't often re-reads books.

This book might just be the one! ;-)


I love this, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a new perspective on how to approach life and get more out of it, or a new approach to healing themselves.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Calling in the One, by Katherine Woodward Thomas

Calling In "The One": 7 Weeks To Attract The Love Of Your Life by Katherine Woodward Thomas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I spent longer than the 7 weeks working through this book, mostly because I like to digest things, but also because I am often too busy to come back to it on a daily basis.

In this book you work through 49 assignments, using a journal of your own. You read the chapter and do the assignment at the end. I really enjoyed working through this book and right up to the end the assignments were just as profound and worthwhile as those at the beginning. There is a lot to learn from this book.

I am not single, I am married, but there are areas of my marriage I wish to improve upon and this booked helped me understand and heal issues I had/have surrounding love and being in a relationship. KWT takes you back to your childhood and helps you work through any wounds or problems arising from that time that are influencing your ability to find love and balance in any relationship. This books helps me work on myself and become a more 'whole' person, and be more open to having a loving, balanced relationship.

I would recommend it to anyone wanting to improve their love life.


View all my reviews

Self-Love: How to Love Yourself & Why You Should

Do you know whether you like yourself or not? Have you ever asked yourself?

Are you kind to yourself when things go wrong or do you scold yourself?

Do people tell you, you’re hard on yourself?

“Love yourself first because that's who you'll be spending the rest of your life with.”– Paulo Coelho

There is a lot in personal development and self help about loving yourself and being self-approved (the first one tends to lead to the second). It is a fundamental building block in finding your own sense of authenticity or ‘being authentic’ – meaning taking off the public mask and not being afraid to show others who you really are, and relaxing around people. 

You may have heard the term ‘Self Care’ recently. It is the new buzz word for loving yourself. It means to take time out for yourself: buy yourself something special, spend time with yourself in solitude or in meditation, walking in nature, or doing something you want to do that you would normally consider too extravagant or time consuming.

Some people think that ‘self-care’ or ‘self-love’ or ‘believing in yourself’ is selfish, that you are only thinking of yourself and your own happiness. But you are the most important person in your life – even as a parent your children are dependent on your health and happiness, and your ability to function on a daily basis.

“Loving yourself isn’t vanity, it’s sanity.” – Andre Gide

When I began the journey to start loving myself, it was to try and achieve a sense of calm about everything in my life. I was defensive, sensitive and reacted to people, usually with unsuccessful outcomes. I was angry and frustrated, and I needed to find a way to change that. I realised that I hadn’t spent much time with myself - in fact initially I had been scared to spend time with myself. I would do anything to avoid being on my own. I would liken it to loneliness. Spending time alone meant emptiness and sadness to me. It meant spending time with my feelings, which I was trying to avoid. As a child I hadn’t been allowed to express my feelings or have feelings, so I had no idea how to deal with them.

It was only when I went travelling on my own for a year that I started to understand myself better. On a daily basis I met new people and I would listen to what I talked about and what I told them, and notice how I reacted to them. I started to hear my own story and notice my reactions and behaviours. I started to know myself and see parts of myself I liked, and by the end of my trip I discovered I enjoyed my own company, and was fine spending time in solitude.  

“Stop hating yourself for everything you're not. Start loving yourself for everything you are.” – unknown

But not everyone can go travelling to ‘find themselves’, so how do you go about loving yourself while living your day to day life?

Step one: Listen to yourself: your feelings, your thoughts, your response to things externally. Don’t concentrate on any specific one, just listen to all of it, without judgement, without any expectation. During this process you will start to understand your own thoughts and opinions about things.

Step two: Trust your feelings: Trust how you feel about things: from what you might want to eat in the morning, to the state of the world. Some feelings might feel bad, or ‘wrong’, but they are your feelings, so hear them out. Believe them, rather than argue with them. Reason with them or sympathise with them. Find a place that you can start feeling comfortable about them. Don’t cover them up; be honest with yourself about how you feel. If you think you have to change how you feel to suit others, ask yourself why? Are you putting their feelings before your own? Why are you compromising yourself for another? Know the reasons why you think and feel the way you do, but don’t justify them. You don’t need to justify yourself to anyone. 

Step three: Set Personal Boundaries: Boundaries are to stop you compromising too much of yourself to suit others. Decide how you want to be treated: what you are okay with and what you are not okay with. Define where your limits are. Not being true to yourself will disrupt your sense of self. If you change your mind to suit another, or do something you are not really happy or comfortable with, you are compromising yourself – your feelings, your truth - and that can leave you feeling bad about yourself, resulting in guilt, regret, even resent and anger. By setting personal boundaries and trusting your own feelings and thoughts, and being clear about what you do and don’t want, you can achieve your own sense of inner security. If you are sure about who you are, it doesn’t matter what others externally say or do.  

“Listen to your own voice, your own soul. Too many people listen to the noise of the world, instead of themselves.” – Leon Brown

There are a great deal of articles and books on this topic. A book I have found helpful is Mirror Work by Louise Hay. In this book, you are guided through exercises where you look at yourself in a mirror and talk to yourself – to your inner child (the part of you inside that was once a child). It helps you uncover previous painful events and helps you release that pain and learn to appreciate who you are in the present moment. It teaches you how to be comfortable with yourself.

This book also highlights how you talk to yourself. Many of us might be kind to others, but we aren’t very pleasant to ourselves. When we start listening to what we are saying to ourselves, often we will find a negative stream of dialogue: berating ourselves over things from the past, present and even future scenarios, or constant criticism over how we look, feel or present ourselves.

If you hear yourself doing this, ask yourself: “If someone externally was saying these things to me, how would I feel?” Would you be upset, offended, even angry? If so then ask yourself: “Why am I saying these things to myself? Why am I not standing up for myself? Why am I not being a friend to myself?”

To practice self-love, let that voice speak, but don’t engage with it - know that it is not the truth. Not every thought you have in your head is true or real. And a lot of the noise in our heads is put there by other people: family, school friends, work colleagues. It is their perception of us, which is a reflection of themselves: their own thoughts and feelings. It is not who you are, and by listening and learning who you are, you can be sure of that.

“Be careful how you are talking to yourself, because you are listening.” – Lisa M Hayes

Compassion and empathy are feelings that we express when we care about someone deeply, and we want the best for them. They allow us to be non-judgemental and support people in being who they are and appreciating them. By listening to and trusting our feelings we are showing compassion and empathy for ourselves. We can then appreciate all the positive things about who we are and what we can bring to the world.

Self-love is something that can take years to build, but once you achieve it, you have a foundation of inner security: of trusting who you are and being sure of yourself. No longer questioning the things you do or feeling bad about them. It’s not easy, it takes courage to stand up and be honest about who you are, but you find that you start caring less about what others think and say about you. You realise that only what you think matters - because it is the only thing that impacts you.

“If you are not good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you will resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.”- Barbara De Angelis

Book Review: Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown

Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was interested in this book as it talked about finding true belonging, something that is hard to do in this world, and having watched Brene Brown talk about vulnerability, I was keen to read what she had to say on belonging, and I was not disappointed. She covered the topic thoroughly and gave guidance about how to go about it in today's world.

Braving the Wilderness was only published at the end of 2017 so Brene Brown refers to recent world events, culture and society. This is as much a guide to dealing with the current negativity, lack of integrity and fake news and political lies as it is about finding true belonging. It talks about how to deal with it and how to stay connected in a positive healthy way.

The section headings are advice on their own:

People are hard to hate close up. Move in.
Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil.
Hold hands. With strangers.
Strong back. Soft front. Wild Heart.

I would recommend this book to anyone struggling in today's world, and trying to find a way to cope with the overwhelming amount of noise it creates in our day to day lives. And anyone wanting to feel a sense of belonging in their lives.

View all my reviews

Self-sabotage: Identify when you are doing it & how to stop

Do you make a lot of excuses about not doing something you have always wanted to do?

Do you not inform yourself properly so you miss out on an opportunity you have always claimed to want?

Do you behave in certain ways that stop things from progressing in relationship?

“Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn’t happen.” - Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

Self-sabotage is when we have dreams or goals that we want to achieve, but keep putting them off, or create problems that stop them from happening. We might even attempt to try them but in a half-hearted way so that it goes wrong.  

We can sabotage a career by not informing ourselves properly about what we need to do, so we’re not successful when we take the first few steps. We might not work hard enough at it; we might keep making excuses why we can’t, or deliberately forget things and/or turn up late. Alternatively we might behave badly in interviews for a job we need but don’t really want, thus sabotaging our chances of getting it. 

In a relationship we might keep providing reasons why we are not good for our partner, or behave in ways that are destructive to the relationship: being needy, desperate, clingy, or argumentative, rude, aggressive, even disinterested, until eventually they break it off.

This type of behaviour is borne out of fear and feelings of lack: whether lack of self-belief, lack of self-esteem or lack of confidence; we don’t feel worthy, we don’t feel good enough. Or we are scared that if we succeed we will be a fraud or undeserving.  

We sabotage the great things in our lives because deep down we don’t feel worthy of having the great things.” – Taressa Riazzi

Our limiting beliefs about ourselves and our capabilities cause us to self- sabotage: If we believe something won’t work or that we won’t be able to create the desired outcome, we don’t commit in the first place. And through that non-commitment the cycle is repeated: we don't give it our all, so it doesn't work, thus reaffirming the belief that it's not for us - self-sabotage at its best. 

The way to deal with self-sabotage is to understand that we limit the things we want to do by the thoughts we have about them. 

If we have been told we can't do something as a young child, we may hold onto that, and believe we can never do it. If when we were a child we were enthusiastic about being an astronaut, but someone (a parent or teacher or authority figure) says "You can't possible do be an astronaut, science is not your strong point', we might believe it, and stop pursing our dream: no longer working at the subjects required with such commitment and vigour and getting lower grades, thus supporting the idea that we wouldn't be able to do it, and that they were right. But had we been encouraged, we could have worked on the subjects required and pursued a career in it, and truly giving it our best shot.

Unlocking the negative belief and seeing what we are truly capable of, we can embrace it and wonderful things can happen. 

To see if you are doing things to sabotage the things you want, write down a list of the things you want or wanted to do in your life. Leave nothing out.

Then make a list about why you aren’t doing (haven't done) them. Ask yourself: what is/was stopping me? Why do I believe I can't do them?

Then question that list. Ask yourself if the reasons you have provided are the truth, are they real reasons, or are they due to fear, or something somebody said? 

Question all of the answers back until you see what the truth is. More often than not you will find that really it is just yourself stopping you; most likely fear about being out of your comfort zone and trying something new. 

“A comfort zone is great, but nothing ever grows there.” – John Assaraf 

Seeing the reasons and the truth behind the reasons written down in black and white enables you to see them differently; seeing them outside of the internal perspective enables you to understand what is real and what is not. You can re-evaluate the truth behind the things you want to do, they can become tangible possibilities again, things you can pursue. 

You can then take the next step: Action. 

You do this by looking at the things you want to do and breaking them down into bitesize goals, and then take them step by step. This can involve learning what you need to so that you are fully equipped to do the things you want to do, and provide no more excuses.

"The distance between your dreams and reality is called Action." - Jim Rohn

But this can be trickier if self-sabotage is taking place in relationships. In those instances you need to question your beliefs about love:

What do you believe about love?
Where did you learn that?
Was that source positive or negative?
What do you believe about love – especially about you and love?
What do you tell yourself about love?
Do you let others love you?
Are you able to love yourself?
Do you know how to love yourself? 

It can be hard to give love to another if you aren’t very good at giving it to yourself. Working on these deep rooted beliefs can take a lot of in depth work. I recommend a course (available in book or audio) called Calling In The One by Katherine Woodward Thomas. She enables people to uncover all their issues surrounding love and relationships, and how to go about healing them. 

Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others we are withholding from ourselves. - Marianne Williamson 

Learning to identify where you are self-sabotaging in your life is the key to making the changes that will help bring you all the things you want and deserve in life.