David Feder and Associates Newsletter
Newsletter Issue # 4 Mid - November 2010
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| Greetings!
This newsletter begins a 4-part series on the theme of forgiveness.
This edition will focus on The Value and Importance of Forgiveness. The remaining topics will be covered in future editions of this newsletter. Look forward to reading about Forgiveness and Infidelity, What the Participating Partner Must Do To Be Forgiven, How Forgiveness Benefits the Hurt Partner and Self-Forgiveness.
Any time a person does not get what they want or when a person gets something they did not want, we feel hurt and a grievance or grudge can develop. Forgiveness leads to greater happiness and is the antidote to holding onto something that will never happen....a better past!
I hope you enjoy this series of articles and they assist you to feel better and more empowered.
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The Value and Importance of Forgiveness
Unfortunately hurt and disappoint is a fact of being alive. No one is immune. During your life you will either have something happen to you that you don't want, or you will not get something that you do want. Some of these disappointments will be minor and you will pay no attention to them. The disappointment will easily be forgotten. Other disappointments will either be more difficult for you to ignore and it may seem impossible for you to even consider it and instead you may develop a grudge against the person who disappointed you. You may choose not to speak to that person again and feeling victimized you may decide to act as though that person no longer exists in your life. Feeling angry you may spend hours thinking about how you might get even. When you can't move on it's because you took what occurred personally and you developed a grievance against the person who did you wrong. When this happens you lose control of the situation and you become powerless to it. You are stuck.
Most of us strife for happiness in our life. Most of us want to feel good and if this is true of you, you owe it to yourself to find a way to release the pain you feel. You want to get unstuck and reclaim your power and to do this, being able to forgive is critical. Through forgiveness you will move closer to reaching the state of feel good that you desire.
Unfortunately most people don't know how to forgive simply because most people were never taught how to. For most of us forgiveness is just another word in the english vocabulary and instead people hold onto their grievances and their negative emotions of anger and bitterness keep them stuck. They believe that they are doing the right thing, when in fact the opposite is true. People believe that they are hurting the person who hurt them, or they believe that the person who offended them will eventually in time see the error of their ways. This could happen, but what a high price to pay and continue to pay sometimes, for a very long time. As Dr. Luskin, Director and Co-Founder of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project explains, "the pain isn't necessarily started by you, but it is maintained by you."
In reality though the opposite happens and the unforgiving person remains stuck, hoping for a better past and, how likely is that to happen? Never! The past is the past and it cannot be changed. What people forget is that the present and future matters and is what needs to become the new focus. That is why forgiveness is so critical to one's state of happiness.
I believe if you ask ten people the same question you are likely to get ten different opinions. This is also true if you ask ten people for a definition of what it means to forgive. Think about your definition?
But what is forgiveness? Let me start with a brief discussion of what forgiveness is not. It does not mean that what happened to cause the grievance was alright, because it will never be alright. It does not mean that you condone what happened, because you will never condone it. It does not mean that you have to reconcile with the person who hurt you because forgiveness does not mean that you have to stay in an abusive relationship, or unhealthy relationship. Forgiveness does not mean that you shouldn't get what you deserve but it does mean that you do what you have to do without bitterness, anxiety, on-going disappointment and hate for another individual. You stop giving the other person power over you.
We forgive for ourselves and not for the person who hurt us. It is for our own healing. We forgive to open our heart so we can begin to appreciate the goodness that we have in our life. We forgive to release negative emotions that keep us stuck and in pain. We forgive to stop living in the past. We forgive so we can trust again and we forgive to reclaim our power and so we can stop being a victim to something that happened in the past, something that we cannot change. We forgive for today and through this we empower ourselves and we get closer to being the person we are intended to be.
Forgiveness is possible and we can learn to practice it in our life on a daily basis.
The benefits to forgiving are enormous and are evident in the emotional, psychological and physical parts of our being. People who forgive are happier, more content with their life. People who forgive have better relationships. People who forgive feel better and studies by Dr. Fred Luskin have proven this. He has shown that when people forgive they lower their level of stress and this results in improvement in every system of their body that responds to stress, including the cardiovascular system, the immune system and the nervous system.
There is no doubt about the benefits of being able to forgive. This has been proven in clinical studies. I hope that if you don't already know how to forgive you will take some time to learn. There are nine steps to forgiveness and these are posted on my website at mylifeafteranaffair.com. I hope you will take a look at these and determine where you are along the continuum leads to forgiving.
Remember, forgiveness is for you!
In the next edition of this newsletter in December I will speak about the topic of Forgiveness and Infidelity.
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