The most painful experience in life is being seriously and deliberately harmed by someone else. These wounds can leave you with lasting feelings of anger and bitterness even vengeance.
But if you don’t practice forgiveness, you might be the one who pays most dearly. By embracing forgiveness, you can also embrace peace, hope, gratitude, and joy. Consider how forgiveness can lead you down the path of physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.
When we keep grudges and grievances, we retain everything that goes with them; anxiety, irritability, anger, depression, weight gain or loss, lack of trust in ourselves and others, insomnia, addictions, etc.
Letting go of grudges and bitterness can make way for improved health and peace of mind.
Following are 5 of reasons that should convince you it’s time to let go and move on.
- Stops War and Promotes Peace
Forgiveness is one of the keys to peace. When we can’t forgive other people for what they do or say, we keep ourselves in a state of war with them. We battle over how right we are, and, obviously, that affects everything in a very negative way, whether the war is on a big scale or a small scale.
Having little wars with others in your life is a bad thing. The consequences of war are; loss of time, energy, happiness, relationships, etc. Therefore, one of the benefits of forgiveness, and experiencing peace instead of war, includes things like gaining time, gaining energy, gaining happiness, and gaining relationships.
Moreover, having wars with yourself is a bad thing. Contemplating what you should have done, what they should have done, and what you can do to make it all better, is just as bad as actually fighting with the other person.
- Healthier relationships
When we make forgiveness a regular part of our spiritual practice, we start to notice that all of our relationships (with lovers, co-workers, bosses, neighbors, etc.) begin to blossom. There’s far less drama to deal with, and that’s a huge bonus in life.
- Improved psychological well-being
By releasing our grievances, we become more harmonious on all levels. Nightmares recede and exciting new life visions become commonplace. We feel calmer, happier and ready to give compassion and love to our world.
A good life, full of quality relationships, service to others and fun, is something that most of us hope for without ever knowing how to create it.
- Helps you sleep better at night.
The emotional weight of an injury is often heavier than the actual injury and takes longer to heal. When a person forgives another, it feels as though the pressure is released from one’s shoulders. Forgiving people have less stress and more joy, regardless of the pain in their life.
- Less hostility
By its very nature, forgiveness asks us to let go of hostility toward ourselves and others. Spontaneous hostile behavior, like road rage and picking a fight for no reason, goes down as our commitment to forgiveness goes up.
