One of the key skills in life for each of us is the ability to forgive other people and ourselves. Unfortunately, only a few have this skill. If you are one of them, do not read this article! For the rest, we discussed the topic of forgiveness in detail. Read and change your life. Find out how to learn to forgive grievances!
A quick question: is the ability to forgive a strength or a weakness?
People and resentment
Today, most people tend to dwell on their grievances and are able to torment themselves with negative thoughts and experiences for years. This does not bring any benefit and only harms physical and mental health.
If you look closely, such people are constantly dissatisfied with something, this attracts troubles to themselves, something bad constantly happens in their lives. Why is this happening?
The fact is that resentment has tremendous destructive power. If a person holds grudges, he is finished.
At the same time, people who are able to live and let go of their negative experiences, find positivity even in the most hopeless situations, and forgive their offenders live many times happier lives.
Which category of people would you classify yourself as? If you want happiness, read on.
The ability to forgive in the modern world
With the advent of televisions, social networks and other depersonalizing crap, people began to absorb tons of negative energy from these sources. Many have already forgotten how to give gifts and love, rejoice and laugh. People don't know how to learn to forgive insults.
“The heart forgives often, the mind rarely, pride never”
Louis Dumur
The development of modern technologies gives rise to more and more grievances against oneself, against one’s family, and against one’s environment. Lost in gadgets, people forget how to communicate with each other, how to talk about the most important things. As a result, they feel resentment towards the whole world for not being understood and appreciated.
First of all, this concerns the younger generation. For example, modern teenagers are often offended by their parents because they cannot provide them with the desired standard of living, broadcast by social networks, fashion bloggers and other unauthorized individuals.
Due to being constantly offended, adolescents develop an inferiority complex and dissatisfaction with life. Such children grow up to be incapable of mediocrity, who spend their whole lives looking for someone to blame, do not know how to solve problems and cannot admit their mistakes.
The key to salvation is the ability to forgive. The ability to forgive is the ability to let go of difficult situations, look at them from a different angle, give thanks, perceive what is happening as a lesson from which you can draw benefit and important experience.
Having learned this, you will notice how your life will change, how many new and interesting things will appear in it. You will discover new opportunities for yourself and see the world from a completely different perspective. You will have inspiring goals and a zest for life.
The ability to forgive is power!
Why do we get offended
Try to remember your very first offense. It will probably be something from childhood. It is during this period of life that we learn well how to “correctly” be offended by others in order to achieve our goals. Many girls and boys, unfortunately, take this childhood skill into adulthood.
When do we get offended?
- If someone didn't give us something we really wanted (be it a lollipop or a luxurious bouquet of roses on a special occasion);
- If someone did not “read your thoughts” and did not do as you wished (it was out of spite that he did not go to the store to buy bread...);
- If your opponent’s opinion is fundamentally at odds with yours (after all, you are sincerely convinced that you are right, and he is proving something to you).
We are offended simply because we are accustomed to reacting this way since childhood. Touchiness can quietly become part of one’s character - a real bad habit that destroys a person from the inside.
The root of the problem is childhood grievances
Childhood grievances are considered the most severe. Few people are able to cope with them on their own. Of course, you can try this way, but it is better and faster in this situation to contact a specialist.
There is nothing terrible or reprehensible in this. This does not indicate the presence of mental illness, but only indicates that the person wants to live happily and be in harmony with himself.
Why is it important to forgive childhood grievances?
Without letting go of childhood grievances and forgiving those closest to you, you cannot continue to move towards a conscious, happy life. No matter how much you want to just forget and move on, it won’t work.
Everything that happened to us in childhood is the cause of our present. Therefore, it is first important to “forgive” the past and only then take on the future.
A person who does not know how to forgive will fail in life.
Adult children resent their parents. How to learn to forgive grievances:
Understand the reason
There are situations when not everything is so obvious. Nobody called you bad words, but the statement was not abstract, like, for example, a joke, but was quite specifically aimed at you. For example, you were told that you have recently gained some weight. Or they congratulated you on your promotion, at the same time clarifying what a great guy Ivan Ivanovich was for supporting you, otherwise without him you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere at all.
This, of course, offends, especially if there are grounds for such statements and you have actually recently begun to gain excess weight. But it hurts even more if there is no reason, and you deserved support because you worked day and night on a project that was important for the entire department, and not just for Ivan Ivanovich, while simultaneously studying for an MBA, improving your English and literally never getting out of business trips.
Here, too, it is very important to separate two points: whether your well-being depends on your offender or does not depend. If the spiteful critic is approximately on the same level of the social ladder with you and your well-being does not depend on him in any way, forgiving him is as easy as shelling pears. Think that nature has already deprived him of kindness and intelligence, instead providing him with a burden of envy, anger and pessimism. Forgive him, and stay away from him in the future, because even such a person somehow has the intelligence to figure out how to harm others, at least with the same inappropriate remarks about appearance or belittling other people’s merits.
A truly kind and smart person would never gloat that someone has gained excess weight. And of course, he will be happy for his colleague who has received a promotion, and will not look for reasons why he is not worthy of a better position and a higher salary. If you hope that the person is simply not aware of your merits and contribution to the common cause, you can agree that Ivan Ivanovich, of course, helped, but if someone knew how much time you spent on the project that became decisive in your career , then I would also decide that the promotion was a natural result. If the explanation did not help and your offender continues to spew bile, then it is better to distance yourself from him.
It is much more difficult if the person offending you has the power to influence your well-being. For example, if this is your boss or a representative of the top management of the company, a husband or wife, a friend with whom you have many common affairs. Now we won’t talk about the fact that you need to choose your friends or your other half carefully. If only because life goes on, people change, and after 5-7 years of living or working together, there may be a different person next to you than the one who was at the start of family life or a pilot business project. But this does not mean that nothing can be done about such changes in someone else’s behavior.
You can just talk to a loved one. It often turns out that he doesn’t even suspect that his stupid jokes and statements somehow offend you. Then such a conversation can put an end to both the cause of the offense and the offense itself. It’s more difficult with a boss, however, and here you can use dialogue tactics. You can always answer his unfounded attacks that you tried, and you are also sorry that everything turned out a little worse than expected. Usually this reduces the intensity of passions, because... there is no point in offending you further if you are already sad and sorry.
If outbursts of negative emotions and offensive accusations against you do not happen very often at work, perhaps there are some objective reasons for them, and you should not be offended, but rather work better. If the accusations are constant, random, unfair and unfounded, then it’s time to think deeply and seriously. Permanent resentment over unfair attacks threatens to develop into chronic stress and depression, which are harmful to health – mental and physical. So something definitely needs to be done about this. What exactly?
For example, remember the words of the wisest Socrates that “no one is your friend or enemy, but everyone is your teacher.” What can a situation of constant attacks and growing resentment against injustice teach you? For example, that you should get rid of template thinking and take responsibility for your success. First, it’s worth understanding why a person tends to be offended.
Why do people get offended:
- The gap between reality and expectation. In response to his decent behavior, a person expects the same from others and is offended when his expectations are not met.
- Your own parallel reality, which others are not even aware of. You do something for someone, and that someone thinks that it goes without saying.
There is no one's specific fault here. False thinking patterns are cultivated in us from childhood. Remember the saying “judge not, lest ye be judged.” You will! They will wash all your bones, even you have never said an evil word about anyone in your life. Or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In fact, other people may have desires that are different from yours, and you don’t need to treat them the way you want them to treat you. And expect that in return they will do with you as you want, too.
It is equally important to understand the reasons why people, in principle, offend someone. This will make it easier for you to forgive or, alternatively, allow you to develop adequate counteraction tactics. In this case, they will simply stop offending you, which means you will have nothing to be offended by.
Who is more likely to act as an offender?
- Badly educated people who do not understand the inappropriateness of certain jokes and remarks.
- People who want to assert themselves at the expense of others.
- Conflict personalities who need conflict for the sake of conflict.
- Toxic people, for whom everything is always bad and everyone around them is bad, which should definitely be reported to everyone, including you.
- People who are offended and underestimated or who consider themselves to be so.
The last option is the most difficult to recognize and, accordingly, the most difficult to forgive, because it is not clear what the matter is and what exactly should be forgiven. There are few options here: either stop such communication so as not to receive a new portion of insults, or listen carefully to what the person says about himself and others. Then there is a chance to understand his behavior, which is usually enough to stop being offended. For example, if a person talks about how long and hard it was to get to the top of his career, and at the same time makes caustic remarks about your promotion, he may believe that you have had it unfairly easy.
There are several options:
- You can formally support him, saying that his achievements are cool, and you are just taking your first steps and intend to emulate him. Firstly, dialogue does not allow the offense to become mothballed. Secondly, you will deceive the brain, because a person cannot be offended by something with which he agreed at least formally or partially. Thirdly, light flattery can be useful in dealing with people, especially narrow-minded and envious people.
- If this does not help, you can structure the dialogue differently. For example, nod your head sympathetically and say something like “Yes, it turned out to be so simple, and you flew through the program, spending so many years on such nonsense and receiving a diploma with honors in order to work for the same salary as former C students.”
Our “Best Communication Techniques” program, which you can complete in just 2 months, will help you think through a dialogue option specifically for your situation. Even if the dialogue ends in shouting and insults, your offender will stop saying nasty things about you in your presence, so as not to look like an idiot in the eyes of others. What he will say about you in your absence is no longer important. As one Odessa joke aptly noted, “tell him that when I’m not there, he can even beat me.” By the way, many psychological and meditative practices offer such distancing from the problem.
Is it possible to learn to forgive?
Can!
Gradually moving on to practice
