Where do we go from here?

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love." 

--Martin Luther King, Jr. at www.brainyquote.com

Christmas Eve was rough this year. 

Three out of the four of us were recovering from the stomach flu and we were lying around the house feeling nauseated and headachey. We didn't leave the house all day. 

By evening the novelty of being home-bound was lost on all of us, especially the boys. They were fighting like cats and dogs. 

I have come a long way in my parenting; spills no longer make me angry, I can look the other way at a massive pile of Legos on the floor, even backtalk can be met with a loving tone, but when my kids are being mean to each other it just sets me off. 

So what did I do? I joined the fray. 

At 7:00 pm on Christmas Eve night I could be found in my bathrobe and slippers, standing in the basement, screaming at my kids, "If you don't stop fighting I'm going to throw out every one of your Christmas presents!"

We could talk for days about the irony, but if I didn't get it then, I'm not thinking I'll get it now. 

One of my New Year's resolutions last year was: Forgive Everyone for Everything. I'm moving it right to the top this year as well. And at the top of my list is myself.

There are lots of different forgiveness processes, some of which I have mentioned on this blog, but my current favorite is called Radical Forgiveness.

Radical Forgiveness was created by a lovely British man called Colin Tipping. He realized that traditional forgiveness (where one person says to another, "I forgive you.") does not really work for most people and we continue to suffer the pain of the "incident" long after we have supposedly forgiven the other person (or been forgiven). 

So he developed a set of tools, in the form of worksheets, to help people achieve true forgiveness and total freedom from the past.

The worksheets are amazing! And many of them are free on his website . 

There are worksheets for forgiving someone for a specific incident, a worksheet for forgiving yourself, a worksheet for manifesting a new job, he even has a worksheet (called Balancing Humenergy) for when you just don't like someone, but are not even sure why. 

I love this! That has happened to me so many times in my life and I would love to know what might have happened if I could have recognized that energy and cleared it right away. Things might have been very different - and much more pleasant - for both of us.

He also has longer, more intensive programs for forgiving your partner, your parents and yourself. 

I did the partner program earlier this year and it was pretty incredible.

I like to think that my husband and I have a pretty good relationship, but after I finished this program it was like a whole new ballgame. We stopped having the same arguments over and over again, I was able to let things go much more easily and our communication was just on a new and different level. 
 

The best part is that you can do this process with anyone in your life or past that you hold negative energy around and they don't have to even know about it for it to work. It truly is a miraculous process!

 

I encourage you to check out his website, try out a worksheet or two, and see how it works for you.

In keeping with my New Year's resolution I will be doing a lot of these this year. And the "Forgiving Yourself" program is right up there on the list too.

Wishing you miracles of forgiveness in 2011!