Page 48 - Creeative Thinking

So, try to be gentle with your self. You are, after all, only human and humans tend to
make mistakes. Let’s just hope that each time you make a mistake you are able to
learn a new and valuable lesson from your experience.

Although the other type of forgiveness, the kind you give to someone else, also
requires a great deal of patience and love, it does get increasingly easier each time you
give this gift away. So don’t get discouraged if your first attempts seem a little
awkward. You’ll get the hang of it. We will cover forgiveness in greater detail in the
following chapter and go over the specific steps involved in this process.

Whether you, yourself are the recipient of this gift, or you are handing over to a
deserving friend or foe, you WILL feel as though a weight has been lifted off your
shoulders once this gift has been given. Because the scar that was left by the negative
experience will be forever erased from your psyche, the positive effect of your
forgiveness is sure to spill over in to every aspect of your life. Consequently, many of
the negative emotions you had been feeling before will slowly begin to fade away.

No matter who is to be the recipient of your precious gift of forgiveness, there are some
words that are instrumental in this procedure. One of these key words is
“RECOGNITION” and another important word is “RESPONSIBILITY”.

Although feelings of “GUILT” and “BLAME” can become destructive if they are not
dealt with properly, these two words are exceptionally important in the process of
forgiveness. This is because, before a person can truly forgive another, he must learn
to own these emotions and then dispose of them appropriately before they cause him
any undue harm.

The last, but by no means the least important of these words is “LOVE”. More
specifically, self-love is the key to forgiveness for there is no hope of ever forgiving
anyone if you don’t love yourself.

To begin the process of learning to forgive, we must first learn to recognize the offence
that demands being forgiven. Think of the situation that has caused you grief and
specify exactly what requires forgiveness.

When doing this, it is especially helpful write down as much of the experience as you
can remember. This will make it easier to empathise with the perpetrator when the
time comes, in later steps.

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