The Everyday Mystic

It’s normal to get angry or feel bad when someone does something that hurts you.  However, letting anger, resentment and bitterness accumulate inside you is detrimental to your physical, emotional and spiritual health.  We know that learning to forgive eases stress, improves health and makes you happier.  Here is a “quick win” method to forgive the every day events that you interpret as a grievance against you:

1. Journal.  Writing about your deepest thoughts and feelings about the incident helps you to analyze and process the emotions.  Just getting your feelings out of the deep dark closet of your brain and heart and onto paper is a cathartic experience in itself.  You can read what you’ve written using the analytical powers of your executive brain and sort things out.  The act of journaling itself can heal.
2. Reframe. You have interpreted the event’s meaning using your own unique set of filters, which represent your beliefs, background, recent and past events and self-concept.  You have created a story that interprets the incident according to your ego’s voice.  Try to reframe the story in another context, to see it from a different angle.  Play a game with yourself to see how many possible alternative views you can imagine. You might ask questions like:
   1. What in my background would make me act like the other person?
   2. How can I assign a positive intent to what the other person did?
   3. How might an unconditionally loving parent/God see this situation?
3. Bless the other. Instead of paving a superhighway in your brain that whisks your thoughts right to “I can’t believe he did this to me - I want to wring his neck!”, you can catch yourself and bless the other person.  Substitute thoughts such as, “She did the best she could” or “I wish her well.”

Stop the anger and bitterness before they have a chance to put a vise-grip on your heart.  Use the quick win method and forgive faster!

Want more forgiveness?  Register for Kristin’s FREE Forgiveness and Emotional Release Telesummit that starts this Saturday, August 1!  Hear 7 days of interviews with experts on forgiveness - at no cost!  Register today to attend from the comfort of your office or home, and on your schedule at www.aforgivenessjournal.com/telesummit2009

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