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I am sure that everyone, at one time in their life, has experienced being hurt by another person. Most times the hurt comes from a breach of trust that we have placed in someone close to us: someone steals from us, marital infidelity, divorce, and physical abuse are some of those breaches.
Life is so short.
When you think about how much time we really have in our lives, it can be quite humbling to realize how quickly it can go by.
In past articles, we have spoken about forgiving others and forgiving yourself or, in other words, your being the party doing the forgiving. But there are also times when we might need to be forgiven by another person for hurtful actions we have taken.
Many people carry around a significant amount of guilt as a result of actions they have taken that have been hurtful to others. And many times this guilt can have significant consequences for the person carrying it and may even limit their ability to enjoy their life.
At this moment, while I sit here writing, I cannot think of one thing that I have done that the memory of makes me feel resentment towards myself. Sure, there are things that I have done that were hurtful to others, but for the most part I have realized my actions may have caused hurt, tried to learn from my actions so I won’t repeat them, and asked for and received forgiveness for my actions. From this, I have been able to move forward in my life without carrying a lot of guilt and self-resentment.
In my original post “Choosing Forgiveness”, I discussed how to move forward in your life and cut the ties that bind you to someone who has hurt you through learning to forgive that person. Now it is time to look at ourselves and try to examine what internal baggage we might be carrying around that we need to be able to free ourselves from by choosing to forgive ourselves.
[Read more…] about Choosing Forgiveness – Part 2 – Forgive yourself