Empowering Forgiveness Guide - Forgive Yourself and Others to Achieve Mental Wellness, Self Love, and Better Communication - Free Zine Read!

Forgiveness - How to Forgive Yourself and Others is an empowering mental health mini zine that quickly covers the ins and outs of forgiveness to strengthen communication, promote mental wellness and nurture self love.

When we associate a person with a bad experience, we can choose to forgive or not forgive that person. Depending on what the other person did, you must decide whether or not forgiving them is the better option. Would it cause you relief or result in more suffering? You may or may not announce that you are formally forgiving a person, but forgiveness is always a personal mental action.

Available for purchase on our Etsy Shop or read for free below. If you'd rather read the transcribed text, scroll to the bottom of this post.

The One Minute Happiness series is a growing collection of mini zines that explore different topics in coping with anxiety and depression by providing empowering insights into various areas of mental health. They include Happy Healthy Checklist, Happy Healthy Eating, Happy Healthy Habits, Happy Healthy Suffering, Soulular Potential, Forgiveness, Trauma, and Your Highest Form. Read them all for free on our Etsy Shop.

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Transcribed text from Forgiveness - How to Forgive Yourself and Others

Introduction

When we associate a person with a bad experience, we can choose to forgive or not forgive that person. Depending on what the other person did, you must decide whether or not forgiving them is the better option. Would it cause you relief or result in more suffering? You may or may not announce that you are formally forgiving a person, but forgiveness is always a personal mental action.

You can learn more about alternative mental health and the science of happiness at www.sageliskey.com

Please note that while the information contained herein is researched and has worked for me, I am not a medical professional and none of this is meant to be medical advice. As such I do not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented and disclaim liability for errors and omissions. The front cover is a digital collage created by Sage Liskey.

Forgiving A Person

Living with anger and sadness constantly pushes down our personal emotional state. You don't have to forgive a person, but it typically feels better if you do.

If you want to forgive someone, you must do two things:

1) Desire to both forgive and continue creating new memories with the person in question.
2) Stop thinking about what that person did or did not do.

This is much simpler if you can communicate with the person in question.


Communicating Forgiveness

The easiest way to forgive someone is to communicate, preferably in person, whatever is frustrating you and ask for that person to change their behavior. Typically friends will listen and heed your desires. When communicating your frustration, avoid using judgments and instead keep with observable facts and feelings – “When you broke my vase I felt really angry and am having trouble trusting you around my possessions.” That will help a person feel much more open to communicating over saying “you're a careless asshole.” More on this style of speaking can be learned through Nonviolent Communication developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg.

Forgiving Yourself

While in many instances we need to forgive others, in some we need to forgive ourselves to relieve the self-criticism that emotionally weighs on us. Follow these steps:
1) Desire to forgive yourself.
2) Stop thinking about what you did or did not do.
3) Understand why what you did in the specific instance caused yourself or others suffering, and be willing to avoid recreating that series of events again.
4) Continue on with your life by participating in daily activities and spending time with people. It is most difficult to forgive yourself when you are isolated.

Helpful Tips

1) Take time away from your source of frustration and form new memories with other people. You may forget why you were angry at the person in question or at least cool down enough to want to give them another chance. If you're close enough, the good memories often overwhelm the bad ones. 2) See a therapist and work through traumatic experiences surrounding a difficult to forgive person. 3) Don't wait around for the other person to apologize. Sometimes finding, naming, and apologizing for your own role in a conflict can greatly help soften a difficult conversation. 4) Create a gratitude list by writing down everything that you have appreciated about a person – why does one bad experience have to destroy the connection you have?

Helpful Tips, Continued

5) Forgive yourself and others as soon as possible. It will become more and more difficult to do so the longer you wait.6) Understand that behind all anger is sadness. Instead of focusing on the anger, find out why you are sad. 7) If you can will yourself to dream or do visualization exercises about a person, working out emotions there can assist in the process of forgiveness. 8) Walk in their shoes – were they being intentionally hurtful? Did they have trauma from youth? Have empathy.9) How many times do you forgive a person before you realize that they're not worth the pain? Is there a recurring pattern to what you need to forgive others for? Why is that? Is there anything attached to your youth, previous relationships, or cultural heritage?
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Digital collage by Sage liskey from Surviving The Collapse of Society, my upcoming book! Learn more from my previous blog entry here. You can purchase a print of this digital collage on my Etsy Shop.