9. Faith in forgiveness and getting rid of anger
Recipe for happiness
Keep your heart free of hate and your mind from worry. Only from here can you learn to be happy.
This is what everyone is striving for – this feeling of contentment. But it is something you must teach yourself. It leads to love of self and others.
From here gratitude is felt. It's the bigger picture of life you yearn for - a life of abundance rather than pettiness, of giving as opposed to meanness, of love instead of hate. Faith in yourself unlocks the power to lead to this wonderful life. Faith in the One gives you what you seek.
Look at your life now. How much sway over you have these angry thoughts and long-held grievances? Do you think of them as soon as you wake up and when you go to bed? Do they consume you with feelings of revenge? Of hate? Of guilt? Do you enjoy wallowing in them as you continually refuel the fires of hatred?
What's stopping you from changing your life and moving forward – it's these built up emotions of course. How can you live a fulfilled life, when you're carrying around a disease with you constantly. All diseases eat away at the body and mind eventually. They tire and drain all energy. You're just being constantly sapped of strength and direction. Carrying this burden around will always keep you from having what you want. You'll always be unconsciously making your life difficult and using up all your available energy on hate rather than love. How can you be grateful for anything if you're feeling resentment?
Let's look at you. We've all had dealings with such people, who don't treat either themselves or anyone else well. Look at yourself in the workplace. “Nothing is ever good enough. I'm a perfectionist. I was always told I wasn't good enough. Well I can prove everyone wrong. I'm the only one that is good enough. I can't trust anyone to delegate work to. Without me the business would fail”.
Look at yourself at home. “I'm divorced. I just couldn't take the constant demands and nagging. No one tells me what to do”.
“I'm proving myself. The business isn't going as well as I'd hoped, but I'll get there. I can't see my friends and kids as much as I'd like, but things must be sacrificed. I'm drinking heavily, but only to network with clients as I need to build up my cashflow”.
Never facing these self-esteem issues that have built up from the past, has lead to never forgiving yourself for the past. You blame your parents, but the only one that is feeling the effects now is you. You can't be kind to yourself as you don't deserve it.
These are the negative feelings carried around from the past:
I'm not good enough
Things have to be perfect
Any problems aren't my fault
I'm doing my best but it seems it's not good enough
I blame my parents/my upbringing/lack in my life
I don't deserve love and happiness
The necessary changes for a new life:
Realizing you have power
You're not alone in making changes. I'm here as We are One.
You have positive attributes
When you know these use them
Work with these assets to get what you want
You decide what your life is like
Decide on the best
No one is to blame except yourself
Choose love, gratitude and from here happiness
When you look at the above list of the necessary mind changes you need to evoke to allow abundance into your life, you'll realize the biggest things you need to get rid of are:
anger
resentment
which lead to low self esteem issues of:
drug/alcohol dependence
abuse
hatred
You refuel your anger all the time, by continually rehashing the same old problems. New problems then arise from here which just add to the mess.
“I've always hated my mother. She allowed me to be abused by different boyfriends. I rarely went to school and hid in my room all day. She was too busy with her own life to notice. I've never had any friends and can't seem to relate to people. I watch tv all day but life itself seems unreal. I feel like I know a lot of things, even though I never finished school. I don't think I'm very pretty, but men seemed to be interested in me.
I now had two kids, but all the men I end up with seem to be abusive. They're always drunk/on drugs and come home and start. I don't have any money. This seems to be the cycle of my life”.
An all too familiar story. Hatred links to abuse, which links to more anger, alcohol and addiction. If you want to leave this treadmill, you're basically going to have to decide you want to do it and get help. But ultimately you're going to have to do it yourself.
How can you start:
a. Know it's up to you and take the responsibility
b. You're not alone in doing this as I'm you and I'm here to help
c. You are not a lone wolf crying in the desert. You are part of the bigger picture of life. If you're reading this book, I know you are looking for a spiritual life. Not a life of sacrifice and repenting for your past sins. But a life of happiness and hope. A life of faith to continue and allow change.
d. You can implement change as you are an all powerful being
e. You are always choosing your life. You chose your parents even before you entered this life, so even though you say, “I hate my mother”, you chose her. You have to work through this scenario now. Why are you choosing abuse, being a victim and living with the subsequent misery? Decide you want to make another choice now.
You've made the decision but how do you implement it?
“I want a better life. I want a better life for my kids. It's going to be tough. That's for sure. I can't get a job and have no skills. But if I can change my attitude first, that's a great step towards a job. First attitude, second skills, third job. If I can believe that I'm bringing all these problems about, I've got to be the one to do something about it”.
Ok, acknowledgment is the first big step.
Secondly you need to bring some peace into your life to create balance. While you're always seething inside, no new life can ever come about.
Everything in life requires practice. You think it's only sport and practical things. But it's the mental side of life as well. Let's look at how anger manifests and how peace shows. Peace rebalances.
Anger manifests as:
High blood pressure
Sweating
Screaming Shaking
Uncontrollable fear
Fist clutching and angry gestures
You haven't been able to control yourself. After the incident you always regret it when you've cooled down. You've made another fool of yourself and all the old feelings of blame and hatred resurface.
Peace shows as:
Steady blood pressure levels
A cool exterior
A calm person to be with
A person who speaks when necessary in a low voice. When you feel the level of your voice rising, lower it. A fight cannot ensue when the other person can barely hear what you're saying.
Relax with deep breaths. Deep breathing always lowers your blood pressure and calms the situation.
Unclench your fists. Just extend your fingers and see what a difference that makes.
Walk away. If you're not charging like a bull, just sitting down or going in the opposite direction, means the fight can't continue.
Think blue. Practice getting rid of the red in your life.
Hurtful comments can strike a raw nerve, but mentally block these and just think a positive thought.
“Another fight has just started. I've put in my IPod and left the room. I've taken the kids for a walk. I know I'm not the slut he's calling me. I know I'm not that moron. More and more I realize he's the increasingly insecure one. The stronger I get the more I know I can do something about the way things are. I now have a spiritual inner life. I'm going to the park. Along the way I'm recharging my mind with thoughts of the pond, the birds, the breeze in the trees. I can be one with these things, so why should I choose to be anything else. I'm no victim, I'm the instigator of events. I'm finally moving on”.
Continue with this peace in your life. Start each day with a few words of thanks. Even if you're woken up at 3am with a baby, give thanks for a few more hours of sleep and enjoyment of this baby. When you awaken, stretch and feel it's going to be a good day. Take some deep breaths and watch your breathing in and out. Focus on this just for five minutes. Roll your new positive life through your mind. Watch these affirmations passing through your thoughts. An enjoyable breakfast, talking to the kids, achievements at home and at work will pass through. It is going to be a good day!
That person who's irritating you. Increasingly see them as one of the mosquitoes of life. They're always trying to buzz, buzz, buzz in your ear, wearing you down so you'll drown with them. You now know you're the power and they're the small fry. Make a conscious decision to delegate them and their barbs. Noticing their behavior only fuels the problem. Just feel sorry for them as they know nothing. If a person is so small-minded they need to be forgiven for their small-minded acts. Really they need to be ignored as they can't help themselves. You can move on and they can't. How pathetic does that make them!
They're the one's suffering. You've emerged triumphant on the other side, as you now know that harboring hatred and resentment affects no one in the end but yourself.
Just keep practicing forgetting. They and your past can no longer affect you, unless you allow it to. No matter what happened in the past, you both decided on it. Even if you don't believe this now, at the end of your life you're know this situation was a stepping stone for you to grow. See it as such and use this to move forward.
Grow from this and now you can forgive and forget. Just keep practicing. By forgiving others we really are forgiving ourselves.
By draining off this anger in forgiveness, you are able to finally give thanks for your life. This leads to feeling love again and being able to make new positive choices. Only then can you finally move on.