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4 Steps To Truly Forgiving

Forgiveness… it is espoused by very nearly any program for personal growth or healing, whether scientific, religious, or new age. The reason behind the effectiveness of forgiveness is not mystical, however. The reason that forgiveness is so essential is simple: True forgiveness involves releasing your hold on grudges that are constantly draining your mental energy.

When you hold on to grudges, you are devoting mental energy to maintaining them and the emotions that you associate with them. Since we're talking about grudges here, this also means that emotions you are devoting your energy to holding on to are negative . Think about it… you are intentionally causing yourself to feel bad feelings. That doesn't make sense, but if you allow your subconscious mind control, things don't have to make sense.

Understand What Forgiveness Is

True forgiveness begins with acknowledging and accepting responsibility for any emotions that you attach to an act. "They" didn't make you angry. "They" did something, and you became angry. The difference between the two is critical. The first one assigns blame for the feeling, and responsibility to change that feeling, to the person who committed the act. The second one brings it back to where it belongs: you.

Forgiveness always comes from within, never from outside. That is because outsiders have no control over the emotions, the feelings, inside of you. The best they can do is inspire you to decide to change yourself.
Understand What Forgiveness Is Not

Forgiveness is not justifying or forgetting. It is not pretending like nothing happened, or letting actions go without consequence merely for the sake of "forgiveness".

Many people confuse forgiving an act with justifying the act. When you justify an act, you search for reasons to show that the act was never bad, right from the beginning. But that doesn't fool your subconscious… it knows what you really feel, what you really believe, and so it will continue to hold negative emotions, though your consciousness may disguise them as feeling guilty either for having provoked the action, or for not having truly "forgiven" it. Your consciousness is not fooled by false justification… and if you REALLY believe the act was completely, 100% justified, then you'll have no forgiveness to grant.

Forgetting and pretending nothing happened are actually the same thing… because you're highly unlikely to ever truly forget. Once you feel like an act has harmed you, your subconscious stores it away in patterns having to do with getting hurt, so that it can recognize similar situations in the future and act to avoid that hurt. Thus, both of these things are false fronts, and do not contribute in positive ways to either you or the person who you want to forgive.

Letting actions go without consequence is VERY commonly mistaken for forgiveness. In reality, it's one of the worst choices you can make. If actions have no consequences attached, then the person committing those actions doesn't learn anything from them. If someone does something that hurts you, and there are NO bad consequences, they will do so again in the future in the same situation. Now keep in mind, knowing that they hurt you may be a bad consequence for some people, but even then, that still requires that you let them know that they hurt you. That means that without consequences for the action, not only did you get hurt, but the person who did it won't even learn that they did something wrong.
Understand Why Forgiveness Is Important

Negative emotions have a natural tendency to become entangled. That means that when you attach negative emotions to an act, those emotions become entangled with any OTHER negative emotions you have tied to another act. They become one interconnected mass, the total size of which grows with each new act to which you attach negative emotions. The fact that they are entangled also means that as you add more to this mass, already existing emotions become harder to release, and new ones are more likely to stick.

This entangled mass is what causes situations where one annoying but inconsequential act snowballs into massive amounts of negative emotions. Basically, it catches onto the existing entanglement of negatives and rips the whole thing into your conscious awareness, but WITHOUT THE REASONS BEHIND THE WHOLE THING. That is, all of your negative emotions that you have piled up get focused on this one, inconsequential thing, and so you completely overreact, out of all proportion to the "cause". Often, you won't know, even later, WHY you did that… so you'll come up with some sort of reason that half fits.

All that energy that you are dumping into holding onto this entanglement of negatives is energy that could be spent to improve your current life, work for the future, deepen relationships, or any number of other things. Because of inertia, though, you continue to spend that energy on anger, frustration, pain, and other bad things from past events. If you were to consciously choose which thing to spend your energy on, what would you choose: positive things in the present and future, or negative things from the past?
Take Action

Letting the negative emotions attached to an act go is an intentional action. You choose to stop devoting the energy to continue feeling the hurt. You choose to untangle the negative emotions from the act you are forgiving from whatever other emotions onto which you are holding. You acknowledge that the act hurt you, but that it is in the past, and that you're only slowing yourself down by holding onto those emotions.

Once you have let the emotions associated with an act go, you can make practical choices about how to respond to the action. You can decide, in fact, if it's worthy of a response other than to note it in passing. Some acts may not be. Others may require you to respond drastically. With your sight cleared of all the negative filters from anger, pain, or whatever else, you can actually make these choices consciously and in an educated manner. You will no longer feel the desire to simply strike out, to make someone else pay for your hurt. That means that you can choose appropriate consequences, and actually let go of the attention you were giving to the act (this includes subconscious attention, which is actually the most dangerous kind, since it's difficult to recognize as even being present, let alone the cause of stress and bad feelings).

Forgiveness can be a cascading event. Forgiving one action removes some of the negative emotions from the entangled mass present in most of us. As anyone who has untied a nasty knot can tell you, each thread you remove makes the rest easier to detangle. You also learn the process, and become adjusted to it, making it even easier to do. You may find that with a few conscious efforts at forgiving specific acts, it starts to become natural… though you will still find instances that require your conscious attention from time to time.

True forgiveness requires conscious acknowledgement of an event that hurt you and the negative emotions that you attach to it. It requires that you acknowledge these feelings, and then let them go. It requires you to take responsibility for the feelings that you associate with the act, because as long as you blame someone else for making you feel that way, you won't be ABLE to let them go (how can you let feelings someone else controls go?).

But most importantly, true forgiveness opens up a huge amount of your life and energy that were closed off by those negative emotions. It makes it FAR easier to be happy and at peace. Those things you aren't fogiving are anchors holding you back from the happiness, the joy, the life that you could be experiencing.

Get rid of your anchors. Forgive someone today!

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Author

August 20th

Awareness, Communication, Energy, Free Will, Relationships, Subconscious

The Power Of The Spoken Word – Spoken Words Multiply

Spoken Words Multiply

The power of words is multiplied as the spoken word multiplies… often having consequences far beyond what the speaker intended.

You've heard stories about, and maybe even been affected by, the power of gossip and rumors. You probably have experience with someone letting something slip to someone they shouldn't have, where it came back to bite you. You've even heard of the power of "word of mouth" when it comes to advertising or gaining customers. These are all some of the more obvious signs of the power of the spoken word.

The spoken word is of immense power. Something you mention off-hand can completely alter the course of the life of someone who hears it… even someone who overhears it. You might mention to your friend as you're walking that you're tired of having to deal with one of your vendors, and someone you're passing by right at that moment may hear you and start a company to compete with that vendor, eventually becoming the biggest company in that industry… all because of your off-hand comment.

That is the power of the word with an individual. But the REAL power of the spoken word is that it multiplies. You tell one person something, and they pass on what they heard… which is NOT necessarily the same thing that you said. This often happens whether you want it to or not.

What that means is that you really need to watch what you say. People around you will remember what you say even after you've forgotten that you ever said it. Not only that, but they will pass it on, either through actual words, or through the way their behavior is modified because your words altered their perceptions of whatever you were talking about.

Tying this back to a recent article of mine, 8 Ways To Show Your Husband You Love Him, one of the very common, very nasty examples of this is when one spouse goes into detail about the faults of the other with friends and family. Many times, they even seem to enjoy getting as low as they can, reporting even things that are temporary or very private (ie "He's insecure about his competency when it comes to his job"… that sort of thing is told with the expectation of privacy, and should not be passed along). You can easily predict what this is going to do to the way the people hearing it view the object of the conversation. This effect is, of course, even stronger when the words are repeated, first of all by the original speaker, and then afterward by those who hear it among themselves and others.

Every spoken word affects every person who hears it. The amount it affects them is, to be honest, completely unpredictable to the speaker. It might be something they dismiss immediately, which never even gets committed to long-term memory. On the other hand, the smallest thing can trigger massive surges of thoughts and feelings in someone, for reasons the speaker may know nothing about.

It even affects the person doing the speaking. Saying something makes you think about it, and makes you give a concept the extra attention necessary to break it into things that can be communicated in words. That extra attention gives it more importance to your subconscious, as well as making you think about each of the individual components, not just the overall concept. That can be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what it is, and what your perception of that is. In other words, if you are communicating your idea for a new business, and speaking about it causes you to break it down into components, which you then think about, that is probably a good thing… it clarifies your idea and makes it more concrete. On the other hand, if what you are communicating is how your wife never does this or that, and you then break that down into details (even if it's only in your mind, not communicated), then you are adding negative thoughts and emotions not only to your life in general at that point, but also to your overall perception of your wife, so that those thoughts and emotions weigh, however slightly, every time you think about your wife.

The moral of this story is to be very careful what you say. Communication is a great thing, especially when it is both useful and effective. Communicating negative things, however, unless it is a needed warning, usually has more of a net harm than benefit. That is, warning someone of something negative that affects them is good. Reporting something negative to someone who it doesn't affect, however, generally causes more harm than good, as it makes you think more about those negative things yourself, thus emphasizing them in your perceptions, and possibly altering the listener's perception of the object of your conversation in a negative, unnecessary, and quite possibly unjustified way.

As I said in the beginning, the power of words is multiplied as the spoken word multiplies… often having consequences far beyond what the speaker intended.

I have created a new contest! One lucky subscriber will win a free copy of The Secret.

Click the link below to enter:
A Miracle A Day Contests – Win A Free Copy Of ‘The Secret’

Author

August 17th

Awareness, Communication, Power Of Words, Relationships, Subconscious

8 Ways To Show Your Husband You Love Him

Men and women experience love in very different ways. Most people are not conscious of this as they go through their lives, and so they attempt to show their love to people of the other sex in the same way they want it shown to them, in the same way they think of it naturally, without considering how the other person views it.

There are certain things that are necessary to feel loved that are shared among nearly all people, regardless of gender. This includes things like time together, touching, communicating, and other things of this nature. This type of thing is worth of its own article, so for this article, I’m sticking with things that are either specific with regards to wives with their husbands, or at least more emphasized.

Women, if you’re reading this, realize that just like you, a man doesn’t feel loved just because you say “I love you”. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it (you should), but you can’t just leave it at that… and most men won’t tell you that they don’t feel loved. Many of them don’t even realize that is what is bothering them, they just know they aren’t happy, and possibly that it has to do with their relationship, but not be able to put it into a solid concept that they don’t feel loved.

I’m a man. I know that most of the things I need to feel loved, when they are boiled down to basics, are the same for most other men. There may be a few here and there that one of the things below do not apply to, or a few here and there where there is another essential addition. If you are one of those men, and reading this, please add them in the comments. For the vast majority, however, I think this list covers the basics.

So, with no further ado, ladies, here are some basic ways you can show your husband you love him.

Respect Him

The most effective way to make a man feel unloved is to disrespect him, especially in front of others. If you have any desire at all to take good care of your husband, and make him feel loved, do not ridicule him, overrule him, or dismiss him in front of someone else. It’s bad enough to do it in private (you really do NOT need to use these methods… find another way to convey your message), but in public you might as well slap his face.
Admire Him

This is related to the first, but from the other side. Respecting him is more about avoiding disrespect than in overt display of respect. Admiring him, on the other hand is explicitly about conveying to him, by words or gestures, what it is that you like about him. This can be body language, like giving him “elevator eyes” when he’s watching, if you like his body, or it can be words, like telling him that you love his sense of humor. You should always make sure that you use something appropriate to the circumstances, however… telling him you love his sense of humor while you’re at his father’s funeral together might not be a good idea.

You also need to vary this, finding new (or infrequently used) little things to tell him you like on a fairly regular basis. If you have trouble coming up with stuff on your own (are you sure you’re with the right guy for you?), then just instantly tell him when he takes an action you like… if he comes around and opens you car door for you, and you like it, tell him so. Always hearing the same thing, like “I love your sense of humor”, makes it lose its power for this. It gets to the point where he won’t really believe you, thinking you’re just saying it to manipulate him.
Let Him “Overhear” You Praise Him

This works wonders, but has to be used infrequently, and with caution. It doesn’t work, and can feel manipulative, if you pretend like you don’t know he’s there, but he can tell that you do. It’s much better, and safer, to ACTUALLY praise him to others, and occassionally he’ll be nearby when you do so, and overhear it. This technique actually works if you do it outright, too, as long as you don’t over do it. That is, you can flat out say to someone “My husband is great, he does X for me”, with him sitting beside you, and it will make him feel like you respect and admire him (see above).
Drop Everything

This is a little thing that has major effects. One of the most effective ways of showing someone you love them is to make them top priority, to the point where you stop everything you’re doing, whatever it is, to focus on them. That is, you step away from the computer, let the baby play by herself, turn off the TV, stop cooking dinner, whatever it is you’re doing, and go to that person and specifically show them that they are your central focus RIGHT THEN. This is particularly effective when you first see them after a separation (ie when you or they get home from work, etc.).
Notice His Strengths

This is similar to admiring him, but specific to his strengths. That is, if it’s hard for you to get the lid off the jar, and you know he can, go ask him, telling him something like “I’m not strong enough to open this. Can you do it for me?”. If his strength is math, ask him to calculate the price per ounce of something (or a similar feat of arithmetic), telling him it’s too hard for you. Don’t lie in this… he’ll know. Just make a point of asking him to help anywhere that you know is a strength of his that complements a weakness of yours. As noted, this can be physical or mental… “Can you move this for me, I can’t do it?” or “Can you help me figure out how to word this?”. Just like admiring him, though, overuse of this in one area tends to lower its effectiveness, eventually becoming more annoying than complementary.
Forgive His Weaknesses

Your husband has his weaknesses. All men do, and all women, too, for that matter. Do NOT use his weaknesses against him. If you use them to try to manipulate him, if you bring them up any time it’s not absolutely necessary, he will start feeling like you don’t respect him in that area. This applies to showing off areas where you are noticeably stronger than him, too, unless it’s somewhere he feels he doesn’t need to (or can’t) compete, which is generally areas that are not considered masculine, or areas where it is widely acknowledged that special talent is required, like singing.
No Comparisons

One of the worst things a wife can do is compare her husband to an ex, whether husband or boyfriend. Doing so is bad even if you are saying that your husband is better in some way. Men understand that they were not necessarily the first person you were with, the first person you loved, but that doesn’t mean they want it brought into their conscious awareness. And if you compare your husband poorly, as in he’s not as good at this or that, then this is multiplied. You are disrespecting him, pointing out his weaknesses, AND reminding him that you were with other men before him. That’s just asking to bring up negative emotions and associate them with you.
No Guilt Trips

It’s a classic, portrayed in uncountable movies and television shows… the wife gives her husband a guilt trip until he does what she wants. Manipulating someone is a bad idea. Clumsily manipulating them is even worse, but manipulating them at all is bad. This has two sides, in that it’s bad for both the person being manipulated and the one doing it.

The person being manipulated, by definition, feels like he is having his power of choice taken from him. If you feel that it’s still completely your choice, then you are not being manipulated. That doesn’t mean that someone isn’t TRYING to do so, but if you still feel like it’s entirely your choice, then they are not succeeding. Now, for someone who DOES feel like their choice is being taken from them, they will resent this strongly. One of the most powerful motivating factors in a human life is the desire to be free, to prove that you can make your own decisions, and that those decisions matter. Messing with this desire is playing with fire… if the person you are manipulating notices it, even later on, after the fact, they will resent it. Since, in this case, we are talking about your spouse, that means that resentment is likely to be there, even if it eventually fades, as a factor when he thinks about you for the rest of your lives together. It may be small, maybe even so small that he’s not consciously aware of it, but it will, none the less, be there.

Manipulating someone is bad for the person doing the manipulation, also. When you attempt to manipulate someone, you attempt to take some of their humanity from them. They will, as mentioned above, resent this, generally resenting even an unsuccessful attempt. But it’s just as bad for the person doing it, especially if they are doing it to their spouse, because it takes away from your concept of the person you’re trying to manipulate as a person, an individual, and instead turns them into more of an object. Objects can be generally counted on to have the same output when given the same input. Thinking of people in this way robs them of their humanity, their power of individual choice, making you respect, and love, them less. Presumably, if you’re reading this article, that’s not exactly what you have in mind.

So there you have it, 8 ways to show your husband that you love him. Some are things to actively do, some are things to actively make sure you DON’T do, but when they are all put together, and included with the things that all people need to feel loved, your husband will know, and feel, that you love him.

Author

August 15th

Awareness, Communication, Priorities, Relationships

The Power Of Touch

Ever have a relationship where you wonder why you feel like you're not as close as you used to be, but you don't know why? You talk regularly, you spend time together, but still have trouble feeling close? You might not be touching enough.

The feeling of being touched by (or touching) another person is amazingly powerful. It is one of the strongest forces bringing two people together, bringing an instant depth of connection unavailable by any other means. It brings a communication that would require hundreds or even thousands of words, all in the space of a moment.

Physically speaking, human contact causes your body to release a slew of different chemicals. Many of these affect the brain, thus affecting your mood. While that is the "scientific" explanation, it's very hard to describe in scientific terminology the mental connection that is facilitated through physical touch.

Touching another person brings instant intimacy (not necessarily in the sexual sense). That is why many people are uncomfortable touching strangers, and some people even have trouble touching the people with whom they are close. They are afraid of opening themselves up to possible hurt, and touching opens you up much deeper and faster than words. Words allow you to keep a safe difference… touch obliterates that distance.

The type of contact makes a difference as well, type being differentiated by three things… the surface area of the contact, the length of the contact, and the points of contact. The depth of the contact varies directly with the surface area if the other two factors remain the same. The same is true for the length of contact… longer contact brings deeper connections. The third factor, the points of contact, though, is by far the largest factor. Skin on skin contact is, generally far more intimate than through clothing, even when it's shaking hands versus sitting close enough that your legs touch (through clothing). There are a few areas, however, that are special… one is the leg above the knee, another is the face (especially the lips), and the third major area is the torso. These areas bring deeper intimacy of touch, even if it is through clothing, though of course skin on skin contact in these areas is even deeper than that.

If you want to get closer to someone in your life, make sure you touch them more often. However, make certain that the other person is not uncomfortable with your touch, or it will cause them to push you away, rather than draw you closer. Also, touch them at appropriate times, in appropriate ways… in other words, don't just spontaneously go up to a casual acquaintance and give them a big, long-lasting hug. Keep all of your contact, your touch, in a zone that's comfortable to both of you… though you're safe pushing the edge of what's comfortable to you, that's not necessarily the case with pushing the edge of what the other person is comfortable with… you might overstep the bounds accidentally and cause them to distance themselves instinctively.

With that in mind, if you want deeper contact, a deeper connection, with someone, find ways and times that you can touch them more without making them uncomfortable.

Author

July 23rd

Communication, Relationships

5 Ways To Deepen Your Relationship

There are many factors that, together, determine how deep your relationship with someone can be. I've been listing them, one at a time, for a while, so here is a consolidated list of five ways to deepen your relationship, with links to the more in-depth articles.

1. Separating The Who From The What
The first thing you need to do, if you want a deeper
relationship with someone, is separate out who they
are from what they do. Any relationship based on
what someone does is based on a falsehood, because
they may have many, many different reasons for doing
what they do.

2. Communicate More
If your relationship isn't deep enough, then you
need to increase the amount and depth of your
communication. This means opening yourself up,
allowing the person more opportunity to hurt you.
It also means starting talks even when you don't
feel like it.

3. Remember The Message Received May Differ
There are differences between the ways that people
receive and send messages, particularly between
men and women. Make sure that you keep this in
mind when you are choosing how you send the message
you want them to receive, and when you receive a
message from someone else… they may not mean it
the way you subconsciously receive it.

4. Don't Let Communication Stop
Don't let communication fade into a lower priority.
If you let the amount or depth of your communication
fall, the depth of your relationship will slowly
fade, too. It's an easy habit to form, and a hard
habit to break… so watch out for it.

5. The Power Of Human Touch
Make sure that you make physical contact with the
people that you want to keep close to you. One
touch can do the work of a hundred, or even a
thousand, words. Keep the touch appropriate to
the current depth of your relationship, the desired
depth of your relationship, and what is comfortable
to both of you.