hi everybody and welcome to chapter four of 10 weeks to love and abundance
i'm your host and the author dr dawn elise snipes
in this chapter you learn about forgiveness and i know i've done
other videos on forgiveness on the youtube channel but forgiveness is such a vital quality
guilt anger and resentment are the opposite of forgiveness now remember anger
guilt those dysphoric feelings i don't call them negative feelings because they have a
purpose but those dysphoric feelings are there to prompt you to do something they're there to
prompt you to check and see did you do something wrong is there a threat if so
you got to do something about it if not then you know consider what your next step should be
guilt is anger at yourself for something you think you should have done but you didn't or something
you think you shouldn't have done but you did and a lot of us carry a lot of guilt our life is kind
of ruled by shoulds and that can be exhausting guilt keeps us from being able to enjoy the moment
anger and resentment often occur when people do something that makes you feel unsafe or rejected
forgiveness involves accepting that nobody's perfect
it doesn't mean that you agree with or condone the situation but it's a power play you are choosing
you are saying i choose to stop using my energy to beat myself up or dwell on resentments and
instead i choose to use my energy on the people things and experiences that are important to me
the things that are going to make a difference in my life in your forgiveness self-assessment you're
asked questions like or prompted to think about things include make a list of all of the things
you feel guilty about or regret and that can be a long old list make a list of all your resentments
what were you taught about guilt and forgiveness when you were growing up what parts of those
lessons were right you know when we feel guilty sometimes it's for a good reason sometimes we did
something that was wrong and we need to atone for it we need to fix it we need to make amends for it
or at the very least we need to learn from it so we don't do it again so guilt is a
functional feeling in a certain context so that part might be right you know there are
some times that we should feel guilt that's part of empathy but a lot of times that message is over
generalized and sometimes we're taught to feel guilty for things that are out of our control
or feel guilty for being compassionate with our self so it's important to look at what the
messages you got about guilt and forgiveness were and why some people were taught messages
about forgiveness that forgiveness was the thing you needed to do well okay great but
other people were taught that forgiveness was a sign of weakness and if you forgive people
they're going to come back and hurt you well there's a middle ground there with forgiveness
holding on to it is going to continue to drain your energy continue to keep your stress up
and continue to hurt you so holding on to anger is going to continue to hurt you
forgiveness means accepting what happened can't change the past learning from it
and that may mean learning that this is a not safe person to have in my life
learning from it and then moving on if that person is not a safe person to have in your life it means
figuring out how to set boundaries so you're not using your energy on that person you're not
subjecting yourself or making yourself vulnerable to that person but you're not continuing to give
energy to thinking about and being angry at that person what were you taught about resentment anger
and forgiveness when you were growing up again what parts of those lessons were right and why
and what parts were wrong and why what are you afraid might happen if you forgive yourself
sometimes people are afraid that if they forgive their self they're going to make the
same mistake again well those are two different things one's forgiveness and one's learning
when you forgive yourself you're choosing not to continue to beat yourself up for something
that happened in the past you're choosing to use that energy to learn from that mistake
and grow so you're reinvesting that energy in growth and productivity instead of just
staying stuck and lashing yourself what are you afraid might happen if you forgive other people
and we talked about that a minute ago a lot of times people are afraid that if
you forgive somebody that they're going to do the exact same dagum thing again
well hopefully if they did something wrong they feel guilty about it they learn from the mistake
and they don't do it again you know it is possible for people to make mistakes and to learn from them
and not to hurt you again but it's important to in each situation in each context with each
person to figure out what does for what does safety look like to me forgiveness is simply
about choosing how you're spending your energy am i going to continue to choose to use my energy
remaining angry and nurturing that anger or am i going to use it for something positive
i threatened one time that the next foster cat that i adopted i was gonna name grudge that way i
could always use my energy to nurture a grudge um but anyway i ended up naming him mojo so i always
have good mojo to give me but poor cat um but it is important you know if you're gonna nurture
a grudge if you're gonna nurture resentment then it should be something positive
and resentments themselves are not positive but a kitty cat is forgiveness strategies
i know i got off on a tangent here four r's of forgiveness responsibility remorse rectifying it
and releasing the hurt and anger forgiveness means taking responsibility for what you did
forgiving yourself for if you're going to forgive yourself for something
experiencing remorse you feel bad if you made a mistake rectifying it you make amends
you learn from it and then the final r is the big r releasing that hurt and anger and saying okay
i'm not going to keep my energy tied up in this anymore i'm going to use it to move forward
the next activity is learning from it to enhance safety
the third activity is was it really about you you know maybe your significant other came home and
gave you an attitude or your office mate bit your head off um and you get angry at them okay natural
automatic reaction when somebody is aggressive to you to feel anger for a second but then
stepping back from it for a minute and checking it out and going you know what you know number
one is they're really a threat and number two is this really about me you know maybe they are
just having a really bad day their car broke down they got yelled at by their boss something else
now did you deserve to have your head bitten off well no
and that's something you can address but forgiveness involves saying okay i'm not
going to stay angry at this person for this i'm not going to tie up a bunch of energy in it
um i am going to you know choose to use that energy maybe to take a breath to take a moment
and then to empathize and reapproach them and go what's going on use that energy to work it out
the next activity is recognizing that people do the best they can with the tools they have
you may have not had the ideal childhood you may be angry that you didn't have the ideal childhood
you know what you can't redo that there are no do-overs staying angry about that is only
draining your energy and preventing you from feeling the fullness of the happiness uh
that you can experience right now having that anger dragging you down is taking away from your
present happiness recognizing that people did the best they can or do the best they can with
the tools they have means we're all going to screw up you're going to screw up i'm going to screw up
it happens forgiveness means acknowledging that we're all human we're all fallible
and holding on to resentment and anger doesn't help anybody so sometimes that helps
people come to a place where they can accept what happened you know they can accept that their
parents you know they weren't warden june cleaver or whatever you envisioned the best parents being
um however you know they can accept that their parents did the best they could with the tools
they had at that point in time and that's that you know they're like i said there's no do-overs
that was often a big issue with people that i worked with especially in residential treatment
because they had had such tumultuous childhoods and the last activity is the guilt bill of
rights and i love this one because so often we feel guilty for things that do not require
guilt notice i avoid using the word should for example feeling guilty for relaxing
feeling guilty for being compassionate with yourself feeling guilty for taking time off
there's a lot of things that are really essential for health and mental health
and self-care that somewhere along the way we were told we were supposed to feel guilty for
yet we encourage other people to do it we encourage other people to take care of themselves
but we feel guilty when we do it ourself how's that work
so the guilt bill of rights encourages you to look at all of those shoulds or shouldn'ts that
keep you feeling guilty and develop alternate strategies or alternate self-statements when you
start feeling guilty so if you want to take sunday morning and just lay around the house in your pjs
what can you say to yourself to counteract the guilt that you might feel obviously that's one of
my issues you know i have i was raised in a family where you weren't supposed to lay around all day
long there was always stuff to be done so i have a hard time relaxing i feel guilty if i just lounge
around the house all day long so it's that's one of those things that i struggle with and i still
to this day have to remind myself that you know what i worked my butt off all week long i deserve
to have a slow morning and that can mean just sitting and lounging it doesn't mean
that i can sit in lounge while the laundry's running it means just sit and lounge oh my gosh
how awesome would that be as always this book contains discussion writing and meditation prompts
and activities for each of these strategies to help you incorporate them into your life
a little bit more and i encourage you to use these not only yourself but to enhance the
relationships you have with your team at work if you're a supervisor or with your family
guilt anger and resentment can suck up a lot of energy
these emotions are designed to tell you to check that something might be wrong and if there is
do something about it don't just sit there and nurture the negativity
in the next chapter you will learn yet another strategy
um that will help you enhance your love and abundance