Author Archive: directorifi

Spring Cleaning for Your Wounded Heart

…….if when you look inside, you are tired;

…….if when you look inside you do not like yourself anymore;

…….if when you look inside you find rust where you used to see sparkle;

…….if when you look inside you no longer find hope…….

Please know this…….

Forgiveness is your energizer;.

Forgiveness is your self-esteem bolster;.

Forgiveness is your emotional rust-inhibitor;.

Forgiveness gives you hope.

Come, together, let us do some spring cleaning of your heart.

The first step is this: Commit to forgiving, to reducing resentment and offering goodness toward those who have cluttered the rooms of your heart.

The second step is this: Commit to doing no harm to those who have soiled your inner world and did not stay around long enough to clean up after themselves.

Forgiveness will be your servant. Forgiveness will make tidy the rooms of your heart.

Robert

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I have begun conversations with someone with whom I have been estranged for about a year. She claims that she wants to forgive and reconcile, but I so often see non-verbal cues such as frowns and even rolled-eyes coming at me. What part of the forgiveness process should I engage when this happens?

I would recommend starting at the beginning and seeing your frustration or anger and then move through the entire process again. This may occur more quickly and with deeper results when you begin again. Only after you have worked through the forgiveness process to some degree might you consider gently talking with her about the discrepancy between her words of forgiving and her non-verbal cues that she is not forgiving.

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Have any of your research participants simply dropped out of the forgiveness process because it was taking too long?

Actually, no, we have not experienced that in our over-twenty-five-years of doing forgiveness interventions. Once people are motivated to try forgiveness and we give them help that encourages them, they keep going until they have forgiven, at least forgave to a degree. Progress in forgiving can help people want even more restored emotional health.

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On the Importance of Perseverance when Forgiving

Many people get quite excited about forgiveness at first and just dive into practicing it, only to lose interest after a few months.  They literally just let it fade from their minds and hearts as they go on to the next popular diversion in life.  In other words, they do not have a strong will to keep forgiveness before them as a practice and as a way of seeing the world.

This could happen to you.  A commitment to forgive does not just mean a short-term commitment toward one person who has hurt you in one particular way.  Commitment has a much longer reach than this.  Would you become physically fit if you worked out several times a week for three months and then hung it all up?  Of course not.  It is the same with forgiveness.  You have to fight against the tendency to just let it fade in you.  You will have to fight against all of the distractions of life that call you away from it.

Robert

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I am thinking of bringing a friend on my forgiveness journey. Please keep in mind that the friend and I actually are forgiving the same person, our employer. Is it a good idea that my forgiveness partner be forgiving the same person as I am forgiving, or should I seek someone else as the forgiveness partner?

I think it would be better in this circumstance to have a forgiveness partner who has not experienced the same injustice as you from the same person. I say this because your mutually-shared resentment might hold one or both of you back from advancing in forgiving or perhaps in giving each other accurate feedback in how well you are progressing in forgiveness. A person who is not angry with the same offender may be more objective in giving you feedback.

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