Forgiveness plays a big role in your spiritual, physical and mental health. Carrying around grudges makes it difficult to find inner peace and positivity in your life.
The good news is that anyone can learn to forgive and live a happier, more peaceful life – and we’ll tell you how.
Feeling angry puts your body into a constant battle between fight and flight, and holding onto those feelings can lead to stress, anxiety, depression and other more serious health effects.
Anger produces physical responses including changes in your heart rate, blood pressure, and your immune response. Studies have found that forgiveness can lower your risk of a heart attack, improve sleep and reduce pain, as well as improving cholesterol levels.
Although forgiveness is only a choice – it is a critical one when it comes to your health.
Sometimes the person you most need to forgive is yourself. Beating yourself up over and over for past mistakes or decisions is just as harmful as holding grudges towards others. Forgiveness is not about just saying the words to yourself or others – it is a conscious decision to let go of negative feelings. This includes times where the other person may not deserve it.
You can make forgiveness a part of your life and be more physically and mentally healthy. In order to truly forgive, you need to remember the event, how you reacted, how it made you feel and how it has affected you since.
Choosing to be empathetic in some instances can help on the path to forgiveness. Taking responsibility for your own actions is just as important as understanding why the other person acted in the manner they did.
It is also critical that you do not have expectations. If you forgive someone with the purpose of getting something back or expecting a certain response, you are setting yourself up for further disappointment. The act of forgiveness is for your own mental and physical well being.
Once you make the choice to forgive, take action. If you cannot talk to the person directly, or if it is you yourself that you are forgiving, you can still act on the forgiveness. Talk to a close friend or write in a journal. Get it out in some healthy way to begin the process of letting go of the anger, forgiving and moving on without further resentment.
