Wednesday 13 April 2011

Be honest with yourself...

One of the most important lessons I have learnt about healing, forgiveness and moving on when things are difficult is to be honest with myself about how I feel.

It is easy enough to put off how you are feeling or to not acknowledge exactly how you feel and then also put off having to deal with it. However, in the long run it is much easier to be honest with yourself from the start and therefore be able to heal far more quickly.

It is an easy thing to learn, being honest, and it takes no particular skill. I taught myself using a number system (can you tell I am a math teacher?...smile). I place firmly into my mind the situation, person, place etc that I feel I am having difficulty with. I then ask myself, "How do I feel about this?" After thinking on the situation for a minute or two I assign a number from one to ten that tells me how painful I feel, how hurt I feel, betrayed etc (Whatever feeling suits the situation...including how much it matters to me).

In this way I am accepting how I feel and am able to gauge the extent of this feeling. In doing this, I accept responsibility for how I feel and the consequences of those thoughts.

Once I have a number, I sit quietly with my eyes closed and ask for help in taking the "bad" feelings away and in finding forgiveness and healing. I ask myself again what number out of ten rates the strength of the feeling. I keep doing this until the number is zero, or as close to zero as possible.

The key thought here, is that in order to heal, seek forgiveness or move on, it is first necessary to be able to be honest with yourself about your depth of feeling. You have to "own" the way you feel and take responsibility for it before you can let it all go.

Trying to convince yourself that something doesn't matter (when it actually does) or that you don't feel hurt or betrayed (when you actually are) puts off your ability to "fix" these problems. It allows these feelings time to fester and grow before they are dealt with. While a momentary relief, it makes genuine healing and true forgiveness harder in the long run when you don't acknowledge you true feelings and the depth of those feelings.

It takes a bit of practice to make this really easy. But as you can see, there are no real skills involved and the process is a simple one.

Do yourself a favour and honour your true feelings...acknowledge and accept that "this" is the way you feel. Then you can change it if you need to.

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