Note: This is a guest post by Ari Koinuma of OurBestVersion.com.

I often take my kids to play in a sand-pit near our home.  Both my 4-year-old girl and 19-month-old boy love playing in sand.

And sometimes I join them.

It’s such a bliss.  I highly recommend it if you haven’t done it recently. Simple acts like digging a hole in sand has a very soothing, relaxing effect.

Like going back to a time when I didn’t have responsibilities.  No need to perform, please or prove.

Scarcity of Unconditional Love

Childhood bliss is, unfortunately, something many of us don’t experience — and even if we do, don’t experience it fully enough.  Imagine a baby cuddled in mother’s arms. You just exist, and your parents love you.  You may not understand their words, but you get the message from their touches, their smiles, the tone in their voice. They tell you: we are glad you were born.

Unconditional love is a birthright. It’s the builder of our foundation, the ground on which the rest of our psyche is built.  But many (or most?) of us are given the gift of compromised foundation.  You may not recognize it as such in your day-to-day struggles.  But consider these common symptoms:

• Chronic, mysterious and/or incurable health conditions (migraine, skin rashes, perpetual history of getting sick or injured one way or another)
• Difficulty trusting other people
• Insecurity/inadequacy
• Scarcity mentality
• Dependency (substance, food, approval of peer/parent/boss)

Virtually all big and deep personal problems can be traced back to your foundation: your right to exist.  And unconditional love is the only true cure for the problem.  There are many fixes for any and all of the problems listed above, individually.  But since all the problems stem from your lack of trust in your existence, fixing your foundation will solve or cure all the other symptoms that come from it.

Where Can We Find Unconditional Love?

But unconditional love is an elusive commodity.  If parents weren’t available or able to give it to you abundantly, who can?  Religious institutions claim to, though they are full of moral codes you have to fit into. Spouses, maybe, but romantic love isn’t the same as unconditional/parental love.  You may believe that a god or a “higher being” can provide it, but on the condition that you have to believe in such thing and have your spiritual antenna developed enough to really experience that love.  It’s not available to atheists, is it?

Is there any place in this world that everyone can turn to, a reliable source for our deep crave for unconditional love?

Yes. You.

You can love yourself unconditionally.  Even if you didn’t experience enough of it the first time around, you can always do so today.

How? You may ask.  I’ve never, ever really received it — how can I give myself which I didn’t receive?

It’s simple.  You re-live your babyhood.  Except this time, you play both roles — the baby and the parent.

5 Practical Ways to Self-Produce Unconditional Love

I put the list more or less in the order of potency.

1. Visualization. In your mind, imagine your mother (or father or a caregiver) holding the baby you. With a big smile, she holds you gently and tell you over and over, “I’m so glad you were born.” You can write it down or verbally describe it, for aiding your visualization and for greater impact.  This is the easiest method, though least potent and impossible to do if you can’t remember experiencing unconditional love, ever.
2. Drawing. You can use any material, but I recommend you at least invest in a sketch book and a decent set of oil pastels. You can draw the above scene literally, or you can draw more abstractly by intuitively splashing, lines, shapes and colors.  If your hurt is coming out, you may draw ugly, painful pictures — allow yourself to do so.  Just keep drawing until you get to a point where you can start drawing what your heart desires.  You’ll get there once you spill out enough of your hurt.
3. Playing. This is where the sand pit comes in — once in my therapy session, my therapist had me play in the sand. Another time, she had me use a pile of dolls and figures to describe how I was feeling.  I remember picking one figure for myself and placing everything else in a big circle facing me, surrounding — to express that I felt like the whole world was against me.  Again, after pouring out your hurt, you’ll get to a point where you start expressing your unconditional love for yourself.
4. Role-playing. You can get a doll (there are ones that specifically designed for therapeutic purposes, though anything will do) and you hold it in your arms, and physically carry out the acts described in #1.  Be sure to call it your name and tell him/her “I’m glad you were born.”  Alternatively, if you have a willing spouse or a trusted friend, you can enact this where you really get to be on the receiving end.
5. Caring a child. I obviously don’t recommend becoming a parent for the sole purpose of healing yourself, but this is actually what takes place among parents: a chance to re-do their own life.  We parents all project ourselves to our children to some extent.  Raise your baby and shower him/her with abundant unconditional love.  Alternatively, you can baby sit someone else’s baby and do this, if you don’t want your own child but want to try out this most powerful method.

As you try out these exercise, you’ll experience a powerful sensation of relief and relaxation.  If your scar is deep, you may feel the hurt coming out first — and you need to allow it.  But be sure to incorporate the central message:  you are telling the baby — yourself — that you are glad you were born.  This the most fundamental message of unconditional love.

For most of us, this is not a one-time healing session.  It’s an on-going process. When you have a need to heal, life tends to create opportunities for you to do so — by creating situations where you encounter your brokenness. Each time you feel anxious, worried, or scared, take the time to engage in these exercises. Over time, you’ll notice that your inner peace becomes less and less affected by life events.

An effective psychotherapist can mentor and guide you in this process, especially if your hurt is deep. But don’t underestimate, don’t misunderstand that you are healing yourself. Therapists and other healing arts are simply helping you use your own healing power.

My Personal Healing

I have personally used all 5 methods at one time or another in my healing process.  I used to have this paralyzing fear of people getting mad at me, or being blamed for my mistakes.  When such a situation occurred, my head would “blank out” with fear — I was so overwhelmed by sheer terror that I couldn’t think.  I had an unnatural drive to be blameless, or at least appear to be infallible.  Whenever I was under stress, my defence mechanism was to cover my tracks so I had no visible failures.

After years of living with my fear, I finally submitted myself to therapy. I enjoyed my therapy sessions.  I had two sketchbooks full of my pastel drawings, and piles of journals.

But my catalyst was when my daughter was born.  At that very moment, I felt my capacity for unconditional love truly awaken.  It has been the most transformational healing experience.  As I poured my heart into taking care of her, and now my toddler son, I observed my own foundation become more solid.

Nowadays, those panic attacks are a thing of past.  Sure, my heart would still pound faster when people get mad at me (which doesn’t happen as often as it used to) or if I make a mistake and other people notice it. But nothing out of ordinary. I don’t feel threatened, nor live in fear of such situations.

Concluding Thoughts

If you experience abundance of unconditional love, your life will be peaceful.  By that, I don’t mean quiet, slow or serene — it’s just that you’ll spend little time feeling threatened, afraid, and insecure.  There’s nothing to prove, no need to argue.  Wars will end and crimes will diminish.  Sounds idealistic?  Yes, it can certainly appear so, until you actually experience this healing and transformation. The security becomes so strong and stable that you just simply lose room in your heart for things like desperation and aggression.

Regardless of your childhood experience or your relationship with your parents, don’t begrudge them.  It may be hard to feel grateful for getting hurt, but once you experience the healing, you’ll realize what an amazing transformation it is.  People who were uncompromised may not realize what they have.  But you won’t take it for granted.  You’ll be grateful and will feel excited to tell other hurt souls that healing is possible.

The above 5 methods are the ones that worked for me.  What other methods can produce unconditional love to you?  When have you experienced unconditional love’s healing power?  Please share your stories, so that we can tell the world that it is possible to heal and that opportunity is available to everyone.

Ari Koinuma writes on the theme of “Bic Picture of Healing and Growth: from Depression to Self Actualization” at his site, OurBestVersion.com. If you enjoyed this entry, check out his thorough analysis of self-esteem and his personal story of how he used the method described above to heal himself.

“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”
Mahatma Gandhi

Many people have heroes in their lives. Heroes can be helpful to get inspiration and they can provide you with valuable information if they have already walked the path you are on.

But there are also a few downsides with having heroes. Or at least with putting them on too high of a pedestal. Something I think is pretty common and can be helpful at first. But, as you move forward it can become an obstacle for you.

Here are four reasons to be careful with your heroes. 

1. They might not live up to your image of them.

It can be very hard to really see a person. This is probably especially true with someone you hold up as a hero. But people aren’t an idealized images in your head. No one is Superman or Wonder Woman.

This can lead to disappointment. You may feel betrayed. Your unreal expectations might damage that relationship, no matter what kind of relationship it is. You may even abandon people when they don’t act as you wanted them to. When they don’t live to the image in your head.

I think it’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

2. It can make you feel like you are not worthy.

When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different.

You won’t feel worthy to do so. And so you’ll hinder or self-sabotage to keep yourself in line with your own expectations and self-image. Understanding that everyone is human can open you up to your own potential.

3. It can make it harder to connect to people.

When you have some heroes you are likely to think more about the opposite too. And place people into neat and tidy folders. You may create villain-like images of people in your world.

But in truth, things can be kinda messy. Putting someone on a pedestal or making a villain out of them create barriers in your head and life. It may give you a sense of being right. But it can hold you back from positive experiences too.

Openness is more fun than judgement.

4. You may develop tunnel vision.

If you get too attached to one hero, you may believe all s/he says. Everyone has flaws and blindspots though. What your hero tells you might not be the best fit for you, even though it may be for him/her. So take inspiration and knowledge from many sources and people. Go out and experiment and see what you like.

I’m not saying that any of this is easy. But to keep these pointers in mind, remembering to relax and that people are mostly just people can be very useful.

Note: This is a guestpost by Claire Askew of One Night Stanzas.

The space you work in is important.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your living room, a six-foot-square cubicle, or a corner office-suite; the space you work in makes a massive difference to the work you’re doing. It can affect the creativity and quality of your work, and it can even affect the time it takes you to do it. We’ve all had days where we can’t string two thoughts together coherently, and can’t figure out why.

Well, it’s highly possible that the workspace you’ve carved out for yourself is a contributing factor. Check out this list and see if you can’t turn your place of work into a more productive environment…

1: Tidy up.

There’s an old saying – which you’ve doubtless seen on fridge-magnets the world over – that dull people have tidy houses. Maybe that’s true, but tidy people get the last laugh here. If you’re a naturally messy person, you’re probably less productive than your tidy colleagues.

Think of the times you’ve searched frantically through a totally un-ordered pile of papers looking for a particular document. Think of the times you’ve needed to email something out, only to find that it’s lost somewhere in the depths of your hard drive. Had you been a natural tidy-freak, you’d have found what you needed within seconds, and your task would have been completed much faster.

Tidiness doesn’t just add speed. It also removes some of the small stresses that come with having a job to do. You may not realise it, but the mess all over your desk is distracting the heck out of you every time you look away from your computer screen.

Thoughts like “I should rinse out that coffee cup” or “that’s where my stapler went” can totally de-rail you from the task in hand. If you have a massive pile of papers teetering on the edge of your desk, it’s only a matter of time before you knock them over – and mark my words, it’ll happen in the middle of a crucial phone-call, or while you’re video-conferencing with a client. And of course, a messy workspace is never going to endear you to your boss or a new customer, so knuckle down and tidy up.

Block out a day in your planner and spend it sorting, restocking, filing, binning and recycling. Get your workspace in good order, and then invest five or ten minutes per day keeping it that way. I promise it’s worth it.

2: Change the furniture.

Now, you may not be a believer in feng shui, but sometimes the arrangement of your workspace furniture can make a massive difference to your productivity. Maybe the sun shines onto your computer screen at certain times, making it hard for you to read. Maybe your desk chair is too high for your legs to sit comfortably under the desk. Maybe you’re close to the water-cooler and always have people coming and going right next to you.

Chances are, these things have never fully registered with you, but they’re potentially impacting on your work. Something as simple as adjusting the height of your chair, or having a word with your boss about shifting your desk, can make a huge difference.

Sit in your workspace and look around you. Pay attention to anything you think might be distracting. Are you facing a door? If people are coming into the office all the time, chances are you’re subconsciously looking up every few moments to see who’s there. Is your desk littered with snapshots? If so, your mind may not be 100% on the job.

Being next to a window overlooking the car park is problematic – seeing your colleagues going home early on a Friday afternoon is guaranteed to put you off your work for the rest of the day. Think – are you physically comfortable, even at the end of the day? If not, what’s the problem – your chair, the height of your desk, an unruly keyboard? 

If you find that there are issues you can’t change yourself – e.g., having the water-cooler at your elbow – then voice your concerns to your boss. If you explain that you think the situation is affecting your ability to work, chances are they’ll act quickly to change it.

3: Surround yourself with inspiration, not distraction.

You don’t have to get rid of every surplus or scrap of decoration, however. What you really need to do is turn distraction into inspiration – to surround yourself with things that gear you up to being creative.

Everyone likes to brighten up their workspace, but having eye-catching photographs and images in front of you 24/7 is asking for trouble. Rather than lining up family photos or holiday snaps next to your computer, grab yourself a photo album and spend an evening sticking your pictures inside. Keep the album in a desk drawer, and when you’re feeling burned out, take five minutes to flick through the pages. This can provide a welcome break and stops you from just staring into space when a creative block strikes.

Another thing you can do is always keep your pin-board in the present. Many people still have things hanging on the wall that have been there since they started their job.

Post-its are great things, but if you have a million stuck all over your desk and covered in scribbles, I’m guessing you’re not using them to their full potential! Look around your office and remove anything that’s in your line of sight that you know you won’t need or look at anymore. Anything you don’t need now but might need in the future, file.

Only keep the things you use right now on display. Think about how to display them. Got a heap of post-its hanging around, each reminding you of a task you need to complete?  Compile them into an easy-to-read to-do’ list instead.

4: Change colour.

We’ve all read about colour being an important factor when it comes to creating mood. And of course, you’d carefully consider any colour for a room in your house – so why not for your workspace?

Most offices like to keep colours neutral, with white, beige and grey as sure-fire favourites. Grey is not a good colour for anyone – it’s boring, depressing and it’s perhaps the least creative shade in the spectrum, with beige not far behind. White can be relaxing, but not very stimulating, so if your workspace has been sapped of colour, it’s time to make some changes.

If you have a great boss, sit down with them and discuss the colour issue. You may feel nuts doing it, but if your boss values productivity and creative output, they should be willing to listen. Do some research on colour psychology, and find out what colours stimulate and inspire.Produce your findings and make some suggestions for changes to your space.

Look around for the blank spaces in your office and suggest putting simple, vibrant art pieces into these gaps, or put forward the possibility of painting one wall with a vibrant hue – whatever you think works in the space. If you work from home or don’t think you can approach your boss, customise your corner with a colourful painting, or pin coloured paper onto your pin-board to make a brighter background. Pick up some coloured post-its and trade in your cardboard-cover notebook for something a bit more snazzy. Brighten up your space, and it may well benefit your work.

5: Beat the clock.

Watching the clock is guaranteed to kill your creativity, particularly when you feel like you’re at a low ebb to start with.  The old saying “a watched pot never boils” rings true here – the more often you glance up at the clock, the slower time will seem to go.  So take action. Get rid of your wall-clock or desk-clock. 

If you sit in a position where you can see the office wall-clock, or the personal clock of a co-worker, ask about getting it moved, or move yourself.  Yes, people may think you’re weird, but yet again, if you’re going to be working better for it, it’s worth it. Leave your watch at home, and put a screensaver on your mobile phone.

Don’t let yourself even think about how many hours, minutes and seconds you have left before you can stop working. Instead, set yourself other deadlines. Look at the letter you need to write, or the pile of files you need to sort. Tell yourself “when I’ve written 300 words, I can take a break,” or “once I’ve sorted A – G, I’ll go grab a coffee.”

That way, you’re not constantly looking at the clock thinking “only ten more minutes, only nine and a half more minutes, only eight and a quarter more minutes,” etc.  Instead, you’re doing something productive. And chances are, you’re doing it quickly and efficiently, because you know that when you’re done, you can reward yourself with a little downtime!

Claire Askew blogs at One Night Stanzas, a creative writing/personal development blog for young and emerging writers. She is also editor-in-chief of Read This, a monthly arts magazine currently on its tenth issue. Claire is a semi-professional poet and her work has won four major Scottish literary awards to date, and been published in numerous literary journals in the UK and elsewhere. She works part-time as a tutor for 11 – 18 year olds, teaching English, Creative Writing and Drama. Claire currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with her partner, artist and web-developer Leon Crosby.

You can also check out these articles by Claire:

– 10 Commandments: What to avoid when sending your work to magazines
– The Importance of the Cover-Letter

When you talk you aren’t just communicating with your words.

In fact, you are communicating with your whole body.

According to research done by Albert Mehrabian, currently Professor Emeritus of psychology at UCLA, words are only 7 percent of your communication.

The rest is your voice tonality (38 percent) and your body language at 55 percent.

These numbers may vary depending upon the topic, situation and how something is communicated (for instance, talking over the phone is obviously different from talking face to face) but body language is still a very important part of communication.

Three good reasons to improve your body language:

• Improve your communication skills. If you improve your body language you can get your thoughts across in a more effective way. You can create a connection to another person more easily. When using more powerful and appropriately balanced body language your communication skills become better and more focused.
• Emotions are linked to your body language. Emotions work backwards too. If you feel good you’ll smile. If you force yourself to smile you’ll feel good too. If you feel tired or down you might sit slumped down. If you sit slumped down you’ll feel more tired and negative. Just try to sit straight up for 5 minutes and feel the difference in energy from half-lying in your chair.
• Increase your attractiveness. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. A better posture and a more enthusiastic and focused body language will make anyone more attractive. And not just in a sexual way but also when talking to new friends or in job interviews and business meetings.

These 7 common body language mistakes is a mix of deeper things that control our body language. And a few tips where you manually correct and stop reinforcing certain old habits.

1. Not keeping your emotions and focus in the right place.

It seems to me like the biggest part of your body language is how you feel. When you feel open, positive and confident that will come through in your body language. You’ll smile and laugh more and gesture confidently and openly.

So to improve your body language in a consistent way in your day to day life the major part consists of improving your life. For example to sleep enough, to eat right, to work out and to get the things you want to get done handled. When you live the life you want to live, when are going about your daily life being your “best self” then you tend to feel good or great. And that comes through in your body language.

As expected, no quick fixes will solve your problem. They can help though.

You can for instance change how you feel temporarily and then build on that feeling by acting as you would like to feel. Once example would be to take kind actions towards someone even though you might feel envious. And then build on that kind feeling your kind action generates. Here are few more ways to quickly change how you feel and a few tips on how to turn a bad day around to a good one.

2. Becoming too self-conscious.

To keep your feelings, thoughts and body language in the right place or to make a change you need to monitor yourself. However, over-doing it will quickly turn your ambitions into feeling self-conscious and nervous. If your inner dialogue goes “Am I doing it right? Am I sitting right? Am I walking too slow? Or too fast?” then you are feeling worried and anxious. That comes through in your body language.

So you need to learn to check your feelings/thoughts or the part of your body language you want to change once in a while. And learn to not let this desire to change spiral out of control into babbling thought patterns in your head that just go around and around and make you feel bad. More on this in the next section.

3. Taking yourself or life too seriously.

Generally, taking yourself or things too seriously isn’t a great idea for several reasons. It can cause you to get offended and angry or resentful for the smallest negative thing someone says or does. It can make it hard for you to let things go and instead you let them fester. It can make tasks a whole lot harder to get done as you might see everyday life as a bitter struggle. It can help you reinforce and strengthen victim thinking.

This isn’t good for your interactions. And it isn’t good for your body language as your negative feelings will come through to others.

It’s also not a helpful attitude to have if you want to change your body language as it can make you take this challenge all too seriously. That can cause you to get upset with yourself when you make a mistake. And make you think so much about the challenge that your thoughts get stuck in self-conscious loops.

A few tips for adopting a lighter attitude towards yourself and life are to not identify so much with your thoughts and emotions, to realize that you are not you ego and to develop an abundance mentality.

4. Moving too fast and fidgety.

If you move too fast you can feel stressed. The stress can then reinforce how fast you move. Or make you more fidgety. Moving fast and fidgeting around can make people around you feel stressed, nervous, distracted and uncomfortable.

Shaking your leg while seated or tapping your fingers against the table rapidly are two fidgety habits. Touching your face a lot is another one.

Instead of fidgeting with your hands and scratching your face you can use them to communicate what you are trying to say. Use your hands to describe something or to add weight to a point you are trying to make. But don’t use them to much or it might become distracting. And don’t let your hands flail around, use them with some control.

If you have a tick or feel fidgety then learning to relax more can help you out. You can, for instance, become more relaxed by just moving slower. This will also make you seem more calm and confident.

Or you can weed out your habit of touching your face simply by keeping it in mind and avoiding it. There might also be larger issues in your life that you need to resolve to decrease or remove your bad habit.

5. Not keeping your posture in mind.

From time to time that is. You shouldn’t make mistake #2 and getting obsessed with it. Sitting or standing up straight in a relaxed manner with your head up has a few benefits:

It creates positive emotions such as alertness and feeling focused.
It can help you with first impressions as it makes you seem more interesting/attractive.
It can sometimes help you avoid pain in your back, shoulders etc.

6. Closing up.

Being open and conveying that you are open is one of the most important parts of communication. If you start to close up or walk into an interaction closed up then it will be hard to establish a genuine connection. If you feel a bit wary and closed up inside then it will not only stop you from being open. It will also keep you from relaxing, smiling and laughing and having fun.

A few common ways to close up is to:

• Cross your arms and/or legs. You have probably already heard you shouldn’t cross your arms as it might make you seem defensive or guarded. This goes for your legs too. Keep your arms and legs open. Taking up space by for example sitting or standing with your legs apart a bit signals self-confidence and that you are comfortable in your own skin.
• Not keeping eye contact. If there are several people you are talking to, give them all some eye contact to create a better connection and see if they are listening. Keeping too much eye-contact might creep people out. Giving no eye-contact might make you seem insecure. If you are not used to keeping eye-contact it might feel a little hard or scary in the beginning but keep working on it and you’ll get used to it.
• Hold your drink at your chest. Don’t hold your drink in front of your chest. In fact, don’t hold anything in front of your heart as it will make you seem guarded and distant. Lower it and hold it beside your leg instead.

Closing up often comes from feeling nervous or insecure. You may in some way perceive the people you are meeting as a threat.

Perhaps you’re afraid that they will mock you, not like you or that you will make a fool of yourself in some way. A few tips to a shake these thoughts and feelings out of yourself is to:

Belly breathe.

This is one of my favourite tips to make myself feel more relaxed and calm in just a minute or two.

Assume rapport.

Just before a meeting, you just think that you’ll be meeting a good friend. Then you’ll naturally slip into a more comfortable, confident and enjoyable emotional state and frame of mind.

This also helps you and the other people to set a good frame for the interaction. A frame is always set at the start of an interaction. It might be a nervous and stiff frame, a formal and let’s-get-to-the-point kind of frame or perhaps a super relaxed one. The thing is that the frame that is set in the beginning of the conversation is often one that may stay on for a while. First impressions last. With some practise – to remove inner resistance towards this idea and get you to feel more like you know what you’re doing – you may become pretty surprised at how effective assuming rapport is. I was.

Experiment.

Have a look at a few more ways to handle nervousness. And a few tips for putting a stop to anxiety. Try a few of them plus the ones above to find which one(s) fit you the best.

7. Holding yourself back.

So, let’s say you know most of the things above already. It isn’t exactly rocket science. So why are you still not using those tips – or tips from somewhere else – to change and experiment with how you communicate?

One big reason may be that you are holding yourself back.

You may hold yourself back from becoming more expressive over all or, for instance, with your hands. Or you may hold yourself back completely from taking up more space or making more eye-contact.

Holding yourself back may be because of a few different reasons. The most common one is probably the one already described in the previous mistake: a fear of what others may think, say or do.

Yes, people may react negatively. And yes, you might exaggerate your body language a bit too much at first by for instance sitting with your legs almost ridiculously far apart.

However, people aren’t looking at you as much as you may think. They are like you. They have their own stuff to think and worry about. If you experiment with your body language, then sure, you might seem a little strange sometimes. But most of the time people will probably not even notice that you have changed something. They aren’t standing around watching your every move all day long.

Also, keep in mind that if you for example are normally not that expressive then what might feel weird to you isn’t necessarily that weird to others. It’s just you comparing the old way to the new way in your own head. It’s just you getting used to being more expressive.

If you change your body language for the better, most people will only react in a more positive way towards you. Because as mentioned in mistake #1, how you live your life and how you feel comes through in your body language. And if you feel great then that comes through. And emotions are contagious. So now, people you interact with feel better too. And just about everyone wants to feel positive emotions.

So, yeah, you may look like fool a few times if want to change. But that’s OK. It’s a lot better than going around all of your life and holding yourself back. And if you don’t take yourself and life too seriously – mistake #3 – then your fear of looking like a fool and being rejected in some way will decrease.

“Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.”
Dag Hammarskjold

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.”
Robert Muller

Forgiveness. One of those things many of us struggle with from time to time. But why should we forgive? And how can we go about it?

Here are a few timeless thoughts on forgiveness. I hope you’ll find something useful.

1. Forgiveness sets you free.

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
Catherine Ponder

I think this is a great point and one of the best reasons I have found to forgive. It’s easy to get wrapped up in thinking that forgiveness is just about something you “should do”. But forgiving can in a practical way be extremely beneficial for you.

As long as you don’t forgive someone you are linked to that person. Your thoughts will return to the person who wronged you and what s/he did over and over again. The emotional link between the two of you is so strong and inflicts much suffering in you and – as a result of your inner turmoil – most often in other people around you too.

When you forgive you do not only release the other person. You set yourself free too from all of that agony.

2. Forgive yourself.

“The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbour as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.”
Eric Hoffer

What you think and feel about other people is pretty much what you think and feel about yourself. This is not something that may always be obvious. But we do tend to judge and think about people as we think about ourselves. A person who, for instance, is very critical of others tends to, deep down, be very critical of him/herself.

So how do you get better at forgiving others? You can start by forgiving yourself. Because when you start to forgive yourself you get some practise with forgiveness and you also realise how good it feels. You open up to how forgiveness can improve your life and lives of the people around you.

By forgiving yourself – instead of resenting yourself for something you did a week or 10 years ago – you make this habit more and more of a natural part of you. And so forgiving others becomes easier too.

Also, what you think is a question of forgiving others you may sometimes – after some time and inner struggle – discover is just as much, if not more, about forgiving yourself rather than the other person.

3. Remember to forgive everyone.

“We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.”
Sir. Francis Bacon

It’s often pretty easy to see the obvious people to forgive. People who have done something terrible or someone you don’t get along with at all.

It’s sometimes hard to see that you should forgive yourself for something. It can also be hard to remember to forgive people close to you. There might be relationships where forgiveness could resolve some vague resentment or other negativity that sometimes arises between you and another person.

When you feel such emotions is can be useful to ask yourself questions like: what is unresolved here? Or just: why do I feel this way towards this person? You may get some revealing answers. They might not come the first time you ask yourself though. So keep asking a bit more.

4. When you forgive, really forgive.

“Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.”
Marlene Dietrich

“Most of us can forgive and forget; we just don’t want the other person to forget that we forgave.”
Ivern Ball

When you forgive, you have to really forgive. Or you will continue to wreck the relationship again and again. And yourself too.

You can view forgiveness as a way to feel like you are the better person of the two of you and then hold you forgiveness over the other person whenever you feel like it to show your superiority.

But it might be more helpful to view forgiveness as a way to release yourself and the other person from being trapped in the past. As a way to throw a big piece of self-inflicted suffering out the window and get on with the rest of your life in a more open and positive way.

5. Forgiveness is not a weakness.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Mahatma Gandhi

It may sound like forgiveness is a way of giving up or giving in. As a way to be a weak person. While the ones not forgiving are angry, powerful and strong. Such ideas may float around in various parts of your world and society.

But reality is a bit different. Not forgiving just seems to mostly eat you up inside. Your feel angry and may even wish for revenge. You replay arguments and memories over and over. While the person you are resentful of or angry at may often not even be aware of all your thoughts and feelings. And so you go on, creating suffering for yourself.

Forgiving releases you from that suffering. It can also make you feel good about yourself. Doing difficult things you know deep down that you want to do tend to have that effect.

6. With forgiveness the future may become brighter than in your dreams.

“Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.”
Hannah Arendt

“Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.”
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”
Paul Boose

If you look at from a very practical perspective then forgiveness is the smart thing to do. It saves you a lot of painful expenses. It makes you clearheaded again.

Forgiveness centres you in the now and in yourself once again. You stop regretting what is already in the past. You stop feeding your thought loops of negativity with more energy. And now you can use that energy and focus that was previously spent strengthening those loops to start moving forward again.

Forgiveness might not be pleasant or something you necessarily want to do. You might think the other person is wrong and that you are right. But sometimes you have to do it anyway.

Without really forgiving moving on will be impossible.

So everyone has to choose for themselves.

Do you want to stay in this protected position of feeling right and superior?
Do you want feel like the victim who has been wronged for the rest of your life?

Or do you want make a real change in your life and world?

You will have a hard time getting them both.

It might not always be easy to forgive. But it has many big benefits. And personally I would be a bit wary of playing up forgiveness and what happened more than necessary. Many of our challenges – not all, of course – become so large and complicated in our heads that we build huge, monumental problems.

Making mountains out of molehills is a good way to strengthen a victim mentality or feeling even more right than you did before. It’s an effective way to paralyze yourself.

It’s not a pleasurable or an effective way to live your life and to explore your true potential.