"The offended person carries water on the offended person" - the proverb focuses on the negative attitude of surrounding people towards a person who is not able to forget resentment, who is always sulking and is constantly dissatisfied with the attitude towards his beloved, indeed, it is difficult to communicate with such people. "insulted" is no less difficult to carry a grievance in your soul, so you need to learn how to get rid of such cargo, and for friendly relations with other people, and for yourself, even in those situations when the grievance is really big. is the ability to forgive?
What can forgive?
As doctors say, the ability to forgive can be even beneficial to health. In particular, the constant state of insult promotes the development of various heart diseases. This is confirmed by the results of recent studies in England, which proved that people who are hostile to others are four times more likely to have heart disease and they are more than six times more likely to die at a young age than in balanced individuals.
Also, the ability to forgive and to preserve the psychological health of a person is no less significant. As psychologists define, forgiveness is the state of the soul, which makes the apologetic a free man, and also relieves him of inevitable picking in personal wounds. This is a good way to break the circle of hatred and fear, the ability to forgive is very important for every person.
What does it mean to forgive? Doctors say that forgiveness is a change in the negative attitude towards the person who has offended you. Such a change of mood makes it possible to stop the continuous development of the brain by strong enough hostile impulses that send blood doses of dangerous hormones - cortisol and adrenaline. It is not necessary at all to personally see the person you are about to forgive, as much as he does not need repentance or apology from him. Forgiveness is always within you, so in order to forgive, someone else you do not need.
Why is it so difficult to forgive a person?
The whole thing, initially, in our own opinion about ourselves - the feeling of self as an independent and independent personality, which, of course, will never allow it to hurt. For this reason, the first reaction is to offend a person in return. However, after a while a person begins to react more adequately and objectively to the situation. It is very difficult for a normal person to move from a sense of revenge to a feeling of sincere forgiveness, because for this it is necessary to develop in your soul feelings of empathy or in another way, the ability to relate to oneself thoughts, feelings, and actions (even if they are incorrect in your opinion) another person, which is inherently a very difficult task, the same as the ability to forgive.
There can not be empathy also because the actions of the person who offended us in our minds are altered, and we perceive it only as a negative person. In addition, we are fully confident that the offender deliberately humiliated or insulted us. Psychologists call such actions "attribution of motives." At the same time, we can evaluate our mistakes differently, since we know that we were guided not by negative emotions towards a particular person, but by circumstances independent of us, while the misdemeanors of other people in our minds always have intentional reasons. However, if we look objectively, then in the actions of each of us, both circumstances and personal controlled desires are equally guilty.
What should I do to forgive a person within me?
First of all, you need to clearly imagine for yourself that coming to the forgiveness of another person is not only not easy, but also long enough. The first step will be a detachment from one's own personal experiences that obscure reason and common sense. The best option is just to start thinking about something else, which in no way is connected with the person who has offended us. And you need to do this until such time as you clearly for yourself do not understand that you can sincerely forgive a person.
Professional psychologists advise to do one simple exercise - as soon as you have to immediately begin to think about something pleasant and positive. In extreme cases, you can fill your thoughts with a prayer or repeat to yourself a nursery rhyme or a simple counting-out. However, it is best to think up some pleasant memories for yourself so that when you start to get angry, you do not need to feverishly recall your life in general, and its positive moments in particular. If you still managed to extinguish negative emotions, then you can safely congratulate yourself, or even make yourself a small gift, for self-control.
There is another option - try for life to keep a log of forgiveness. People at different times look at the same situation in different ways, so write down in the journal those thoughts and feelings that you experience every day. Write down everything that, in your opinion, can lead you to harmony, and restore justice. According to researchers, people who have diaries are much easier to deal with the grievances and quickly come to forgiveness.
Over time, diary entries become less angry, and there are underlying causes that, in the opinion of the offended person, could induce the offender to act in this way, and not otherwise. Memories are also very helpful when a person has offended someone. What did you feel at that moment, what emotions did you overflow? Put yourself in the place of the abuser, and think what he feels, and whether he wants to change the current situation. Look at the situation from the philosophical point of view, and just forgive the offender of his imperfection, since we are all human beings and can make mistakes, for which we are then ashamed. But are there any perfect people?
How to revive the ability to forgive?
Everything begins with a small one, so if you want to learn how to forgive big grievances, then you need to learn to treat small imperfections more easily. For example:
- Choose for your training unfamiliar people. If your car was scratched by an inexperienced driver, or you were pushed in the queue, then try to collect the will into a fist and suppress all of a sudden wave of anger.
- Try to forgive "in advance". That is, in the morning, after awakening, say to yourself in the mirror: "Nothing bad happened, but I owe everyone around me, for everything good."
- You do not have to try to completely forgive a person in an instant. Try to give him forgiveness even for one minute a day. Then try to increase this time to two or more minutes. And then look, what from this
- Begin by forgiving yourself. As soon as we are able to perceive ourselves objectively, not paying attention to our shortcomings or virtues, we become more restrained, in relation to the imperfections of other people around us.