The Reason For The Season

 

THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

Jesus is the reason for the season.  And regardless of your religious or spiritual affiliation, I highly recommend his teachings as a path to a life of peace and joy,  One of his most powerful teachings was forgiveness, and I believe that this time of year – the Joy of Christmas and Hannukah, and the coming celebration of a New Year – is perfect for practicing forgiveness.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover that the prisoner was you.”  Lewis B Smeades

Resentment is a grievance or grudge held against another person.  It begins as a judgment that someone has mistreated you or behaved badly toward you in some way.  When the present time belief, feeling, or judgment that someone has done you wrong is carried into the future it becomes resentment. There are few things more treacherous than resentment.  It is an insidious poison that eats away at anyone who partakes of it, destroying health and happiness.  YOUR health and happiness.  You see, resentment is something we feel toward someone out there, but 99.9% of the ill effects of resentment are wreaked on the person harboring the resentment – not the person who is the object of the resentment.

And guess what:  It does not matter how justified you believe your resentment is – it is definitely going to diminish your capacity to be present to the current moment, diminish your ability to experience happiness, and make you sick.  Even if everyone in your life agrees that you were wronged, and that you have every ‘right’ to be resentful, YOU still suffer by harboring it. 

It does not matter how heinously you were treated by another person in the past.  As long as you hang on to that resentment YOU are the person hurting you in the present.  And the poison will seep into all your other relationships and human interactions.  

The antidote to resentment is forgiveness.  Yes, I know, how unfair.  Someone else does something hurtful, and YOU have to do the work of forgiving!  Actually, you don’t have to.  Like everything else, it is a choice.  You can go right on nurturing your resentment for as long as you are willing to reap the consequences: diminished access to your innate happiness, a compromised immune system, decreased energy, increased likelihood of heart disease and cancer, and the list goes on and on. 

 The root of “forgive” is the Latin word “perdonare,” meaning “to give completely, without reservation.”  The word was translated into German and then Old English as “forgiefan,” – meaning to give up, or allow.  In modern English forgive means to pardon, exonerate or absolve. In Aramaic the word for forgive  is “shbag” and it means to untie.

Forgiveness is the antidote to resentment, it is the path to freedom from all the ills and suffering that resentment creates.  Forgiveness is one of the most powerful life tools you will ever learn.

In our culture the practice of forgiveness most often involves one person (the one who was wronged) letting go of the ill feelings/anger that she/he has toward the person that has ‘caused’ the hurt.  When this is done sincerely and completely, the person doing the forgiving is immediately released from the creation of the ongoing harmful effects of resentment.  Note that this release occurs regardless of whether the person being forgiven ever knows about it.  It is the forgiver who is released.

Forgiveness is for YOU.  Forgiveness sets YOU free.  Forgiveness is first and foremost a selfish act.  Hooray for that!

Secondly, understand that you are forgiving the actor, the person you perceive as having hurt you.  You are NOT condoning the hurtful act.  In other words, when developing/choosing forgiveness for your former spouse who cheated on you, you are NOT making a statement that cheating is acceptable. 

It is true that if the person who hurt you is remorseful about what they did, then knowing that they have been forgiven can also be a significant release for them.  It is indeed a gift you can give another human being.  But, as the quote at the beginning of this chapter suggests, it is the forgiver who is immediately and most powerfully released from the suffering created by resentment.

When you harbor resentment toward another, you close your heart to them.  This may or may not have an impact on the person you are resenting.  It always and dramatically has an effect on you.  Any time part of your heart is closed off, you suffer.  Whether you are aware of it or not, it impacts your immune system, drains your energy, constricts your creativity and increases your ‘stress’ level.  Overall, it diminishes your ability to experience life fully and joyfully.  Most people walk around harboring multiple resentments.  Is it any wonder that happiness is so difficult to achieve? 

I am not suggesting that forgiveness is easy, only that it is very, very powerful.  As a life skill, it is one of the most transformational ones you will ever learn.  It will change you first and foremost, and that creates the opportunity for others in your life to change.  The first step is merely cultivating within yourself the desire to forgive. 

Wishing you the most Joyous of Holidays

The Most Important Relationships

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There are two relationships that determine most of what you experience in life:

1.  Your relationship with yourself

2.  Your relationship with the present moment

If either one of these relationships is dysfunctional, there is little hope of experiencing life as easy, joyful, fun and rewarding.  Yet most people never even think about the state of these relationships.  Consider this: Are you ever – is it even possible – to be not with yourself and not in the present moment?  Absolutely NOT!  The present moment is the only place we can ever actually be, and we are always there with ourselves. 

Of the two of these relationships, my experience of 20 plus years of coaching indicates that #2 is the most difficult one for people to “fix”.  For most people the present moment is NOT their friend.  And since all we have is the present moment, if you argue and fight with it continuously, you cannot create a joyful life.

This is how people fight with the present moment:

1.  We treat it as a means to and end.  Yes, YOU do this.  How many of your moments do you rush through just to get to some ‘future’ moment that seems more important?  Any moment you are rushing thru is just a means to some other moment.  And when you get to that moment how present are you? How many moments are you going to treat as throw-aways??? 

2.  We reject it or make it wrong.  It shows up not the way we want it to and we just want to change it, reject it, hold our breath until it goes away.

3.  We make it our enemy.  We complain about it, argue with it, blame someone for it.  Feel annoyed, exasperated, frustrated by it.

The present moment is our best friend.  It is the only place we can ever experience life and take action.  It is the only place we can create anything.  So why do we treat our best friend like it is a nuisance, a problem, an inconvenience, a burden, an obstacle, a hassle???

When you heal your relationship with the present moment, your entire experience of life will shift.  Start by asking yourself as often as you can throughout the day, “What is my relationship with this moment at hand?”  Be honest with your answer, and you will begin to see the insanity of our inability to be with the moment at hand in a welcoming manner.  You will begin to see the myriad of ways that we all make an enemy of the present.

When you can say yes to the moment at hand, and make it your friend no matter HOW it shows up, you will experience a freedom you have never imagined.

Getting Clear About What YOU Are Choosing

On February 20th (See 'Happiness Is An Inside Job') I suggested contemplating the question: “What am I willing to have get in the way of my experience of happiness?”

20 years of coaching people has given me a clear answer to this question.  These are the things that people choose over happiness: petty grievances, annoyance, frustration, complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, blame, worry, and fear.  Sounds crazy, right?  Why would anyone choose any of these over happiness?

The reason is simple - We don't realize that choosing the emotions/mind states on that list obscures the experience of our innate happiness.  We have been conditioned to believe that everything on that list is a normal part of everyday life.  And believing makes it so.  That list is a virtual table of contents for your day to day experience of life.  Please do NOT take my word for it.  It is far more powerful to discover this for yourself.

I encourage you to keep a mind/emotion journal for a few days.  Write or print out the above list of emotions/mind states on a piece of paper and keep it with your journal/list.  Read the list in the morning to remind yourself of the thoughts and feelings you are going to record, and then - at the end of your day do a mental review  and write down a brief notation of any that show up.  If you can review more than once per day, you will get a lot more out of this because we all quickly forget what occurs during our days.  And because we are so accustomed to running these emotions and mind states, and accepting them as natural, it takes practice to notice when they are happening.  

Am I suggesting that one can live life without regularly running the above list? Yes.  Absolutely.  And the first step is becoming aware of their presence and impact.  In future posts I will discuss the exact nature of petty grievances, annoyance, frustration, complaint, anger, resentment, judgment, blame, worry, and fear; as well as how one can limit the presence of these emotions and mind states in daily life.