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We humans are complicated creatures. There is no direct straight line that you can follow from Situation A that leads to Feeling B. Often we have an initial reaction that we will suppress and think we’ll deal with later, only to find ourselves caught up in the busyness of daily life challenges.

We think we have moved on from a situation, but then find ourselves overreacting to a missed deadline, someone else’s anger about a decision we made, disruptions while we are working on a project. These overreactions are because we didn’t resolve an experience we had yesterday, last week, last year, many years ago. 

How does this connect to your daily professional work? To your daily life as a business owner? You won’t hear people talk about forgiveness in a professional context. However, when we can see that other people suffer from emotional pain, for whatever reasons, and to varying degrees, we can see that their actions aren’t motivated by something personal to us – they’re acting from a feeling of hurt that has nothing to do with us. They’re holding on to resentment, feeling the initial anger from a past situation, and thinking it’s the current situation they’re angry about. Now the question is: are we able to see this in ourselves?

We must deal with people and their negativity, unreasonable requests, surprising overreactions. What if we are doing the same things to other people? What if our communication with others is laced with negativity, snarky comments, anger? What if we’re treating others in a way we don’t like to be treated?

We all have attachments to other people, we create bonds based on shared experiences and likes and dislikes. We’re not just attracted to like-minded people, we’re encouraged by leaders in our lives to seek the company of like-minded people. It’s these attachments that make forgiving ourselves so important. As we encounter trust issues, grieve the loss of a friendship, wrestle with the feelings of betrayal, we take those feelings into our daily lives and they affect how we respond to others. 

While we experience these issues at varying levels, when we don’t resolve them right away we carry them into the next day, the next week, the next year. Then, when we are ready to resolve them, we find ourselves going through the grief process. This is when some people will stop and try to tell themselves that it’s just not that important. For those who understand that it is important to resolve these issues, they will get through the grieving process.

Something to remember is that there are eight stages of grief. They are as follows:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Sadness
4. Fear about what will happen next
5. Mental and emotional acceptance
6. Forming new attachments or renewing a bond
7. Forgiveness
8. Finding full gratitude and joy again. 

Of these, forgiveness can be the most difficult. And yet, it’s also the most healing. 

Forgiveness means: to be able to give again. People who are not able to forgive tend to become victims or persecutors. They are unhappy, cynical, negative, over defensive and they suffer. They tend to hold others hostage by accusing them of actions or thoughts that are causing harm, when it’s their inability to detach themselves from someone else’s emotional issues. The victim and the victim-turned persecutor attitudes result in not being able to experience real joy, genuine love, or full gratitude. 

Does this sound familiar? Does it describe anyone you know or maybe even describe yourself? If so, there are some things you can do to begin the journey to forgiving yourself.

The first thing is to be clear on what it is you want to forgive. Your first thought may be that you know what you’ve done or didn’t do. Are you sure? If time has passed your perceptions have changed, your recollection can be skewed by today’s emotions and knowledge. This is where a journal can help to give you clarity. Write down what happened and your part in it. Stick with the facts. 

When you’re done read it and remove the extra, the parts that have nothing to do with the actual behavior or words that occurred. Be truthful, don’t embellish. 

Next is to acknowledge your emotions around that situation. Give yourself permission to be angry, hurt, frustrated, afraid, sad, embarrassed. Time has passed but those emotions are still tied to that incident and if you want to forgive so you can let go, feeling the emotions at this point is important.

And next, think through how you could have handled yourself differently. What would you have done if you had tried to resolve the issue at the time it happened? Get clear about this because it reflects your vision of who you want to be, which may be different than who you are now. It’s now when you also acknowledge the other people involved, if the mistake you made hurt another person, you need to determine the best course of action. Do you want to talk to this person and apologize? Are there monetary issues involved? Do you owe them money or cause them to lose money? It may be that to resolve this you offer to make amends, rather than just an apology. There are steps you take to make amends, some of which include:

• Be truthful about the damage you caused.
• Express your desire to repair it.
• Admit your mistakes.
• Find a way to repair the damage, asking them what they view as fair recompense or repair. 
• Be patient if they tell you they don’t know, yet, and that they’ll get back to you.
• Be patient about getting someone’s trust, they may not forgive you as readily as you would forgive someone else.

Your intention is to restore goodwill, to make right that which you did wrong, to come clean with your mistakes and missteps so that you don’t do them again. It isn’t to have the other person say “I forgive you”. The process, when you do it, results in you forgiving yourself. 

You will know you have forgiven yourself when you feel a weight lift from your shoulders, you feel a release and feel joyful. Then the feeling turns to being grateful. Grateful for who you are and what you have to offer the world. You’ll also see the world differently. The grass is greener. The trees are more full. You’ll hear birds when before you heard nothing. You’ll smile when someone cuts you off in traffic. You’ll find it is easier to communicate with others.