Life is so short.

When you think about how much time we really have in our lives, it can be quite humbling to realize how quickly it can go by. 

I am 49.  The odds are that more than half of my life is over.  I am to the point where I can remember things that happened before many of the people that I talk to were born.  This feels very odd as it just seems like yesterday that I was a teenager.

I am now starting to feel like one of the “old guys” I used to know that would give me life advice.  Back then I couldn’t appreciate what they were trying to tell us.  I had no idea what they were talking about and sometimes I even thought they were kind of crazy. 

(more…)

In past articles, we have spoken about forgiving others and forgiving yourself or, in other words, your being the party doing the forgiving.  But there are also times when we might need to be forgiven by another person for hurtful actions we have taken.

Many people carry around a significant amount of guilt as a result of actions they have taken that have been hurtful to others.  And many times this guilt can have significant consequences for the person carrying it and may even limit their ability to enjoy their life.

How do you go about releasing yourself and your conscience from the guilt that you might be carrying?  You must learn to ask for forgiveness from the other person.

(more…)

At this moment, while I sit here writing, I cannot think of one thing that I have done that the memory of makes me feel resentment towards myself.  Sure, there are things that I have done that were hurtful to others, but for the most part I have realized my actions may have caused hurt, tried to learn from my actions so I won’t repeat them, and asked for and received forgiveness for my actions.  From this, I have been able to move forward in my life without carrying a lot of guilt and self-resentment.

In my original post “Choosing Forgiveness”, I discussed how to move forward in your life and cut the ties that bind you to someone who has hurt you through learning to forgive that person.  Now it is time to look at ourselves and try to examine what internal baggage we might be carrying around that we need to be able to free ourselves from by choosing to forgive ourselves.

Many of us have done things in our lives that we might not be happy with ourselves about.  Have you been the one to cheat on a partner?  Have you been the one to break a promise you made to yourself or another person?  Do you beat yourself up over the fact that you didn’t say something to someone before it was too late or that you did say something that you could not take back and now you regret it?

(more…)

I am sure that everyone, at one time in their life, has experienced being hurt by another person.  Most times the hurt comes from a breach of trust that we have placed in someone close to us: someone steals from us, marital infidelity, divorce, and physical abuse are some of those breaches.

Being hurt by someone close to us can generate some very strong emotions; unfortunately, the emotions that being hurt generates are negative ones.   Anger, betrayal, sadness, and other feelings similar to these are entirely normal reactions to the hurt.

While these are normal reactions, what is not normal is allowing these feelings to consume you to the point where they become unhealthy, affect your attitude, or cause you to cease being able to enjoy life.

(more…)