Phase One: Stepping Towards Forgiveness.
Choose a dream or a goal that you haven’t yet attained, one you’ve held on to for a long time that’s been dear to you. It could be a dream that you’ve discarded lately because you thought it would never come true. 1. Write down a word or two that describes your dream in the middle of a piece of paper. Then, using the mind-mapping technique you learned earlier, start looking at all your reasons, rationalizations, or excuses for not completing that dream. List all the reasons you can. 2. Look at your reasons. Can you think of one or more people who’ve contributed to your difficulties? Write down who they are and what happened. You might say, “My dad was a put-down artist who undermined my self-confidence,” or “My uncle Joe wouldn’t give me a loan for my education, so I don’t have the credentials I need.” Look for the person or people you blame. Was it a teacher who was cruel? Or your brother, the family star, who got what he needed at your expense? This is no time to look good. List the person or people you feel stood in your way or caused you to get derailed. Say what they did, or failed to do, for you. Don’t worry about being uncharitable. Just be honest. 3. What do you feel as you write? Is there heaviness in your chest or gut? A lack of breathing room? Anger or frustration? No matter how you manage to disguise your true feelings, when you are in the same room with that person, or even hear their name, the feelings you have now are always present. They’re right out front, or buried just beneath the surface. This is definitely not traveling light. 4. Ask yourself: “If this person were never in my life, would I have gotten what it is I say I want? Would I be free of all these reasons and excuses? Would I be successful? What would I be doing with my life that I’m not doing now?” If you’ve made your mind map and don’t locate any people you deem responsible for the condition of your thwarted dream, look deeper. If you’ve made your mind map and don’t locate any people you deem responsible for the condition of your thwarted dream, look deeper. For example, if you say, “One of the reasons that I haven’t gone to Tahiti is that I don’t have enough money,” look under that statement for the reason why. What’s causing you not to have enough money? You may have to go back three or four steps, but I guarantee that you will eventually trace your reason to the personality of another person. Maybe it was that your mom never showed you how to manage money. Maybe it was that your father was stingy with the money that he had. But allow yourself to go back until you locate the person or people whom you really deem responsible for things being the way they are. It takes courage to do this. How did you feel as you did this exercise? Share what you found with a friend. Remember, when you forgive another person you cease to use what they did as the reason that your dreams and goals failed to materialize. Through forgiveness, you are waiving the right to use what they did against them or yourself. As forgiveness replaces negative judgments and assessments, your stories or scenarios about how difficult it is for you to deal with that person fade away. You no longer spend time talking with others about that person’s character flaws and how much they hurt you. This may not be easy. I remember one woman who said, “If I can’t talk about how rigid and selfish my mother is, I’m afraid I won’t have anything to say to my brothers and sisters when we’re together at Thanksgiving!” Once again, when you give up your characterizations you’re no longer shaped by them. One consequence of holding on to your limiting decisions about another person is that you may turn out exactly like them. You know this is true. You have seen it in yourself and others. You wake up one morning to find you’ve become like the person you blame for your misfortune. You can hear it in your voice or in the words you use. Conversely, releasing others releases you to be successful. No more reasons or excuses! If you wish to go on, try the exercise in forgiveness that follows. It is powerful, and freeing.