Written by: Thokozile Eunice Mahlaola, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Every individual has a right to live a life full of peace and happiness, and the way to achieve such a life is through expressing peace from within us. Yet how can we express peace when we are faced with so much negativity? One way of expressing this inner peace is through forgiveness because it cleanses away the negativity that stands in the way of what we believe we can do with our lives. I have come to find that forgiveness is expressed in three ways.
1. Fore give
“Fore” means before; therefore, the “fore” in “forgive” means before we give. We need to do this before we can give whatever it is that we want to give to the Creator, ourselves, our children, our spouses, our clients, and all of humanity.
What causes unforgiveness might not be between us and those we want to give to, yet if we harbor unforgiveness in our hearts, it affects everything else in our lives. This is because unforgiveness is tied to negative emotions that bring heaviness such as sicknesses, addictions, and death to the soul. Giving before we forgive is a waste of time, energy, and resources because our gifts carry all that negativity from us to those who receive us. This is because we do not just give physically but from our spirits and souls also, and if we are burdened by carrying unresolved issues, heaviness gets attached to those we serve.
2. For give
The “for” in “forgive” indicates that we give for the sake of giving or we give for something. In other words, it is a reason for doing something. Now the first reason we give is because our Creator first gave us life; the second reason is that we are created to be like Him, so it is our God-given nature to extend ourselves and our gifts to others in service.
The thing with giving is, it fills our hearts with goodness, and it benefits us because the more we give, the more we receive. Yet, we should not give with the aim of gaining because giving needs an open spirit and an open heart. Therefore, we should give as if we have never been hurt or rejected before. We should understand that giving does not mean the receiver is perfect but that our gifts can help them.
3. Forgive
To forgive means to pardon; to give another chance, or to grant a do-over. It is about going back to the beginning and sorting out whatever issues we have so we can give freely. It means to stop feeling the negative emotions and let go of whoever or whatever incident that brought those emotions about.
When we realize that we are not angels but human beings, life starts to be better because we start to accept that we all have faults. We can then treat each other with kindness rather than with judgment. When we give each other chances to do better, we help each other to be better. This shows that forgiveness demands us to shift our focus from how people treat us to how we process their treatment because that is the only thing we can control.
Most times, when we consider forgiveness, we think of it in terms of other people. Yet, we also need to forgive ourselves for the bad decisions or mistakes we make. We need to forgive ourselves when we doubt ourselves and believe that we are not enough; for thinking that we are perfect while seeing others as imperfect, for what others did to us and for what we did to others, and many other incidents in our lives. All this may sound like it is nothing but the void these unresolved incidents cause stays with us until we deal with them.
We need to realize that forgiveness opens our lives up for abundance to flow in while unforgiveness closes us off spiritually, soulfully, and physically. Whatever we do with a heavy heart does not bear healthy fruit; instead, it makes us bitter and robs us off our inheritance. It also keeps us locked up in the past instead of allowing us to experience the possibility of a new day. It causes us to hurt others because we are hurt. It causes us to think that everyone and everything is against us when they are not. It makes us hold on to the hurt to remind us to protect ourselves from perceived future dangers. But the answers to our healing, breakthroughs, promotions, success, happiness, marriages, pregnancies, businesses are tied to our forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not a feeling but a choice. We do not forgive and immediately step into happiness because it is a decision we continuously take until we are fully freed from the heaviness. The good thing about forgiveness is that it takes away the heaviness and gives us peace of heart and mind; healing and happiness, freedom and restoration, as well as abundance and fulfillment.
Also, remember that forgiveness does not mean that we are right and others are wrong. It only conveys that we are done with holding on to this hurt or disappointment and that we are ready to allow healing, peace, and freedom to flow into our lives. This is important because healing happens when we declutter our spaces just as the sun shines the brightest through a clean window. Now let us empty our loads and spring clean our hearts, minds, spirits, and lives to experience lasting peace and happiness.
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Thokozile Eunice Mahlaola, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Thokozile Eunice Mahlaola is the founder of The CherryBlue House, a consortium where they deal with career development, personal development, content writing, and music entertainment. Since 2015 she has self-published three books and has two books and a music album coming out in 2020. Her online courses have changed the lives of people from different parts of the world. She has studied Creative Writing and Editing through the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism and Language and Literature and Public Relations Management both through the University of South Africa. The eighteen years of combined corporate and entrepreneurial experience she has gathered has prepared her to work with individuals, employees, and new entrepreneurs who want to know their life’s purpose; align their priorities with their values and be more productive in their lives, work, and businesses.
