Forgiveness will set you free; once you choose to forgive, you choose to separate yourself from any negative outcome you had in the past that still resounds in your present; forgiveness is not something you give to others; forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself.

We have wrong beliefs about what forgiveness really means, and that is why we doubt every time we want to forgive. What we need to understand is that forgiveness is something you do for yourself; it seems as if it is something that you only do for another, but in fact, the result of forgiveness is something that will benefit you more than anyone else.

We see forgiveness as a gift to another; while that can have some benefits to others, and it can give some kind of peace in someone else’s life, it will never let someone be free from being guilty; that is something that they have to do for themselves, they have to forgive themselves in order to be free.

“Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.” –Jonathan Lockwood Huie.

We see the act of forgiveness as an act of weakness, but in fact, it requires a lot of courage and strength to forgive. It’s the way that you have to step aside from the victim role and see everything from a different perspective. It will give you the power to control a situation without giving it the opportunity to control your thoughts, emotions, and life.

What someone does to another is a way to reflect how they feel deep inside their heart, because when you feel happy, and you love yourself, there is no way that you can hurt someone else, it is always the one who has a broken heart, the one who breaks someone else’s heart.

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”- Thich Nhat Hanh

So the best way to forgive, in fact, the way we have to never have a motive to forgive again, is by never taking something personally, even though an action seems to be against you, for the only purpose of hurting you, it is something never really done against you, but rather something that people do for themselves.

Think it this way: all of us have done something against someone, so first of all, nobody is innocent, so anybody can find a good motive to do something according to their belief, but what I want you to understand is that when you do something bad to another human being, you do that against you too, because what you give, you receive, is that simple, nobody that do a negative action can have positive feeling about it, the negativity and positivity simply do not go together.

“Forgiveness doesn’t excuse their behavior, forgiveness prevents their behavior from destroying your heart.” – Unknown

So knowing that, it is a very useful way to not take anything personally, what it will give you the opportunity to see everything from another perspective, you will not see yourself as a victim any more, and you will understand what is really happening and why is it happening. Allowing yourself to see everything from another perspective will give you a different reality. You will understand them and forgive them, because you know that whatever somebody is doing to you, it is doing to himself too, because as I said before you can never do a negative action against someone and expect a positive result out of it, so that person is the first victim of all the pain that he is causing.

So allow yourself the gift of forgiveness, do not let any situation stop you from moving forward, and set yourself free from all pain and sadness from the past, using that as strength and as a motivation to keep getting better because you do not want to be like them. You don’t want them to win, being their victim, and you either want to be condemned for something you have done in the past. Believe me, you are better than that!

Forgive others and forgive yourself from any past situation and you will be free!