Have you ever paused to consider how much your personal growth can be really stymied by guilt and forgiveness issues(or often a lack of forgiveness, to be more accurate)? Why? Because they suggest to us that beauty does not lie within us, but in others. It urges us to listen to voices outside of our own and in many cases, to give away our personal power to the owners of those voices. Going further, it even suggests that other people know more about us than we do!
What is the definition of guilt? An on-line dictionary defines it as: “The fact of being responsible for the commission of an offense.” So there lies the key to removing this barrier to personal growth and dealing with your guilt: accept responsibility for what you’ve done and act appropriately. You may need to apologise, you may need to make reparation and both of these may be as true when apologising to yourself as to others.
This will help your personal growth in another way – it will teach you to listen to your intuition; you may initially feel that you have to take masssive action but if you pause and take a breath, your intuition will guide you. It’s difficult for some people to accept the wisdom of their inner voice – people have a difficult time accepting this inner teacher that has perfect understanding.
The other side of the coin is forgiveness – we often have lengthy conversations with students on our courses, and with our clients, about the need for forgiveness. The conversation usually goes along the lines of “Why should I (or How can I) forgive them after what they have done?” The answer is simple – it has little to do with the other person. It’s for your benefit, for your personal growth. It’s about releasing the angst trapped within us, angst that can add significantly to the burden of stress we carry. To put it another way, the other person may have done something nasty to you that caused you a lot of problems. Why should what they did continue to cause you a problem, perhaps even endangering your health? Why give them that power over you? Forgiveness is for your benefit, not theirs.
Another important catalyst for personal growth and development is pardoning yourself – we often carry unrealistic expectations about ourselves and when we fail to meet those expectations, we blame ourselves. For example, for years I blamed myself for mishandling how I told my brother that our mum had died. It took me a long time to understand that there is no ‘best way’ and that I’d done the best I could with what I knew.
When you have a quiet moment, sit and ask your self two questions:
1. What guilt are you carrying around and what can you do about it?
2. Who do you need to pardon?
I wrote here that true happiness comes from within and I believe that you can start to experience this by thinking about, and acting upon, the two questions above and by beginning to listen to your intuition. What benefits have you gained from learning about guilt and forgiveness? How important has it been for you to learn to forgive yourself?
Similar Posts:
- Guilt and Forgiveness – you first!
- 13 Important Questions for Personal Development
- Healing Through Forgiveness
- Personal Development Lessons from Patch Adams
- Personal Growth the Benjamin Franklin Way!
