Maintain a Forgiving Attitude

Dr Tae Yun Kim is a martial artist, an author, a speaker and much more. Here is an excerpt from her book, The Silent Master.

Once you have begun to set goals that go beyond your present concept of yourself, you may have to work hard at letting go of your past. A big part of the readiness phase of Self Discovery is the elimination of the old to make room for the new. This may require much forgiveness on your part, because forgiveness is the way you release the past. You cannot change a situation if you keep holding onto it with negative emotion. You must forgive, release, and sacrifice feelings of condemnation in order to change any bad situation in your life.

Forgiving yourself is as important as forgiving others. You never need to condemn yourself or anyone else for mistakes. You simply learn whatever you need to learn, let it go, and then move on to create a new reality.

Unfortunately, forgiveness can seem to demand the ultimate unwilling sacrifice. So much tempts us to hate and resent and be angry when we feel wronged. We don't easily sacrifice those feelings, and forgiveness almost seems to hurt when we're called upon to do it. But if you can do it, you find release, not loss. With forgiveness, you find freedom to create the new unhindered by past impressions.

And perhaps what may be harder than forgiving others is forgiving yourself. The main obstacle in forgiving yourself is guilt. If you think back to your childhood, you'll remember that condemnation was probably the most common way of dealing with wrongdoing. Most of us have been taught that when we did something wrong, we should be condemned before being forgiven, and maybe not even forgiven! Most of us were not taught that doing something wrong should be an opportunity for education, or an opportunity for creating a better solution.