Have you ever found yourself in a rut because you couldn’t seem to let go of something? Not a physical object, necessarily, but an experience or event. You know the kind – something happened and you feel that you were treated unfairly, personally wronged or, worst of all, on the receiving end of a lie. Different emotions wash over you: betrayal, sadness, pain. This is a perfectly normal reaction, until…it’s gone on for weeks, months, even years and you just can’t seem to let go.
You might feel resentful towards the person or entity that did you wrong. You fantasize about revenge and ways to get back at them. If you could only cause them to feel the same pain they have caused you, then you could finally get closure.
That is a very human impulse, one that we all have felt at some point, but it is not a healthy state of mind. The time you spend fixating on this person or event is lost time. It saps your energy and attention from the things that are important in your life now, and for what? How many of us ever actually achieve that fantasized revenge, or find it as satisfying as we hoped it would be?
The hard part is that you and you alone have to take the steps necessary to get out of this difficult place. You have to find it in yourself to truly forgive the other person – not because they deserve it, or because they ask for it, but because you need to forgive them in order to move on. An exercise I like to use to help me with this is to try to imagine myself in their shoes and view the event from their perspective. This will often help you gain a new understanding of the situation. You may come out of this exercise just as angry at the other person as you were when you started, but it will at least help you understand why the person did what they did. That may give you some peace, or at least the perspective to be able to avoid similar situations in the future.
We like to think that the person we’re angry with spends just as much time obsessing over us as we do over them. We hope they feel terrible when they walk past us, and imagine the awkward pause when we speak with them on the phone is because they’re wracked with guilt. But here is some unpleasant truth: they probably haven’t spared a second’s thought about the incident since it happened. You can’t stop thinking about it, but they may not even remember that it happened, or care. All that worry and angst you’ve invested in the situation likely hasn’t affected them in the slightest. Until you let that person or event go, they control you, even if they are no longer physically in your life. When you let go of the hurt and the bitterness you are setting yourself free.
Let me be clear: letting go and forgiving doesn’t mean that you weren’t wronged. It doesn’t mean that your anger at what the person who wronged you did isn’t justified. You don’t have to magically start trusting them again, or even speak to them again if you don’t want to. Letting go is simply a personal choice that you make to stop letting your anger and frustration about the situation control you. It is a choice to turn your energy towards things that will improve your life and help you accomplish your goals as you move forward, instead of keeping you stuck in the past.
A friend of mine has a motto that he uses when these types of situations arise in his life: “Let’s move on,” which he sometimes shortens to “LMO.” If you’re in a situation like this one, write down this motto and take the first steps towards moving on. Like most difficult and worthy things, this will take time and effort on your part. I promise you, though, that the end result will be worth it.
Have a great weekend,
Ro