Week One - Letting Go

Seems like an odd place to start a mindfulness program right? I mean, who am I to ask you to forgive whoever or whatever has hurt, harmed or wronged you in some way?

I don’t know you. I haven’t experienced the pain, stress, and/or difficult emotions you have. Yet here I am asking you to do something that can be hard, uncomfortable and maybe, completely unjustified.

(Keep in mind my job over the next 5 weeks is to guide you. To open the door and point to the path. You still have to be the one to walk through. There will be no pushing. Every step is completely up to you to take or not. However, the more willing you are to take those steps, the more the internal shifts will begin to happen).

Now coming back to forgiveness, why start here?

Any pain stored as a memory in the mind which hasn’t been dealt with will continue to burden you. Weigh you down and block what your intuition is trying to tell you. Trying all the things to make yourself feel better e.g. eating healthy, exercising, even meditating, will only give you a surface type of healing. We need to clean out the fridge before adding all the new good food in.

It’s like building your dream home on sand. It doesn’t matter how nice, slick and fancy the home is, it’s always going to be unstable. We need to clear underneath and lay a strong and stable foundation first and we do this with ourselves through forgiveness. 

Forgiveness has nothing to do with justice. Forgiveness is completely for yourself. By you thinking that forgiving someone else is letting them ‘off the hook’, is actually only keeping yourself strung up by that exact same hook. 

Forgiveness allows you to be free. To establish a strong base foundation to which you can then build healthy habits upon.

Now it’s time for the exercise itself.

Take 5 minutes to write down anything that comes to mind when you ask yourself the question “what moments in my past still feel painful, uncomfortable or difficult that were caused by someone else?” 

Write it all down. Whatever comes to mind first and keep going till you feel like you’ve gotten it all out down on paper.

Once you’ve gotten it all done. Turn over a new page and repeat the same process, however this time write down whatever comes to mind when you ask yourself the question “what moments in my past still feel painful, uncomfortable or difficult that I did to myself?”

Again, just write down what comes to mind first. You can allow yourself to pause and let whatever needs to arise to bubble to the surface, then write that down until you no more thoughts on the matter come to mind.

Once nothing else comes to mind, take a moment to take a few deep breaths and step away from what you’ve written down, Go and grab a glass of water and take a few moments to compose yourself. When you feel a little more settled, return to what you wrote down, read it back to yourself and now write down the following words under both sections.

“I choose now to forgive and let go of all of this.”

Repeat this line to yourself multiple times. Each time being more certain as you say it. Opening yourself up and really letting go. 

Then when you can, either burn or throw away the pieces of paper.

Well done.

We now have a clear, strong foundation to build on.