Why You Should Forgive-12 Benefits Of Forgiveness

Probably  you are considering forgiveness for yourself, your significant other or perhaps others, but your are not sure if it’s worth the emotional work. You might prefer to ignore the painful memories and keep going about your daily activity with the intention of dealing with it later.

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The best time to forgive is now!! This is because not forgiving has a price tag. Keeping grudges and grievances against our significant other, we retain everything that goes with them.

Grudges and grievances are associated with relationship anxiety, depression, irritability, controlled or uncontrolled anger, weight gain or weight loss, lack of trust in ourselves and others, various addictions, insomnia and much more. Do you have enough space in your heart for all of this?

Read 6 Causes And Solutions For Relationship Anxiety

With all the negative effect of not forgiving, let’s look at the benefits of forgiveness and they are overwhelming.

Benefits of forgiveness

Healing has various process and forgiveness top the rank recently (medical research). There are evidences that holding onto painful memories and bitterness result in long-term health issues. While forgiveness has direct opposite effects.

1. Healthier relationships

When we make forgiveness a regular part of our daily life, we start to notice that all of our relationships; with your significant other, co-workers, neighbors etc begin to flourish. Forgiveness has a way of accessing deeper love thereby leading to healthier relationships.

2. Improved psychological well-being

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By releasing our grievances, we become more harmonious on all levels. Your mind becomes calmer, you become happier daily and ready to give compassion and love to the world. You will experience less nightmares. You will enjoy exciting new life daily because you have a calm mind.

3. Lower risk of alcohol or abuse of substance

Forgiveness helps us release that inner pain and find gifts in our situation instead of relying on alcohol and other substances which are mask for underlying pain. They don’t remove the pains, they only suspend them.

4. Reduced depression symptoms

With reference to (3 above), this is a crucial issue for many in their relationships. Depression is debilitating and can lead to suicide and in-fact this is the cause of many suicide today. The entire world is under depression. Forgiveness gives healing and can replace depression with a sense of purpose and real love.

5. Reduced anxiety symptoms

Anxiety often arises often when we fear that we have done something wrong. Hence we all need to forgive ourselves and as well others. Forgiveness helps us to love ourselves deeply and helps to relieve us from our inner pain because our guilty conscience causes anxiety at a deep level.

6. Reduction in chronic pain

Refer to (2 above), physical pain often has psychological cause. When we allow thoughtful change to happen with forgiveness, we get healed on both psychological and physical levels hence, reversing chronic pains.

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7. Better friendship

Old relationships have a chance to change for better and grow stronger, and new relationships can develop faster when we make room for forgiveness. We become closer to our friends and family when we no longer hold grudges against them.

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8. Better anger management

With fewer burdens in our heart from the past weighing us down, we can have more self-control when we are angry.

Read Managing Anger In Your Relationships

9. Lower blood pressure

When we are able to manage (5 and 8) above because of past grievances our heart rate evens out yielding a lower blood pressure. There are other health benefits associated with lower blood pressure: healthier circulatory system, heart attack etc

10. Reduced hostility

Forgiveness is serious commitments and has enormous benefits. Spontaneous hostility behavior like road rage, aggressive reply’s and picking a fight for no reason goes down. Forgiveness asks us to let go of hostility towards ourselves, our significant other and others.

Hostility can be caused by unhealthy relationship, anxiety, depression and anger.

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11. Reduced stress

Stress can amount as a result of holding grievances. Hence the need to forgive. Forgiveness eases stress because we no longer recycle thoughts that cause psychic stress.

12. Greater religious well-being

Every religion of the world preaches forgiveness. It is at the center of every religion and whether you have chosen a religion or not, forgiveness will bring you closer to your believes.

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Most of us crave for good life, full of quality relationships and fun without knowing how to achieve it,

From the list above, we see that if we had lower stress, lower blood pressure, reduced hostility, and less chronic pain, we will be happier in life. We will be living a life of joy, peace, purpose and love when we have healthier relationships, improved psychological well-being and connected to our believes.

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