Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

In the course we have covered just about all you need to know for a successful apology and healing relationships. There is but a few issues that need to be addressed. What do you do if a person is not willing to forgive you? Are there certain communication skills you can use to get the person to forgive you or should you just move on and accept the person’s unwillingness to forgive you as their problem? Is there are an art to forgiveness and how do we find it? How can we forgive others and start experiencing more happiness, success, and enjoyable relationships as a result of forgiveness?

The Ugly Duckling

I will give you the quickest overview of the ugly duckling story you’ll ever hear with my “brilliant” story-telling abilitie. Basically the story is about a duckling who was different to his brothers and sisters. It was frustrated with its difference and sought acceptance from others. The duckling ran away from home. It returned to its place of birth a year later. When the duckling came back to its home the other swans welcomed the once ugly duckling as part of their group.

Over the years I have come to notice that while there are laws and principles which govern how to get the most out of communication, success, relationships, and happiness, quite a few times there is the ugly duckling. This ugly duckling is the unusual exception to the group. There is only so much you can do in any area of life. I will read, learn, apply, change, and reapply skills in my life and help others improve themselves yet we all still fail at things we set out to achieve. It relates to our natural and forever lasting imperfections.

There are skills you can put to use to get a desirable response in others, to get them to do what you want, and to build healthy relationships; yet the skills have an exception, like the ugly duckling. With the complexity of human behavior it is very difficult to create unbreakable skills that will work every time. In our situation and what this last part of the course covers, the ugly duckling is the person who is not willing to forgive you. It also covers the situation when you are not willing to forgive another person.

Some people will never accept your apology. You can only do so much. There will always be those people who do not forgive you. If you have taken responsibility, planned, sympathized, used good timing, and explained yourself as taught in the earlier lesson how to apologize correctly and the person does not forgive you; move on. You can definitely still put some of the following skills to use that will help the person find forgiveness, but be prepared to move on and not expect anything in return. Likewise, when you manage to forgive someone, do not expect them to forgive you or have a similar reaction. Forgiveness is about letting go of the past and getting on with life.

Say you have done everything in your power and the other person not forgiving you is based on his or her own problems. Life goes on and so should you. Do not get bogged down on someone else’s grudge against you. If you move on, the person maybe willing to accept your apology at a later time. This is using the timing tip taught in part three of the course.

Different Awareness

Did you know that you and everyone else always does the best they possibly can at that point in time? You may feel you could have done better in past situations, but the truth is: you did your best. Whether you all of a sudden lose your calmness as you emotionally lash-out in an argument or miss an easy goal in soccer, hockey, or football – you always achieve your best. When I heard this for the first time, I was astounded and felt compelled to disagree with it due to my conditioning I had received from sport coaches, family, and others who use to tell me, “Come on. You can do better then that!”

Your best performance is based on your present level of awareness. A sports coach who revs up his players about not doing their best is in fact still right, yet this is misinterpreted. The sports coach in yelling at his players stimulates a new awareness that they are not trying as hard as they could be. The players at that point in time actually performed their best like we all always do. What the coach does is create a new awareness in the players which allows them to perform better than their prior performance. While the players may have been underperforming, they still did their best.

Applying this law of awareness to our communication and relationships, you cannot forgive others and they cannot forgive you if one’s level of awareness is not high enough. No one can do that which he or she is not aware of. Awareness applies in being aware of the fault at hand and knowing the art of forgiveness. In order to forgive a person, you must be aware of the fault and know how to forgive. A greater awareness can be created from learning the skills and mindset one must have to forgive, which leads to problem identification and a solution.

I have found that teaching other people communication and personal development skills has given me a greater level of personal awareness. Just like others, my level of success is determined by my personal awareness. Not only do I gain further knowledge in teaching others which improves my life, but I try to shift other people’s awareness so they can achieve personal and relationship success more rapidly than they thought possible.

We all have different perceptions, understandings, and experiences which we apply to the present – and this forms our current level of awareness. Someone may not forgive you because they are unaware of the secret art of forgiveness, which you will soon uncover in this article. By shifting their awareness you can transition them into becoming more forgiving of you as you expand their initial understanding – opening their mind with what could be.

Effects of Not Forgiving

The root of evil, negative emotions and actions, grudges, anger, resentment, hatred, and envy begin with not forgiving. This may seem religious to you, but the fact is rejecting someone else’s apology and not forgiving them causes these effects. You build up various negative emotions that destroy your life. An unwillingness to forgive is damaging to one’s mental well-being and this damages one’s physical well-being. If someone does not forgive you, they will suffer more than you will. This is a part of finding the secret art of forgiveness.

By not forgiving someone over just one issue, there is enough potential in the resentment and anger generated from that problem to damage the person’s life. That’s right. Just one, single, solo, individual, exclusive, and lone unforgiving issue is enough to ruin a person’s life. You can live in anger based on one topic that destroys your happines, causing other things in your life to crumble around you.

To demonstrate how one issue can damage a person’s whole life, I’ll use an example that I know many people struggle with. The example is about being poorly raised by your parents.

You may have been abused by your parents at an early age. Perhaps they made some wrong decisions that negatively affected your life. Alright, so let’s say you have experienced this from your parents. Though you are now someone who forgives everyone because you’ve learned from this course that you need to forgive others, you have not been able to forgive your parent’s for the way they have raised you.

The mistake they (or your Mum or Dad alone) made hurts you deeply, generating severe emotional pain. You hold this mistake against your parents. You may never even have talked about this problem with anybody in your entire life. Even though you forgive every other person and your parents on other problems, you cannot forgive your parents for this one problem and as a result you constantly experience anger and resentment. This one issue is enough to make you unhappy for your entire life.

You can not afford to let this happen by not forgiving. Do not be that person who cannot forgive. Clear your mind by clearing the other person’s slate of mistakes. You need to forgive every person, on every issue, every time; or you will experience the negative effects of not forgiving. To do this, there is one principle in the secret art of forgiveness I live by that changed my life and will change yours as it allows you to forgive others over issues you thought you never could get past.

Secret Art of Forgiveness: Whose Canvas Is It?

I believe there is one true life-changing secret in finding the art of forgiveness. There is one mindset that changed my life forever and allowed me to start creating forgiveness, healing past problems, letting go, eliminating the blame-game from my life, and truly getting on with life instead of worrying about past problems others have inflicted on me.

Are you interested in creating a master piece by forgiving others? Are you ready to begin painting your life and taking control of how you feel? Are you willing to no longer let the past mistakes of other people make you angry, frustrated, and resentful? Are you interested in how you can apply this secret art of forgiveness in others so they are more likely to forgive you?

The secret art of forgiveness lies in throwing down the shield you are holding up in your life on the ground and acknowledging that what you are trying to do in making the other person unhappy by holding a grudge is in fact only making you unhappy. When we are unwilling to forgive we think our unforgiveness is hurting the person who hurt us. We hold our unhappiness and hurtful past against those who hurt us in an effort to reciprocate the damage they have done to us. The truth of the matter and finding the art of forgiveness lies in knowing your hurtful attachment to the past is not doing these other people any harm, but is only hurting your emotional well-being. The gun you are firing is in fact off target and the recoil is hurting yourself. We think we are messing up another’s piece of art but we are in fact scribbling on our own piece of art.

You can only forgive another person when you make the choice to be happy instead of right. If you see the person as having done wrong and you are right, you will never be released of your hurting emotions. The art of forgiveness is not about who is right and who is wrong. It is about making the choice that you want to be happy instead of right. Only then can you take advantage of the secret art of forgiveness and free yourself from your hurtful past. You will at last begin painting your life the way you want it to be instead of the past destroying your creative imagination.

Forgiving a person does not “let them off the hook”. It does not mean you accept or condone the person’s behavior or trust the person. What forgiveness does is give you a clean future despite a dirty past. In part three of this course I said:

There is a lot of confusion about the old phrase, “We must not forget; but we must forgive”. Have you ever thought deeply what this truly means? Instead of just accepting these phrases we were brought up to believe, I want you to challenge them. We know forgiveness is a must. Without it, resentment builds up which only hurts the person unwilling to forgive and not the person who did the damage. So should we forget other people’s mistakes?

If another person holds the bitter memories and resentment of your mistake against you then the person really hasn’t forgiven. However, it’s almost humanly impossible to forget another’s mistake. Forgiveness heals the past releasing ill-will against the person while not forgetting is a memory of the pain that guides future actions. It would be foolish to not learn from the past. Forgiveness and forgetting are closely tied together, yet are entirely different things.

Forgiveness is not easy, but by acknowledging the fact that the only person you are hurting in not forgiving another person is yourself, you are finally able to reliquinish pain and relish the happiness you were born to experience. If someone is not forgiving you for your mistakes, make sure you have entirely forgiven them, and communicate the fact that you thought you were hurting the person, but you were only hurting yourself. What you are doing here is educating the person in an indirect manner so your passive advice will not be rejected. In turn, it will increase the person’s awareness and they will be more likely to accept your apology and forgive you for your mistake. “To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love.” said Robert Muller, a well-known advocate of world peace. “In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.”

Emotional Callus

I have a weird way of holding my pencil. Just about all my school teachers have attempted to change my pencil grip yet I refused to change. I was stubborn and stuck in my habitual ways. Maybe that’s why my handwriting is still messy.

As I do now, like in school, I grip the pencil awkwardly. My thumb is perpendicular to the pencil and my index finger runs directly down the pencil. This left the pencil to rest against the last knuckle of my middle finger. When I did a lot of writing, my awkward grip would cause the pencil to rub against the edge of this middle finger’s knuckle thus making it sore. However, the more writing I did, the harder the skin would become and the less easily irritated it would get from its constant rubbing against the pencil. A callus eventually formed.

When you wear a poorly fit shoe, it hurts as your foot rubs against the shoe. Yet when you continually wear the poorly fit shoe, the sensitiveness and pain eventually subside as your body creates hardened skin.

Human nature gave us the same emotional characteristics as these physical characteristics. We get hurt from a new type of pain or intensity of pain that we’ve never experienced before. From this hurtful experience, our minds create an “emotional callus” that “harden us”. The next time we experience a similar painful event, we are less sensitive to what takes place and are more competent to handle the emotional pain. Wouldn’t it be nice though to not have to experience such pain? Well, you can.

There are some psychological aspects you can change to toughen yourself up. Unless you want to join a boot camp with me yelling at you all day, here’s two quick techniques that you can use to develop emotional calluses so that you do not become filled with bitterness, resentment, and other feelings of ill-will that are common in those who do not forgive people. The emotional calluses will allow you to move on more easily instead of dwelling on the past as all types of resentment involve resisting the past.

The first one is becoming more self-reliant. Stop being dependent upon other people to make you feel a certain way. A person cannot hurt you unless you give them power to. You must take responsibility for how you feel, think, and act. In doing so, you will become more “hardened” and not as susceptible to little or big problems you would once dwell upon.

I know of a lot of women who expect a man to fulfill their emotional needs. The women become reliant upon their men for feeling fulfilled. When they break up, the lady has little self-reliance causing her to feel empty, hurt, and unwilling to move on. She becomes incapable of forgiving her ex and as a result, she feels unhappy for weeks and sometimes even months after the break up.

The second technique is to stop acting so small. Stop letting the little things emotionally eat you up. The people who so often whine and complain over little problems being “so bad”, not only have a low self-esteem, but they have troubles in forgiving others because they frequently feel victimized. The world becomes “unfair” as they “always” feel they are picked on. You can drastically reduce the resistance when forgiving others by developing a habit of being too big for petty problems. It is far easier to forgive another over something you feel they have not taken from you if you become bigger than the problem.

More Materials to Create the Art of Forgiveness

Acknowledging the fact that your resentment which you hold onto in an effort to hurt others is only damaging you, will change your life. What information I have given you should be enough to help you forgive others, apologize, and encourage others to forgive you, but here are additional sources to finding the art of forgiveness:

• Check out the many powers of apologizing. You will receive and give a lot of these powerful benefits in freeing yourself from the burdens of being unforgiving.
• “I can’t forgive my enemies. Josh, what do I do?” You are only hurting yourself when being unforgiving and no one else. You will hurt your enemies more by forgiving them than bottling-up your resentment. I don’t believe you should desire to hurt your enemies, but nothing will make them more satisfied than seeing you beat yourself up over an issue you inaccurately think is hurting them. Oscar Wilde was quoted in saying, “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.”
• We are full of mistakes and acknowledging this will help you see another’s mistake as them just being a typical human. A mistake filled life is a typical life so each one of us needs forgiveness to move on.
• Are your expectations about the person too high? Unreasonable expectations lead to unreasonable circumstances where it can be difficult to forgive the person for not living-up to their end of the bargain. Expectations determine satisfaction so if your expectations in the person are too high, you are setting yourself up for a harder fall.

As you apply parts of the course, the skills will become and feel more natural to you. Despite the ugly duckling, you are now more able to forgive and encourage others to forgive. The person you are apologizing to will feel loved by you from the open communication as you become less selfish and more considerate of them. You will experience happiness as you free yourself from guilt, anger, resentment, and other forms of bitterness. You will at last take advantage of the powers of apologizing. Put away your pride, build the courage, bring out your apologies, and experience a healthier mind and great relationships you were born to have.

Links in this Course: Freeing Yourself From Mistakes and Pain – A Five Part Course On Apologizing and Emotional Freedom

1. Power of Apologizing
2. Barriers and Mistakes Made in Apologizing
3. How to Apologize Correctly
4. Alternative Ways of Apologizing
5. Finding the Art of Forgiveness

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I'm creator of a highly praised program called "Communication Secrets of Powerful People" program. You can read about it here and order it here.