Why Forgiveness?

(hissing music) (enlightening music) Headspace Studio. Hi, everyone. It's Rosie. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday. So I've been having a hard time forgiving someone close to me. It's one of those situations where I asked them for a favor they said they would help me and they did not deliver. Now I know I'll forgive my friend eventually. But since we're on the topic of forgiveness, I wanna talk today about how difficult it can be to forgive, especially if someone has wronged you in some lasting way. So let's get into why it's important to forgive and how forgiveness can even be a path to emotional freedom. Forgiveness, for me, has always meant freedom. Unchaining yourself from that experience, from something that is keeping you stuck in the maze of the mind. If you're living with any sort of contention in your life, it creates negative energy, and that really depletes us. And not forgiving gives the other person power because now they get to live rent-free in your mind. I mean, we have 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day and 90% of those thoughts are the same thing. So if you're constantly dwelling on something that is causing you to be upset or another person that did something to wrong you, you're constantly letting them live in your mind. So going back to the friend I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, I was throwing an event and my friend said that he would help me. And he totally bailed at the last minute. I was left holding the bag. And he even showed up at the event like nothing happened. I was so upset. And obviously I couldn't say anything while we were there celebrating with friends. But it took many, many days before I actually was able to have a conversation with him because of how upset I was. And in the days leading up to that conversation, it took up a lot of real estate in my mind. The way I dealt with my anger in that specific moment was to write about it. Essentially, I wrote him a letter that I had no intention of giving to him, but it allowed me to get all of my feelings out. Once I was done with that letter, the surge of anger and resentment that I felt was completely gone. Now I know that that's not the case for different situations in our lives, especially if somebody's wronged us and it's something that's been long-lasting, maybe even for a lifetime. But for this particular situation, it really gave me clarity around why I was upset. I think it had more to do with me feeling overwhelmed and over-committing to do this event, knowing that I would need help, and I was putting all of that frustration on my friend. I called him and I said, "I'm really upset that you promised you would help me to do this." And he proceeded to tell...