“Forgive even when it feels impossible”

Whether it’s a spouse or your love interest who was unfaithful, a parent who let you down as a child, or a friend who shared something told in confidence, we all must face the question of whether and how to forgive.

After you are wronged and the initial wave of emotion has passed, you’re presented with a new challenge: Do you forgive the person? By forgiving, you let go of your grievances and judgments and allow yourself to heal. While this may sound good in theory, in practice forgiveness can sometimes feel impossible.

To learn how to forgive, you must first learn what forgiveness is not. Most of us hold at least some misconceptions about forgiveness. Here are some things that forgiving someone doesn’t mean:

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you are pardoning or excusing the other person’s actions.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you need to tell the person that he or she is forgiven.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any more feelings about the situation.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean there is nothing further to work out in the relationship or that everything is okay now.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you should forget the incident ever happened.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to continue to include the person in your life.

… and most importantly forgiveness isn’t something you do for the other person.

By forgiving, you are accepting the reality of what happened and finding a way to live in a state of resolution with it. This can be a gradual process—and it doesn’t necessarily have to include the person you are forgiving. Forgiveness isn’t something you do for the person who wronged you; it’s something you do for you.

So if forgiveness is something you do for yourself and if it can help you heal, why is it so hard?

There are several reasons: You’re filled with thoughts of retribution or revenge; you enjoy feeling superior; you don’t know how to resolve the situation; you’re addicted to the adrenaline that anger provides; you self-identify as a “victim”; or you’re afraid that by forgiving you have to re-connect—or lose your connection—with the other person. These reasons not to forgive can be resolved by becoming more familiar with yourself, with your thoughts and feelings, and with your boundaries and needs.

Now that you know what forgiveness is not and why it’s so hard to do, ask yourself: Do I want to forgive?

Forgiveness requires feeling willing to forgive. Sometimes you won’t, because the hurt went too deep, or because the person was too abusive, or expressed no regret. Do not attempt to forgive someone before you have identified, fully felt, expressed, and released your anger and pain.

If you decide you are willing to forgive, find a good place and time to be alone with your thoughts. Then, try following these steps to forgive even when it feels impossible:

Think about the incident that angered you: Accept that it happened. Accept how you felt about it and how it made you react. In order to forgive, you need to acknowledge the reality of what occurred and how you were affected.

Acknowledge the growth you experienced as a result of what happened: What did it make you learn about yourself, or about your needs and boundaries? Not only did you survive the incident, perhaps you grew from it.

Now think about the other person:
He or she is flawed because allhuman beings are flawed. He or she acted from limited beliefs and a skewed frame of reference because sometimes we all act from our limited beliefs and skewed frames of reference. When you were hurt, the other person was trying to have a need met. What do you think this need was and why did the person go about it in such a hurtful way?

Finally, decide whether or not you want to tell the other person that you have forgiven him or her: If you decide not to express forgiveness directly, then do it on your own. Say the words, “I forgive you,” aloud and then add as much explanation as you feel is merited.

Forgiveness puts the final seal on what happened that hurt you. You will still remember what happened, but you will no longer be bound by it. Having worked through the feelings and learned what you need to do to strengthen your boundaries or get your needs met, you are better able to take care of yourself in the future. Forgiving the other person is a wonderful way to honor yourself. It affirms to the universe that you deserve to be happy.

P.S: “Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation”.

“Taming Perfectionism”

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief. Perfectionism isn’t what matters. In fact, it’s the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.”
– Emilly Giffin

Procrastination and underperformance are often linked to unrealistic aspirations. When people pursue realistic goals, their anxiety tends to be manageable and might actually increase their motivation and concentration. However, when our goals are unrealistic, the accompanying anxiety can be overwhelming and counterproductive. For many perfectionists, the need to be the very best in whatever they do can render them worried, powerless, and hopeless.

The “perfect” is the enemy of the “good”:
Perfectionism is rampant in our society and often takes the form of obsession with appearance, achievement, or prestige. It is a common view that any of us can achieve whatever we want if we just try hard enough. However, perfectionism can also lead to feelings of worthlessness, fear, and shame. Preoccupation with perfection tends to go hand in hand with low self-esteem. Perfectionists often have a harsh inner voice that castigates them as lazy or losers when they fail to measure up to their unrealistic expectations. This internal critic is always on the lookout for flaws.

Perfectionists are often insecure and anxious about falling short of their own standards—as a result, they constantly live in fear of private shame and public humiliation. Perfectionists perceive themselves in all-or-nothing terms—“Either I become this great person that I fantasize about or I am worthless.” They find themselves caught in a vicious cycle of chasing perfection, worried about living up to their aspirations, then procrastinating because they are anxious, then feeling even more inadequate, and so setting up new expectations—and on it goes.

Unfortunately, by its very nature, perfection is a moving target. No matter how hard-working and accomplished a perfectionist might be in the eyes of other people, he or she never feels good enough. A perfectionist’s quest is like the labor of Sisyphus from the Greek myth, whose eternal punishment was pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down every time.

An equal-opportunity curse:
Perfectionism affects people from all walks of life. Perfectionists are so preoccupied with achieving perfection that they can’t tolerate the anxiety and imperfections of the creative process. In particular, they feel they are not allowed to produce less-than-perfect rough drafts. For e.g, A writer spends hours every day in front of his/her computer laboring to give birth to the perfect words in the perfect order. He/She believes that only exquisitely written prose can redeem his/her as an artist, and as a human being. As a result, He/She writes very little and feels bad about herself. In the end, Unable to deliver a masterpiece on the first try, they feel demoralized, defeated, and ashamed.

Perfectionism and parental expectations:
It has been observed that Perfectionism often stems from childhood experiences with primary caregivers. Many insecure parents get emotionally invested in raising highly accomplished children. They tend to be very critical of their children’s appearance or academic performance and fail to empathize with their children’s limitations.
This emphasis on success and recognition, along with the accompanying sense of guilt and shame whenever children fell short of their parents’ expectations, contributed to their fragile self-esteem and insecurities.

5 steps to taming perfectionism.
The reality, of course, is that nobody is ever perfect. With that in mind, here are five practical steps you can take to begin taming your perfectionist tendencies:

1. Acknowledge and cultivate the part of you that sees yourself as worthy, as “good enough.” For instance, make a list of things you like about yourself, like good personal qualities, rewarding relationships with others, meaningful experiences.

2. Pay attention to your “all or nothing” thoughts, and remind yourself that you don’t need to be the best in everything in order to feel loved and respected. When you feel the urge to beat yourself up for perceived imperfections, tell yourself, “Here I go again. Enough already.”

3. Try to be less critical of other people, and treat them with patience and compassion. In addition to improving your personal and professional relationships, it might reduce your fear of being criticized by others.

4. Surround yourself with people who are less caught up in the pursuit of status, money, and success—people who appreciate friendship, family, and community.

5. Find a therapist who will help you contact the unique and special qualities you already possess. In psychotherapy, you will learn to articulate the desires and vulnerabilities that can lead to perfectionism. As you become more self-accepting and hopeful, the pressure to be perfect may subside.

P.S: Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. Perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

“The road to resilience relationships”

“Through resilience, comes hope. Keep going.”
– Rita Said

Resilient relationships persevere, even in times of adversity. Life can offer couples all sorts of challenges like—distance, conflict, infidelity, child or parent-related hardships, sickness and sometimes unimaginable number of possibilities that can wear down a relationship.

Now the question is how resilient is your relationship? And how
can we foster resilience in our relationships? Consider the following questions to help gauge your own relationship’s resilience:

Is destiny the anchor to your relationship?
It may seem romantic to think that destiny brought you together and that it will keep you together, but such beliefs may be obstacles to relationship resilience. When negative events happen in their relationships, people with strong destiny beliefs disengage more, withholding ways to support the relationship. Better to foster growth beliefs—the idea that relationships grow by working through tough times together. Growth beliefs predict active coping, planning, positivity, and focus during difficult times.

Do you give your partner the benefit of the doubt?
No relationship or person is perfect, but if you can come to see your partner’s quirky imperfections as positives, you may have the stuff that makes for a resilient relationship. Couples who view each other in idealized ways are happier and tend to have less conflict and more relationship stability.

How much self-control do you have?
When your partner does something that really annoys you, can you resist an impulsive response, or do you fly off the handle? Self-control is the ability to regulate one’s own reactions in these types of situations, forgoing the backlash in favor of a pro-relationship response. People who have high self-control are better able to resist impulsivity and constructively respond to potentially destructive partner behavior.

Are you grateful for the little things?
In resilient relationships, partners are oriented towards each other, appreciating each others’ efforts to be responsive and doing their best to be responsive themselves. This creates a wonderfully positive cycle of behaviors that help maintain a relationship ( like positivity, reassurance), and partner gratitude, which then encourages those behaviors that help relationships thrive.

Do you work continuously to maintain your relationship?
Resilient couples are flexible. They work to accommodate change by engaging in behaviors that help sustain the relationship. For example, resilient couples share tasks, offer positivity, and reassure their partners. Such behaviors are not one-time acts, but a pattern of work that can pay off with a healthy partnership.

Resilience in times of serious difficulty can come in many forms. The above questions highlight an important but limited set of individual traits such as self-control and growth beliefs, and partner dynamics such as gratitude that foster resilience. Commitment, investment, and on-going work promote relationship health, but no one recipe works for all couples, especially given the many diverse types and severities of stressors that we can encounter in our relationships.

“Hopeless Romantic”

“I’m not done with love, but I refuse to settle. I’m a hopeless romantic. And I won’t stop till I get it right.”
– Halle Berry

A hopeless romantic person is some one who happens to be in love with love and loves the romance of love. They are mostly idealists, sentimental and fanciful dreamers. Hopeless romantics believe in true love, and the eternal bliss that comes from being united with one’s soul mate is what they crave most and that’s why they passionately seek their soul mate. They dream of roses and candlelight, walking on the beach at sunset, dancing in the rain (almost doing every crazy act). They know that somewhere out there is a knight in shining armor ready to carry them off, or a beautiful princess waiting to be carried off into the sunset. Hopeless romantics recognize in themselves the ability to love infinitely deeply, and they ache to be loved with the same fervor in return. When a hopeless romantic has someone to lavish their affection on, lavish they do. Hopeless romantics sometimes write love letters full of poetic phrases and send flowers, but mostly they try to find a thousand thoughtful little ways to show their love. They just simply make romance into an art form.

They believe in fairy tales and waits for them to come true, waits for the chance when he/she will be able to act out their love. Although, they usually perform a romantic act of love, yet rarely or never gets the chance to get the special someone and often gets disappointed, as real life is much harsher than fairy tales. Hopeless non-romantics think that hopeless romantics are delusional and too intense. Because hopeless romantic is a kinda social personality trait which is in constant conflicts with Commitment Issues. But, hopeless romantics do not feel, in any way, hopeless; on the contrary a hopeless romantic has such immense hope that it is impossible for them to escape immense pain when their heart, so willingly offered, is returned in pieces. Hopeless romantics will give all they have to the one they love. They love deeply, completely, entirely and dangerously. They will hand their whole heart to whomever they love, and do so willingly and joyfully. What, then, becomes of a hopeless romantic once their heart has been broken, if they are so very apt to believe in true love? Hopeless romantics, though they suffer immense heartbreak, still believe in love. That is their very definition – to always believe in love. They give the world its once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters. Hopeless romantics may have their feet on the ground, but their souls fly somewhere over the rainbow.
Relationships are the learning playground of life. And the idea of a hopeless romantic definitely has some beautiful and positive elements to it. Good Luck!