Have you ever made a mistake?  Yeah.  Me neither.

Of course… who hasn’t made a mistake?

What do you do when you make a mistake?  Do you think about it over and over again, telling yourself how awful you are for doing what you did?  I certainly hope not.

When you make a mistake, reliving it doesn’t change it, doesn’t change the outcome, and usually doesn’t make us feel any better about it.  As a matter of fact, reliving it just keeps us stuck in the mistake.

Instead, decide what went wrong, decide what you would do different in the future, learn the lesson, and let the mistake go.  Move on.  Anything more is an energy drain and keeps you stuck in the past.

What if it’s someone else’s mistake?  What if they did something terrible to you?  Do you think about it over and over again, telling yourself how awful they are for doing what they did?  I certainly hope not.

Like we said before, everyone makes mistakes.  We just talked about forgiving yourself and letting the mistake go.  How about just forgiving the other person and letting the mistake go?

When someone does something to hurt or offend you, does reliving it over and over change what happened?  Does it change the outcome?  Does it make your feel better?  No.

And while you are feeling miserable, what is the other person doing?  Probably not feeling as bad as you are!

When you forgive the other person, think about the situation, decide how not to get into that situation in the future, learn the lesson (which may be not to hang out with them anymore), and let the situation go.

Forgiveness is not about telling the other person what they did was okay.  It is about learning your lesson and releasing the energy around the situation so it doesn’t have a hold on you anymore.

Forgiveness is something you do for yourself.