Tips On How To Become Happier!: #4- Forgive

I've recently learnt the importance of letting go of past experiences that still cause you to feel negative in any way.  These experiences happened in the past, therefore, holding on to any negativity that they caused you is only doing damage to yourself.  The only thing that can make you start feeling better about them is if you allow yourself to let go.

Letting go is particularly important when it involves someone who has hurt you in the past. You may be waiting for them to apologise but what if this never happens? Will you be holding on to the negativity that they caused you forever? You may not be able to control other people's thoughts and  actions but you can definitely control yours. Therefore, if that apology is not on its way, try your best to accept that and let go of the situation because holding on to it won't bring you any good.

The amazing author Louise Hay taught me the importance of  truly forgiving others for their actions against you in her book 'You Can Heal Your Life'. This can be very difficult to do, and is something that I still struggle with but once you truly forgive someone, you feel so much better within yourself.   This may be challenging because sometimes the person that hurt you may not even feel that they did anything wrong. However, your forgiveness will help you. This is because holding anger against someone is hurting you the most, it is affecting your moods, which then affects your whole day. Forgiving them is a way of allowing yourself to feel better, and therefore, happier.

It can be difficult to know how to start forgiving someone. One thing that has helped me is trying to understand things from their point of view and accept that not everybody thinks the same as me. You can start doing this too by attempting to think of reasons why that person did what they did, even if you don't believe these reasons are justifiable. For example, if someone has betrayed you, try to think of the relationships that they've had with other people and whether they have been trustworthy. Consider that they may have never had a trustworthy relationship with anyone which could be a possible reason for their behaviour. I'm not saying to create excuses for them, it's simply a way of making the forgiveness process easier for you.

Also, do not feel afraid to forgive yourself for past mistakes that you've made. Nobody's perfect and everyone's done things that they feel they shouldn't have and many people continue to hold guilt about them every day. If you've done everything you can to try to put that situation right, then there's nothing else you can do and it's time to let go of the situation and forgive yourself.

Forgiveness involves releasing so much negativity from your life and replacing it with positivity and is bound to make you much happier within yourself.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and that this series of posts have helped you! More posts in my 'Tips On How To Become Happier' series are coming up!

- Positive Thinking Wins -

Love, Chey x 

Tips On How To Become Happier!: #3- Be Grateful

You may not have everything you want in life but when you are grateful for the things you do have instead of dwelling on those you don't, life becomes much more enjoyable. 

Something I remind myself of when I'm not feeling in the best of moods is that things could always be worse. The fact that you are still alive and breathing is a fact that you should be grateful for because that means that there's time for situations in your life to improve.

We're all guilty of getting caught up and frustrated about little things such as having to wait longer than expected for the food you ordered or needing to re-schedule plans with a friend because they cancelled at the last minute. Something useful to practice when you find yourself doing this is thinking about what you are grateful for about the situation instead. For example, the fact that you can afford to order the food in the first place or that you have a friend to make plans with.  It's easy to become so used to having these things and forget that there are others who are desperate to have them too. 

When you focus on being grateful for everything in you life, you start to truly appreciate the life you have, which automatically leads you to becoming happier.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and you have taken something from it! More posts in this 'Tips On How To Become Happier!' series are coming up! The next will be posted next Sunday :D Have a lovely week!

- Positive Thinking Wins - 

Love, Chey  x