Tired Of Being Hurt? Why You Must Learn Forgiveness [VIDEO]

We have all been through times in our lives when we knew the right thing to do was to forgive someone, but swallowing that bitter pill is rarely as easy as it sounds.  Rick Warren said in Ladies Home Journal that, "Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves that allows us to get on with our lives instead of being trapped in the past by resentment."

If forgiveness is the key to moving on and letting go, why is it so hard to do?

Sometimes, you go through so much pain and suffering that staying positive feels pretty impossible. The lingering pain in your heart and mind are too hard to forget, let alone forgive.  

It's as if the more we try to piece ourselves back together after heartache, the more we get stuck in the pain. By retelling our stories and revisiting our lingering negative emotions, we re-live it again, and again, and again.

Which is a tempting thing to do.  How often have you had something bad happen to you, only to find that the only relief you feel is by telling all of the people you love what happened.  

That however, is the opposite of what it takes to heal.  Healing and letting go come from feeling our feelings and then moving away from them.

Forgiveness is a critical step to moving on with our lives.  Yet people resist it.  

Is it because they don't know what to do?  Or because they don't truly understand the power of releasing the person who wronged us from that crime?

We asked authors Dr. John Gray, Charles Orlando, Counselor/Therapist Atul Kumar Mehra, Life Coach/Speaker Cara Cordoni and Licensed Psychotherapist Leah Benson to help explain the power behind forgiveness.

Leah shares that, "Our bodies hold the trauma that we experience-both chronic and critical. So connecting to those areas in the body where the emotions about those experiences are held is a way to get rid of the energy that your body is holding."

John Gray once said that, "to forgive is to give as before"; to give to your loved one in the same way that you did before the indiscretion or the painful incident.

So when it comes down to it you have two ways of approaching the pain in your heart.  You can hold on to it, like a grudge and let it consume you.  Or you can put your inner struggle to rest and start living.

There are so many positive things that can happen when you take the initiative to just let it go. You must remember that everyone makes mistakes. If you really think about it, we've all done something that we were not proud of.

Does that mean that you don't deserve forgiveness?

C. Joybell C. once said that, "You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles."

So stop carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

If after watching this video you're still not sure about the merits of forgiveness, maybe read a little bit of what the scientists from the Mayo Clinic have to say about how to forgive.

Armed with the reasons why forgiveness matters and the scientist's best advice on how to do it, you can clear your heart of all that ugliness and get on with your life.

It's time you did.