Day 23: Radical Forgiveness – On “Staycation”

Staycation2

I haven’t posted anything for the last few days for a few reasons:

  1. Christmas and time spent with my family. Between wrapping gifts, cooking, tidying up and just hanging out, I haven’t had the blocks of time I like to have when I journal or do an exercise.
  2. Hit a “stopping point.” When I finished reading Radical Forgiveness and completed the forgiveness process three times, I had the sense of hitting a natural stopping point. It isn’t as though I’m “done.” This is the kind of work that is done over a lifetime.
  3. I also felt some resistance. I enjoyed reading Radical Forgiveness and although I wouldn’t say going through the forgiveness process is exactly “enjoyable”, I’ve definitely felt a sense of progress and forward movement. When I did the self-forgiveness worksheet, I didn’t find what I had experienced forgiving others to be directly applicable.

Colin Tipping wrote Radical Self-Forgiveness after writing Radical Forgiveness to address some of the challenges people were experiencing when trying to forgive themselves. Although I felt some resistance to buying another book (the reviews for the second book were more mixed than for the first book and this also contributed to my unease), I think the second book has some useful ideas that compliment the original Radical Forgiveness book.

I began reading Radical Self-Forgiveness today and I find myself agreeing with Colin Tipping:

  • The radical self-forgiveness process doesn’t feel as clear cut as the radical forgiveness process because it can feel confusing when it comes to “who’s actually doing the forgiving here?”
  • For this reason, it helps to better understand the different selves we each have as well as to understand there is a self representing the Divine within.
  • It also helps to identify parts of ourselves we’ve adopted from others but that don’t serve us. All those “shoulds” that kick our ass all the time. Maybe there are things we don’t even need to forgive so much as unload because it was never ours to begin with.

To that last point, I suddenly had this awareness of how I was feeling bad because I didn’t spend the holidays the way I “should” have. I didn’t reach out to anyone over the last few days; no phone calls, no emails, no cards…and although I’m not aware of any feelings of loneliness  or isolation…a little voice in me is giving me a hard time because that part of me feels it’s not OK to “keep to myself.”

I haven’t felt inspired to reach out. Usually if I’m inspired to reach out, I do.

This is an example of something that I might think I should forgive myself for when actually I’m just being myself.

Tomorrow I’m planning to do the exercises around how I define myself and what qualities I’m fine owning and what I can give back. I imagine I’ll also learn about the qualities I own which I don’t like about myself. Those are the things, I’m guess which require self-forgiveness.

On a final note, I’m wondering if I’ll want to extend my time practicing Radical Forgiveness. Quite possibly although I expect to do it parallel with the work I’ll be doing to find my “right work.”

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