Want a Better Love Relationship? Forgive Your Parents.

And it's not as difficult as you may think!

People often will ask me how to create a lasting, love relationship.  They want to know how to keep one or how to find a great love relationship.  Maybe they have loved and lost, maybe they have loved and left.  Either way, people are looking to find a romance that makes them feel safe and secure. 

We all have different requests in relationships, different needs and different aversions.  But there is one universal step to finding a healthy, strong loving relationship that cuts through all variances:  that is forgiveness.

Forgiveness isn’t stuffing feelings, or looking the other way.  It simply means to let go.  It has nothing to do with right or wrong; just letting go, just wanting to be happy.

THE FIRST STEP

First it’s imperative we forgive ourselves for whatever we’re angry, resentful or blaming ourselves for from the past.  We carry around that unforgiveness as a defensive energy that feels inauthentic and repelling. Our guilt is defending ourselves against what we know we’ve done, and don’t want others to know about.  It doesn't make sense to expect someone else to love us unconditionally when we don’t love ourselves that way.  How can we expect to feel safe in a relationship with someone if we don’t feel safe in a relationship with ourselves?!  Whatever we did in the past we wish we hadn’t, we must forgive ourselves, let it go and move on.   

THE SECOND STEP

And the second forgiveness is extremely important: forgive your parents. This is because whatever we haven’t cleared in our relationships with our parents will come up in our other relationships for healing and release.  It’s an essential part of life’s healing process to repeat unsupportive patterns until they’re cleared. 

When we were infants, our relationship with our parents, or primary care-givers, created the templates for how we experience relationships as adults.  Simply put, if our parents were kind to each other, we tend to recreate that in our adult relationships.  If our parent’s were not kind to each other, we tend to recreate (or overcompensate) that also.

I had a client with a pattern of attracting men who dishonored her and who were insensitive to her emotional needs. This caused my client continued heartbreak and sadness.  She desperately wanted a loving relationship with a man she could feel safe with, but had never.  Our work together uncovered how her father treated her mother dishonorably, not providing the emotional support and love her mother desperately wanted.  My client could see where she was repeating that pattern she learned from watching her parents relate to each other.  I suggested my client forgive her mother for allowing herself to be treated in such a way.  After completing the unique forgiveness process I teach in my book, The Other F Word: 7 Days to Forgiving Anyone, my client was able to release the pattern she’d held since childhood.  She understood that her mother was simply repeating the pattern of abuse she had learned from her own mother.  With her forgiveness and stopping that family pattern, my client has found a wonderful man who honors her and allows her to grow and flourish.  She can now pass on a legacy of empowerment to her own daughter.


And that's how forgiveness works.  It can change how we have thought and felt for years!  Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?  I hope this is the day you'll choose deep joy and happiness by choosing forgiveness.  We need less anger and more joy on the planet.  Be the change we want to see in the world!

Juliana Ericson, of The Joyful Life Project,is author of a new book The Other F Word: 7 Days to Forgiving Anyone, available at Barnes and Noble and her Forgiveness website & blog.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Juliana Ericson has been a Life Enhancement Specialist, Conscious Breath Coach and Forgiveness Coach for 17 years.  Her approach is unique in that she specializes in prenatal and birth psychology.  She teaches Life Coaching and Breathwork schools, leads workshops and maintains an ongoing private practice.  Juliana is also a professional artist, and paints in her home studio in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A.

Happiness Is a Choice

Every person, every moment is precious

I had the most interesting thing happen to me yesterday!  I experienced two heightened emotions at the exact same time: extreme happiness and extreme sadness.  I could feel the two physical sensations in my body and how intensely different they made me feel.

I was on my way home from purchasing this iPad I have been saving for since last year. I was elated and couldn’t wait to get home and play with it!  Then I got a text from my daughter with some terribly depressing news about what had just happened to her. I immediately sank like a rock from the excited state I had been in just moments before.

There I was feeling outrageously happy and extremely sad simultaneously, and beginning to also feel overwhelmed. I remembered an A Course in Miracles lesson “Happiness is a choice I must make”. I took a deep breath, pulled away from my physical and mental experiences, then aligned with my Inner Self, the one who was observing the experience.  It was remarkable!  I was able to watch and feel the sad Juliana and also watch and feel the excited Juliana. I could exactly feel the differences between the two emotions and how they felt in my body!

I slowly went back and forth to feel and observe each one;  it was so fascinating to me! When I was in that position of observing, I could make the choice of happiness. It was clear to me that my sadness wouldn’t help my daughter in any way, and was a waste of my energy. Almost instantaneously I could feel my sadness lighten, then disperse. I’m of much more use to the world and my daughter when I’m not burdened with those negative, heavy emotions. I was able to lift my daughter up with my lightened presence, which then helped her make a constructive choice for the problem.  

Happiness is a choice I must make.

I created “Happiness is a choice, learn how to choose” as the new tag line for my company, The Joyful Life Project.  That statement expresses a core operating system for how to live a happier life.  I use it and teach it to my clients.

Irritability, anger, depression, helplessness: often people don’t realize they are creating their own unhappy lives. They may feel they’re stuck with a problem before them, stuck with the unfulfilling relationship they’re in, stuck with the bad day they’re experiencing.   They may feel they have no choice but to bear it, assuming others will have the peaceful and easy life – but not them.

Usually these unfortunate people have lived their whole lives expecting to be disappointed. They probably have collected plenty of evidence, as proof to themselves and others, that they’ll always lose. It’s a victim-consciousness way of thinking that creates resentment, blame, anger and shame. The hopelessness, helplessness and despair that can result continues until another path is chosen. It’s the choice of the person feeling those feelings who has to make the choice, no one else can make it for them!

I’ve heard it said “You can choose the easy way, or you can choose the hard way, but you’re going to get the life lesson either way”. It’s true that probably the biggest lesson of my entire LIFE was a really difficult one, 20 years ago, when I hit a brick wall.  But In the past several years of my life I now know I can choose the easy path and still get some wonderful life lessons. I choose to live consciously now. I mean, we can’t always choose what happens to us, but we can choose our reactions in any moment.  We can choose to be happy.

Life Enhancement Coach & Author: The Other F Word: 7 Days to Forgiving Anyone

To Hate or Not to Hate

I was at a gathering last night of loving, peaceful people.  The subject came up of a possible war in Syria that has been everywhere on the news outlets lately.  One woman expressed her heartbreak about seeing on the TV news bodies of Syrian children killed from the chemical weapons sprayed on the civilians by their own leader.  It created disturbing thoughts and feelings several in the group were wrestling with: to hate or not to hate the people who committed such unimaginable hateful atrocities.

We spent some time discussing the subject and came up with the consensus that if we were to hate the Syrian leader and his army, we would be on his same low level of hatred.  By hating, we would be creating a wall instead of possibilities of negotiation in the future. We would be separating ourselves from seeking a possible way of building a bridge from our heart to theirs.  By hating, we would be creating a need to defend our position, which would mean more hate and maybe having to use weapons.  As Martin Luther King, Jr wisely said "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars...Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Our group was also reminded of the Ghandi quote about being the change we want to see in the world.  We realized if we hated the Syrian leader, we would be multiplying hate and anger in the world instead of creating more love and reconciliation.  More peace in the world is what we want, so we need to begin that worldview from our own eyes. We must begin with our own thoughts about the world and the people in it.

Free Bonds of Hate: Peaceful Heart while Promoting Peaceful Action 

We spoke about the importance of freeing ourselves from bonds of hate, realizing that they create fear and separation.  We decided to promote the idea of supporting a blockade of arms and vigorously support the political process - particularly joint United National/Arab League envoy Brahimi - and a rapid convening of a Geneva II peace conference with all involved parties. We will promote justice and conversation, while praying for peace in our hearts and in the world that we choose to experience.