Forgiveness…
Forgiveness is hard. Well, let me not speak for everyone else…Forgiveness is hard for ME. lol There, that even FELT better.. the key to forgiveness is first learning to forgive yourself. It always starts and ends with you. You have to make a decision to forgive. I have the most forgiveness for myself because I’ve sinned against God a great deal. There were mistakes that I’ve made in my life that took me a long time to forgive myself for making. But when I finally came to that point, I was able to not only forgive myself but others also. Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s real easy to beat yourself up for certain things, but that’s not how God sees you. God loves you and wants the very best for your life and that love comes from within. That love comes from brokenness, that love comes from shame and guilt and not feeling like enough and then finally coming to a point where you’ve finally had enough but you couldn’t get past the fact that you made some mistakes or experienced some traumatic experiences and you start acting out of character. It’s forgiveness that will pull you through. It is the love of yourself that will make you strong. The Bible says that “Greater is he that is IN YOU, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4) and if you have that peer living inside of you that is the epitome of love because the Bible says that “GOD IS LOVE.” (1 John 4:8)
So I encourage you to live in that Love today. Love in the love of yourself today how God loves you. How he doesn’t hold those things that you have done to yourself or to others or both for that matter, against you. Forgive yourself today and that will, in turn, help you to forgive others. Take the courage to find someone who has done you some kind of wrong in your eyes and forgive them. DO NOT HOLD ON TO THAT ENERGY. Although sometimes that is easier said than done, it is important that you work on it little by little each day to sort through the hurt and the pain and the scars and write them down and feel that negative emotion running through your body as your mind take a trip back to all of the times you were hurt and once you embrace the truth and be honest with yourself, only then you will receive a power unlike never before because of the weight that will be life red off of your shoulders. It’s ok to be angry. It’s ok to be upset. It’s ok to express your feelings, but you have to have the awareness of when you are getting closer to healing than resentment. When you can go from anger, to disappointment maybe…then make your way up from disappointment up to hurt, and so on and so forth until you get to happiness that you desire.
So:
Forgive yourself
Be kind to yourself
Don’t Hold grudges
Write it out
Heal at your own pace
I want to talk a little bit about Healing at your own pace for a second. Everybody handles pain differently. I’ve been in relationships where after it was over, I was still checking to see how fast they would move on after me and then I started to compare it to myself and it made me even more upset because, let me just keep it real, it sucks when you go through a breakup and the other person moves on quicker than you and already is in another situation and you’re just sitting there like “wtf am I doing with my life and why is it taking ME so long to recover??” It’s really hard when you get to that kind of point in your healing process. That’s another thing that you can do that is counter productive to your healing process and finally getting to a point to where you forgive yourself and not be so hard in yourself. Know that it’s ok to heal at your own speed. When my mother got divorced in her first marriage, she said it took her six years to fully heal from that relationship. It’s definitely taken me a year or two just to shake the resentment off of me. It’s going to take time. You just have to know for yourself that you are good enough no matter what and speak positive things to yourself.
Spend enough time with you to get to know yourself and then you will begin to attract people into your life that is in the same vibration as you are, better things, better relationships, better life experiences. But you cannot get to that point without forgiveing yourself first and then going out and forgiving others. Forgive those that have done wrong to you. Forgive your brother or your sister. Forgive your parents if they’ve done anything to hurt you. Make right with the people you love, if it’s that important to you. Work hard to mend those broken relationships and friendships. Don’t be afraid to ask for forgiveness, either! Make right with people. No, you are no going to be friends and “buddy buddy” with everybody. But the ones that mean the most to you, you should make a great effort to start rebuilding those relationships again. If In fact it does bring you happiness. Allow time to heal you. Allow forgiveness to make your burden lighter. Lift that heavy burden off of your shoulders and if they resist you, then you cannot take that personal either.
Have so much love for yourself that you will not feel away if someone rejects your apology. especially, coming from the right place, which is a pure and sincere heart. I have had many people that I have asked for forgiveness and get no response from. I would be doing myself and all the time I’ve spent healing to take that personal and ruin the work.
take time to write out a list of people on your life you need to forgive as well as a list of people you need to ask for forgiveness. Remember that it starts and ends with you and the quicker you are able to get to a forgiving spirit, the more you will have fun spending time on the things you love because you are not occupying your mind with hurtful thoughts that do nothing but take up unnecessary time in your life and helping hinder you from being the best version of yourself! Until next time, Much Love. ❤️
-Jermy
Take Responsibility..
I just want you to know, whoever is reading this, that if you have been feeling like you’ve been held down, not feeling like you are where you’re supposed to be, you’re anxious, you’re on edge, you live every day just to get by…let me be the first to tell you, that in order to be free.. and I mean truly free…is taking responsibility for your own actions. I am a firm believer that taking responsibility takes a tremendous amount of emotional baggage off of you. So many of us, including myself, come with so much baggage when entering relationships, that the ability to take responsibility will not allow you to take things personally because you cannot allow yourself to take on the emotions of the person you are with. Not only is that unhealthy but it’s unfair to you as well as the person you’re in a relationship with.
After my marriage ended, I have learned to be more aware of the feedback that I get from women. The feedback I look at, is not from the lens of something surface, like material gifts and dates and flowers and whatnot. My meter does not take monetary things as a priority (maybe I should change that philosophy) because when I begin to see whatever I say or do is negatively effecting the other person, it sends a signal to my heart now instead of my brain. So I now immediately turn the mirror to myself and ask, “What am I doing that is contributing to this person having a negative reaction to me? Especially if whatever effected my significant other was not coming from a malicious or negative space to even warrant that response to just whatever it is that you may be going through. I’m just using my experience as an example of what my thought process is when I go through a tough time with someone I’m dating. It’s just something that I observe and just wanted to express because I think that there’s more people out there who feel the way I feel.
Nobody should ever want to be the reason they bring someone unhappiness. I know I sure don’t. Although conflict is good, because you’re always going to go through things in relationships, no matter what level you’re at. Wether if it’s the beginning stages of your relationship or you’re well into your marriage years. I just know that when I was able to take responsibility for my actions, it made me a lot less argumentative and it takes the pressure off of the other person, in my opinion anyway… maybe someone can tell me if you disagree, but that’s just how I feel and what’s worked for me.
I think think that if there is conflict that happens every once in a while and you figure it out, It builds relationship health. But if there’s constant conflict, then I have to take a step back and analyze the situation and see what did I do.
in order to be able to take responsibility, you must first have to be completely honest with yourself. If you know you’re a jerk or stubborn, or whatever negative trait you may have, you have to acknowledge that and understand how that effects the people you deal with on a daily basis. Be honest with yourself. I know that I can be guarded and sarcastic and egotistical and also a little privileged at times as well as being hurt in the past and not fully healing from those circumstances yet. All of these thoughts about myself come into play. I zoom out and take a birdsye view and begin to make an honest assess and then make a choice as to either I’m going to push past or is it something I need to move past altogether. It’s in everything I do really. I don’t get it right all time, by any means, but I do try to live by these set of values because well, quite honestly, it helps keep my peace. And if I can’t keep my peace and my lack of peace is starting to beak your peace too? Then I have to go to the drawing board. And notice I didn’t say “We” because it starts with YOU.
So before I go, I just want to encourage you to take responsibility always for your own actions. They always say, “Be the bigger person” But what it really means to me is to be “Bigger than the person you were that helped cause this friction or fallout in my relationship? How can I be a bigger person, internally, than the person that may have either made a mistake or may have caused some pain to someone else? How can I be bigger and better than that person? That totally begins with you and how much you love yourself and do you forgive yourself enough to take responsibility for your own actions. Until next time… much love ❤️
-Jermy
Communication is Key..
I’ve always been, at least in my mind, a great communicator for the most part. I’m great speaking in public, I’m an actor, I’ve hosted talent shows and events, I’ve done college radio, I do podcasts, I communicate. But even with all of those great gifts, the one thing I was never good at was expressing myself in relationships. I would much rather tuck my feelings or opinions in because of how I think people would react to them. Maybe, I was just afraid of what people would think and would react in a way that would make me feel like, I don’t know, like someone would reject me if I did. Dealing with rejection takes a lot of inner work and a great deal of time to repair, especially when you don’t know the root of where the behavior comes from. It took me a long time to find the answers to questions that would unlock the freedom of my drive and ambition. It’s what carried me this far.
When I stopped caring about what other people thought of me, I was known to have great success. Fortunately for me, I was able to find a way to liberate myself from something that I felt was a major component to a lot of things that were passed down to me, generationally. Not being able to verbally communicate to other people, especially when in a relationship is one of the things I find that a lot of people struggle with. Sometimes it’s fear, sometimes it’s ego, sometimes it’s just inexperience. But the way I challenged myself to be better in that area is just facing the tough conversations you may want to have with the person that you are in a relationship with. If you have anxiety or some sort of uneasiness with fully communicating your feeling towards someone, take that time as an opportunity to display courage.
I find that a lot of times in relationships, you never really know what your significant other may have experience in past relationships so you first have to learn not to take things too personal.
Honesty is another component to being a great communicator in my relationships. When I was married, I always used suppressed my feelings whenever I felt a way about something. I realize now, in retrospect, that it was an unhealthy decision to make because I was just avoiding conflict instead of being honest. This method is not only counter productive, but brings a great deal of built up emotions that have been swept under the rug and after awhile, those emotions begin to pile up and you find yourself in a situation that not only effects you but effects others and that can easily be alleviated by just simply speaking up when you feel something bothering you. Even in times when things are great, you should still communicate. It’s better to keep that line of communication open early so that you can have a lot less on your plate mentally as well as emotionally.
Not being able to commit effectively also takes a toll on your mental health. You’ll find some days where you’re now trying to rationalize thoughts that are of times negative to begin with and now you’re stuck in this mental mind storm of scenarios to figure out ways to still get your point across and not ruffle any feathers or rub someone the wrong way.
Be kind to yourself and love yourself enough to have the courage as well as the enthusiasm to be a great communicator in your relationship, business dealings, on your team, anywhere. Never be afraid to express how you feel at all times. Always voice how you feel when you feel it and your significant other will thank you for it in the end. Because, the bottom line is that women know! lol They just do! What can I say? They’re gonna know if we are holding back something because it is very difficult to hold things inside. Especially if it’s something that’s really bothering you. It’s going to alter your behavior because I can probably bet that most most times, like myself, I’m always in my head.
Most women pick up on that and it is very fortunate to find someone who you can verbally express things too. Even as a black man, it takes a certain woman to be able to listen to what you have to say but it takes a certain kind of person to set the table to where you feel safe to even come to a place to where you are comfortable enough to express yourself.