Learning how to forgive can be beneficial. You can get wronged by anyone at anytime. Forgiveness can give you health benefits. By using the power of forgiveness you can become more healthy.
What is Forgiveness
At some point someone, or something, may have wronged you. This may have been intentional or unintentional. Your reaction is your reaction and can often be emotional. When you are wronged, you will experience many feelings that run the gamut of emotions.
Forgiveness itself fits in to two different categories. These categories are emotional and decisional. Decisional forgiveness is easier. You just need to decide to forgive someone that has wronged you (I said this is the easier one, not that it was easy). It is tough to do for sure. Emotional forgiveness is a bit more complicated and requires you to move away from the negative feelings and to not dwell on the wrongdoing that you have encountered.
Health Benefits of Forgiveness
By working on forgiving people, you may experience some health benefits. There is the obvious emotional normalcy that can come from being able to forgive. By being able to forgive someone you will not be focused on the act of wrongdoing. You will not forget, but you will get over the trauma.
Randomized control trials have shown the following healthy benefits to being able to forgive.
Decreased Anxiety
Decreased Depression
Reduced Substance Abuse
Increased Life Satisfaction
Decreased Hostility
Increased Self Esteem
All of these benefits can help you obtain lower blood pressure and a healthy heart. Increased self esteem has been corelated to increased activity level which can influence your overall level of health.
Try to practice forgiveness
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