The neat thing about our celebrating the new year is that we give ourselves permission to “let go” of the past year. It’s kind of like unloading the weight of “what was” you’ve been carrying around with you.

Thank goodness many of us share a cultural tradition of doing this at least once a year. It is hard to imagine that in many parts of the world nobody lets go of anything. In fact, generations of people maintain their ancient anger over situations which have no direct relevance to their current reality. Blaming that situation for the problems they and their ancestors have faced through time.

Many of us have similar situations which have taken place during our own lifetimes.

Traumatic events which altered the course of our lives. Maybe we have brought closure and resolution to those situations. If so we are able to view them in a unemotional manner.

One the other hand, if we are still haunted by emotional ghosts from past memories, it may be time to consciously minimize and dissipate the residue of those incidents. Like it or not they continue to play a role in your day to day life.

Unresolved issues control your attitudes, opinions and beliefs. Your life will never be your own until you break the emotional chains that continue to bind you to unresolved memories.

There is one powerful process which enables you to break free of the “mind control” of unresolved memories… Forgiveness!

Forgiveness is the principle of consciously stopping two primary activities which sustain an unresolved memory:

1. Replaying the memory as a “what if”. What if this or that could have happened, how would things have turned out different?

2. Seeking retribution, justice or some manner which will assign the proper blame to the participants of the situation.

In both cases you are attempting to change history.

You can’t change history, you can only change your perception of it. Forgiveness is the process of exercising your power to change how you will consciously relate to your past. You can either learn and grow from your past experiences or you can choose to continue to use your past as an excuse for not fully engaging yourself in the present.

Reliving a past traumatic experience or “denying it” takes you away from focusing your attention on “now”.

Forgiveness is doing something for yourself. It is the only “selfish act” I know of that is always in your own best interest and the best interest of those around you… and in some cases may be the only “good” that can possibly come from past memory.

You have the power to free yourself from the closed loop of an emotional prison. You just have to recognize that it is for you to decide to use this power. Use it! Forgive yourself and forgive anyone else you feel has wronged you. It does not change the reality of the past actions… It just gives you the ability to put into perspective your role in those actions while giving you the ultimate power to once and for all determine how that memory will resolve itself.

Forgive what has been and embrace what will be!

-Bob Baran