38: How To Forgive Others And How It Makes You Healthier with Jackie Bowker

Jackie Bowker  00:00

Do I really want to encourage a will but we talk more about forgiveness, that how achy and how hard it is someone’s wronged us and how you know, it’s not I’m not saying it’s easy, but what I’m saying is that it is important to make sure that we connect it to our health outcomes. We connect it to our focus to our productivity to our ability to have abundance, prosperity, to make more money, to share our gifts with the world. I would love to encourage you to really renew your personal vision on forgiveness. How can you use forgiveness to improve your health? I want to challenge you on that. How can you use forgiveness to improve yourself as a person to improve your ability to share your very special message? Hi, there. Well, welcome to the feel better now podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Bowker. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future, in your health, in your career, in your relationships for both yourself. And for those around you just one small action step at a time. With so much love and gratitude to be your guide. Let’s get started. Jackie back, why is it good to forgive someone Welcome. I’m super excited today to talk about forgiveness. So something you may not often consider when you’re looking at a holistic health protocol. Or it certainly might not be something that you discuss with your doctor or your functional medicine doctor to improve your health outcomes. But guess what? Forgiveness is really important to your health outcomes. In fact, in 2016, they did the first longitudinal so the study longitudinal made the study over time. So over five weeks, participants reported on their levels of state forgiveness, perceived stress and mental and physical health symptoms. What they found was that increases in forgiveness were associated with decreases in stress, which then went on to be related to decreases in mental health symptoms. So forgiveness is really important. But something that we don’t often talk about, it’s something it’s also really quite hard as anyone ever been in a situation where someone’s really done something bad by them like so they’ve wronged them, and how hard it is to find it in your heart to forgive that person. I know personally, this has happened to me so many times. And I’ve worked really hard at it. And I want to share my tips or my view on the situation and encourage you to think about your perception of forgiveness. I was in church this morning, and they got the children that were in the church. And they brought them up to the front. And they did a little exercise with them. And I tell you I learned so much when I was watching this exercise, not just personally as a parent, and also for the children as well. It was phenomenal. So the instructor had a girl on stage. And the girl had an empty backpack on there was a children’s backpack or pink with like lots of patterns all over it. And the backpack was quite large and was completely empty. Then she had a box of blocks. And she talked about every block. Imagine putting a block in the backpack and every block was a hurtful comment into something that hurt your heart. So the first block was the person had said something about the little girl’s dress and the next one had said a few main things to her at school. And then the next block was another child not wanting to play with her. And then the next block was her getting home from school and her brother said something nasty to her. And in the end, the girl the little girl that had the backpack on there was helping with the demonstration as she heard the instructor talking and saying these examples she said she was grabbing like big hunks of blocks and like putting them in her bag herself. So she could You could tell she could really relate to this situation of people saying things that were unkind or acts of bullying and other sorts of things. So in the end, she picked up the whole box of blocks and poured them all into the backpack and back sort of sagged down and she was having trouble carrying the bag and instructor said how’s the bag feel now and she said really, really really heavy. And so one by one we took the blocks out of the bag and so each time you were taking a block out that was you forgiving someone like giving somebody forgiveness. And so by the time the backpack was empty again and all the forgiveness have been given to all the people that had been unkind in some way we asked the girl how does the bag feel now and she was like oh so much better super light. Like how do I feel walking around I feel amazing now and it was a jaw dropping moment if you think about that concept. Forgiveness makes you feel better forgiveness make Ask feel lighter, makes us walk around with more of a spring in our step makes us happier that we’re not carrying such a load around. And for me, this is a really big lesson than I have learned in my own developing my own journey, that when we forgive others benefits ourselves, and the person receiving the forgiveness. That’s, that’s a bonus. Anything about that is a bonus. So imagine a world where forgiveness is never held back where we’re all walking around with no blocks in our backpack, I want you to imagine a world where you are empowered to receive as much forgiveness as you are willing to pass on. Can you flip it that way? And think about it that way? So interesting, isn’t it? How do you know when you need to forgive somebody? Well, when you think of them, does your heart feel warm? Or does it feel cold? And I’ll leave that with you. I really want to encourage a world where we talk more about forgiveness, that how achy and how hard it is someone’s wronged us and how you know, it’s not I’m not saying it’s easy, but what I’m saying is that it is important to make sure that we connect it to our health outcomes, we connect it to our focus to our productivity to our ability to have abundance, prosperity, to make more money, to share our gifts with the world. I would love to encourage you to really renew your personal vision on forgiveness. How can you use forgiveness to improve your health? I want to challenge you on that. How can you use forgiveness to improve yourself as a person to improve your ability to share your very special message with the world? If you know me, you’ll know that I say I believe we’ve been given a voice for a reason. And that’s to share what we have to say. And it’s really hard to do that often I talk about it’s hard to do that when we’ve got no energy, no vitality, or to do that when we’re really stressed out. Well guess what makes us really stressed out the blocks in the backpack, you know, people that have said something that have wronged us and I often when I’m teaching my children, if people saying things like that, you know, we just we’ve practiced not letting that in. I’m not going to let that in. I’m not letting that in. And that’s a really good tip. Another tip that I have learned that I love to pass on is when someone apologizes for something that they have done, they’ve wronged you in some way and they come and they do apologize. I have transitioned from saying that’s okay, we have this. It’s almost like a an automated response. That’s okay. Well, it’s not okay. It’s not okay that that person did that to you. It was really beautiful. My son was telling someone this morning this message that if somebody does something wrong, and they apologize to you don’t say that’s okay. Because it’s not say thank you, say thank you, and you’re forgiven. And that’s such a beautiful perspective. And that’s making your backpack lighter, that’s taking a block out of your bag. And how many blocks do we put in our own bag that we need to take out as well, I don’t want to forget that it’s not, it’s often more ourselves and just as much as others. I want to leave you today with one of my favorite mantras that my mentor taught me and it’s really beautiful to come back to if you are in a situation where you are feeling icky that someone has wronged you. And your your heart isn’t feeling warm about that person or or towards yourself about that thing. A beautiful mantra to close us out for today is I forgive myself and others for all the wrongs done to me and I take responsibility for my own life. I forgive myself and others for all the wrongs done to me and I take responsibility for my life. I hope you’ve enjoyed this and that I’ve helped to make the connection between forgiveness, stress, and improving your health outcomes and met you know, really making sure that you can use forgiveness and give as much forgiveness as you would want to receive so that you can share your very special message with the world. Bye bye. If you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate yourself because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career in your relationships. And I am so proud of you. And if you want more of the feel better now so tune in every Monday for new episodes and join our community on Instagram at Jackie Belka for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered at feel better institute.com/sign up that feel better institute.com/sign up but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better because the world needs you to feel good. So you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that So see you soon here’s to feeling better now

10:05

Bye Bye Jackie