How Self Forgiveness Leads to Light, Love and a Joyful Life! | Eileen Timmins | TEDxOakParkWomen

[Music] hello forgiveness think about that word for a minute what does it mean to you now add the word self in front of it self forgiveness what does that mean think about a time when you held on to something against yourself for a minute for a day for an hour a week or maybe years and learning how to self forgive and letting that go will change your life and it also free you forgiveness is a journey it's a journey what Noah said time rules or limits it's as mysterious as love and it's similar to a labyrinth of life now I'd like to share with you my story and stories are bridge between your heart and your head and my story I had to I will share with you I had a to learn how to release hurts that I held on to myself I had to figure out what true forgiveness was and finally awakening and my story begins with this in August of 2005 I received a phone call early in the morning and it was from my brother and he had called me to tell me my mother who was in hospice experiencing breast cancer had just went into a coma and I thought wow she just went into a coma the evening before I had talked to her she was joyful she was full of laughter she was joking with me I told her I would be visiting her which was a three-hour drive away the following evening and I look forward to seeing her then she said I love you and I said I love you too and she said here's the phone to your sister why don't you talk to her so I did that so when my brother called and said she was in a coma I said Oh she'll come out of it it'll be fine you know no worries there so what occurred was I went on with my day thinking I would drive the three hours later on five hours later I received a call from my brother stating my mother had passed from a disease breast cancer at that moment I felt grief I felt anger I felt resentment I felt shame for not leaving and going to visit her that's a decision that I can never ever change in my life again and those feelings stayed with me for five years until I had my own awakening and that awakening occurred with a phone call from a radiologist at Northwestern and they had called me to tell me that I was going to experience the same disease as my mother now when I say disease I feel that holding on to those emotions of shame anger resentment grief help me in a not at ease state which contributed to causing my experiencing breast cancer during my treatments at Northwestern I would take time and go walk the labyrinth at st. James off of Michigan Avenue and also for some reason during this time period I was receiving messages about forgiveness and I had to learn what forgiveness was and the steps that you go through to learn how to forgive and with that I was writing I was researching I was journaling I was doing so many things and had a stack of papers about forgiveness but they were true awakening came when I was walking the labyrinth one day and praying and meditating and a voice came to me and that voice was my mother until this day it's very emotion for me to say this I heard her say you need to forgive yourself you must let this go it wasn't your time to be there with me why pass to the other side release this harm you're doing to yourself and forgive yourself needless to say I fell to my knees and I was just shaking it was such a release but I've learned how to forgive and it was truly an awakening for me with that story and I believe the wound is the place where the light enters you as Rumi says and that wound held haunt me for five years and called a disease was that easy and I want to share with you some research about this John Hopkins University has a heads researched and said when you are in a flight or fight mode and sitting in anger or resentment for any amount of time it can cause some conditions around high blood pressure diabetes heart disease and lower your immune system anti-cancer magazine states that the emotional wound associated to a physical wound is just as important to heal and if it's not addressed together it can caught lower your immunity which then can cause conditions for King out sir and lastly dr. Lauren Toussaint of Luther College has a study he said found out a research that women who are highly self forgiving are three times less likely to experience depression now why is this important for you in this room because as women we are very hard on ourselves how many of you put others first how many of you have a hard time saying no and when you say no do you feel it's less loving how many of you are perfectionist how many you overanalyze yourself and when you make a mistake you look back and you say oh I should've did it that way or oh I did it under that way right seeing a lot of heads nodding how many of you believe that your self-esteem this one got me gross by the amount of work you accomplished or tasks you accomplished and lastly our self body image we see body shaming on social media all the time we are hard on ourselves you're going through an experience that I did I love my body every day and we all should we are also blessed with that so with that forgiving yourself heals the broken inside and it is hard it takes time you have to have courage and strength and most of all it takes practice and it has to be a habit right so why is it so important to forgive yourself there's two reasons and that goes around two types of hurt the first is the initial hurt that caused the the act the second on top of that is the emotions that you hold on to it and when you're holding on to that you are hurting yourself so in my case the first act was the decision I wasn't I made the decision no she's gonna be fine I'm not gonna go boom the second hurt was holding on to it for so many years living in that low energy condition and not working through it and releasing it through anyway is possible so release the hurts that you have and forgive yourself it'll bring joy back into your life and you will not be in at dis-ease so what I'd like to share with you is about accepting the self forgiveness challenge and what is that many ways you can release forgiveness one is there's a recent study or article in New York Times about volunteering if you volunteer that helps your immunity it helps your feelings it releases joy another how I helped myself self forgive was to write a letter to myself why I did it put in a beautiful ceramic pot light it and send it up to the universe or God another is to write a letter to yourself just put your name on it put it in the mailbox don't put a stamp on it okay let it go and let it go to wherever it goes right I don't know where that goes but I wrote I'd sent a couple of them okay another is to walk the labyrinth like I did pray meditate zipline which I did and I will tell you stepping off the edge of a platform to go is a release but the last one and the favorite one is it's a little hippie dippie as I call it it's drum circle you sit in a drum circle and you pound those drums and you let it out and I'll tell you it really works so you know figure out what works for you to release the your hurts and to get joy back into your life because life is so precious and we should be living in joy every day and when you live in joy people around you can feel that and you are the center and you are sending that energy out so with that I want to share with you what true forgiveness is and fake forgiveness is now let's start with fake forgiveness as you can see it's temporary it's conditional it's the past is ongoing so it's in your present it's motivated by fear and there's anger true forgiveness on the other hand it's permanent it's unconditional it's stated in the past is over the past is over it's inspired by love and it does take time are many of you seeing the path to forgiveness is love forgiveness love love forgiveness repeating theme so Oprah has shared true forgiveness is when can say thank you for that experience now what I'd like to share with you is that don't judge if you see people forgive quickly right it may not be fake forgiveness because it may be years of experience that they have built up and habits and they know how to release hurts and harms so fake forgiveness can be you know kind of gray sometimes because many people have worked on forgiving so true forgiveness works it's worked for me and I know it's worked with others but it's self forgiving that really makes a difference because when you forgive yourself when other harms come at you you it's easier to forgive others because you have practiced that and you become at peace and not saying forgiving means forgetting and learning from it forgiving is about releasing harms and hurts to you and releasing that lower energy it's a present for yourself and I can tell you the path to forgiveness can take ordinary people on extraordinary journeys I've seen it there's a website that the forgiveness project you can see look at read it and it's extraordinary the journey that you can get from self forgiving so the ultimate gift is self forgiving and what I like to say is wrap yourself up as a present put a bow on your head do a dance and give yourself that gift okay because that gift is taking the past and putting it behind you you're not letting that pass in your present or into your future so it's a time here it's a present for you it's a release from the hurts by self forgiving self forgiving frees your soul and it changes your life it changed the mind and I have a passion to share this with you it'll bring joy light and love into your life many blessings thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 283,108

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Life, Life Development, Peace, Positive Thinking, Relationships, Self, Self improvement

Id: p-at-yS6eaU

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 12 2017