Today’s health conscious trends tell us that sugar can lead to diabetes and damage our brains to accelerate the onset of Alzheimer’s. Lack of fiber in our diets can lead to constipation, excessive weight gain, fatigue and physical weakness. Poor exercise habits can lead to back problems and breathing problems.
What you haven’t been told is that the buildup from daily “unforgiveness triggers” can lead to chronic anxiety, heart disease, cardiac arrest and even cancer. Unfortunately, the damaging effects of unforgiveness are only just beginning to be discovered.
Forgiveness is a body/mind stabilizer. It reverses the destructive effects of stress, unresolved anger and toxic relationships. Forgiveness is not something reserved for those major traumas like betrayal, unloving parents or attacks on your physical being. It needs to be an everyday practice. Forgiveness is not a religious exercise though that universe is the only place it has been advocated. It is a curative and preventative exercise that can lead to a happier. healthier life outside of the Sunday church ritual.
Forgiveness is currently being researched extensively by scientists, doctors and health focused institutions and the results are alarming. Long story short; lack of forgiveness can bring on an early and painful death!
So what is forgiveness? In the simplest of terms, forgiveness is letting go, releasing, dropping it or whatever other synonymous term you can think of. Forgiveness is finding a way to not hold on to whatever is upsetting your mental equilibrium; whatever is irritating you; whatever is causing your body to pump out too much adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine.
So what do those chemicals do? They are invoked when you are in a state of emotional distress – whether it’s because someone cut you off in traffic or the person in the supermarket line is paying in pennies instead of plastic or your partner is having an affair with your best friend. The response in your body is to immediately flood with adrenaline to produce a rush of energy, pump cortisol to increase the body functions needed in stressful situations and surge norepinephrine to increase the brain’s alertness and focus.
In the rest of the body, heart rate and blood pressure rise, glucose is released from where it is stored in our cells for sustained energy, blood flow to skeletal muscles increases, blood flow to the digestive system decreases, and the bladder shuts down – so does your brain. In a state of stress, your mind cannot think clearly or rationally. It is only concerned with surviving the crisis by running or fighting. So smart decision-making flies out the window.
All that activity is great if you are escaping from a tiger or about to run an Olympic track event. But if you’re in that state every day for several hours in a day, it’s like setting your body on fire and it is eventually going to burn itself to a crisp.
Spending extra money for organic foods is not going to have any effect on the physical damage you are doing to yourself. The only thing that can help is to learn how to turn off the destructive mechanisms in your body that were originally created to protect you in life-threatening situations. Learning how to defuse, disengage and relax is what’s necessary. The techniques for doing that are available today and with practice, your ability to activate the process of forgiveness becomes stronger just like physical exercise helps build muscle tone.
One process is called Functional ForgivenessTM. It’s easy to learn and with practice, it can be easy to do. You owe it to yourself, your body and your life to check it out.
Andrew Bozeman is a distinguished speaker, coach, writer and trainer with a deep belief in the unlimited potential of people. In fulfilling that belief, he seeks to offer gateways out of the dysfunction of limiting behaviors and beliefs. He has dedicated himself to the mental, emotional and spiritual transformation of those who are weighed down by self-doubt, self-criticism and negative mental chatter that prevents them from rising to their highest potential.
Andrew is now using his 30+ years of experience as an ordained minister combined with successful careers in business, to chart new pathways. He has created the process of Functional Forgiveness to help people reclaim their lives by letting go of stress, expanding their self-image, enhancing their relationships and achieving their goals. He has helped teams attain higher levels of performance and elevate their productivity.