Steps To Empowering & Healing Your Heart

Healing old wounds requires a lot of effort on your part. To truly heal yourself, you must be willing to make the effort. Here are a few steps that will aid you in the process of healing past wounds, letting them go, and forgiving yourself and others (as long as you dedicate yourself to each step!):

1. Commit yourself to turning inward, and going deep into yourself, to find all of the wounds that cause you pain. 
2. Identify your wounds and the effects they have on you. Do your wounds hold power over you? Do you fear healing? If so, why? Have a friend, or someone close to you, witness the effects these wounds have on you.
3. Observe how you may use your wounds to influence and control the people and situations around you, as well as yourself. Do you use your wounds as an excuse to get out of something?Do you use these wounds to control how another person acts by relating these wounds to their actions or personality? Do these wounds give you a reason to quit something because you're dwelling on your past, encouraging your depression over the painful situation? Do you fear that you will lose friends, and people close to you, by healing yourself? Are you attached to these wounds because they've become a part of your familiar life and you don't want to lose that?
   Continue to observe your actions in regards to your wounds. Try to become conscious of the effects your wounds have on you, and change these patterns to ones of positivity. Relinquish the power that these wounds have over you.
4. Identify all of the good that has come from your wounds. Start showing appreciation and gratitude to these wounds and your life. To help with this step, take up a spiritual practice and stick to it. Remember to be disciplined when it comes to healing yourself.
5. Forgive. Forgiveness does not meaning telling someone, "It's okay." Forgiveness means to release the control that the perception of victimhood has over our psyche. It is a means to let go of the need for personal vengeance and the perception you have of yourself as a victim.
   Evaluate what you need to do in order to forgive others or yourself. Go through with these actions, but make sure that these actions aren't sending another message of anger or blame. If they are, this means you aren't ready to let go and forgive yet.
   Create a ceremony that will allow you to release all negative influences your wounds have had on you and that will bring yourself back into the present, using the act of forgiveness.
6. Live in appreciation, gratitude, and love through your attitude and your actions. Allow change to come into your life. Finally, remember to stay present and to not dwell on your past.