What is forgiveness?

It is an emotional voluntary response, it is an internal process of letting go of feelings and thoughts of resentment, bitterness, anger, and need for vengeance to someone who has betrayed or wrongs us, including ourselves 

Forgiveness has a huge part to play in our lives and we must process and reflect this feeling. In extreme situations forgiveness can be very difficult and would take time to process and resolve within ourselves which is understandable. However today i speak about forgiveness within family and friends and at work

While forgiveness plays an important role in my life, I have been able to work on this in my personal life for a long time now because my evolution taught me that without forgiveness, gratitude is powerless. I have also learnt and experienced that our greatest challenge/betrayer is our greatest teacher. When we are hurt/disappointed or betrayed by someone they are teaching us a lesson we need to learn in our life. The lesson  may be on the path to discovering our purpose of existence. 

We must also evaluate what have they hurt in us, our ego, our respect or our pride? What are we feeling deep inside us? This question has greatly helped me in my journey, because we are full of expectations and when we do not receive what we expect we are disappointed and feel hurt and even betrayed. But, is this who we are or is it their inability to understand us because they don’t understand themselves. When we become aware of this, we evolve. 

When you forgive into love you don’t live with the fear that the person who betrayed you will not repeat the mistake but you forgive into faith and do it for yourself and for who you want to be. It’s not driven by ego but love. Love for yourself, trust in yourself to understand the greater perspective of the pain.

While I am aware of this concept on a personal front, and I coach my clients and friends to practice forgiveness daily, recently I have been practicing  forgiveness at work.. 

I am still weighing the pros and cons of forgiveness at work, I am sharing with you what i have learnt up until now 

For instance, If a team member has stolen money from us, 

What are the arguments involved

  • Inability to trust again
  • Setting wrong precedent and culture 
  • Unaligned to the values, as he breached them 

The questions in my mind,

  • Is the inability to trust a betrayer due to the fact that we don’t trust ourselves? 
  • Is the fear of setting the wrong precedent, enabling us from being a trailblazer to forgiveness at work, giving them a second chance and evolution of ourselves and our company culture and values.
  • One of our company’s values is integrity, does this conflict with forgiveness? especially if the offender has asked for forgiveness? Or does it actually make us a better leader and human?

The reasons we forgive are 

  1. To release any resentment we may hold, to free ourselves from pain
  2. It teaches us a lesson 

To me the above two reasons are in service of ourselves and our journey, and I believe as leaders we must address this at work boldly. 

Even if the betrayer has been let go off, the objective is not to feel a negative charge or ill feeling towards him/her. Forgive into love! 

At the end of the journey, what matters is our evolution. Hence, forgiveness is a choice we make to live in peace with ourselves and evolve as human beings. 

Author(s)

  • Meher Mirchandani

    Director

    Manrre Logistics Fund

    An award-winning entrepreneur, healer, and coach, Meher is the Director of Manrre Logistics Fund and  Managing Director of Palmon Group. She is a maven who balances her various roles with equal ease and  persistent hard work—whether it is that of a business leader, decision maker, wife, daughter, or a devoted  mother to her twin daughters.   An inherently empathetic leader, she is a source of inspiration for her core team of leaders and leads by  focusing on conscious leadership based on her personal and her company’s values. As one of the Forbes top  Indian leaders, Meher believes that culture is the cornerstone of an organization, and she is responsible for  creating and building a culture with a growth mindset at Palmon and Manrre that empowers leaders to be  their best on all fronts of their lives.   Her leadership principle is “Success is something you attract by the person you become. It is your  dedication to consistently grow yourself that will yield you the life you desire.” Her personal journey has  brought about a breakthrough and transformation in her, which she shares in her first book ‘Come Alive’.  Come Alive addresses the answer to the question, ‘Are you truly Alive’?   Her book uncovers that there is nothing missing in life and that you are enough and limitless! It helps you  understand that you are complete. It sheds light on the fact that the relationship we have with ourselves is  what determines the quality of every other relationship in our life. Her journey concludes, that the feeling  of something missing is nothing else but the connection with ourself.  Through this book, the author guides you to know, nurture, appreciate, and fall in love with yourself.  Her five-phase process will lead you to prioritize yourself, love yourself and ultimately come alive. Being  alive is being in love with yourself for who you are.  Her mission is to evoke the transformation in you, so you honor and celebrate yourself for who you are! [email protected] www.mehermirchandani.com comealivewithmeher