Claudia Chan

I was watching one of my coach’s videos, and he said, forgiveness is not a verb. Forgiveness is a byproduct of things you’re doing. Maybe you’re working through the anger or pain.

So how does gratitude come in? When I work with my clients, I ask them to do a Letting Go exercise. It’s a 10 day exercise where for the first 9 days, you write a letter to the person who’d hurt you. Let them know how they hurt you, and all the feelings you had for them. Once you’re done, you rip it up.

Then on the 10th day, you write a thank you letter, in the form of, “thank you for doing this to me so that I learned…”

And this is where the gratitude comes in. Because once you are able to shift how you look at the situation, what you’d learned from it, then you no longer pay attention to how that person has hurt you, so you let go and “forgive” the person. So it’s a byproduct.

Similarly, when we’re in a depressive state where we feel nothing is working, we do the gratitude exercise, to thank everything in our lives.

I recommend the YouTube video by Ken Honda called One Word. You can search for that.

For those of us who had gone through horrible experiences, maybe sexual assault or physical abuse, you don’t necessarily have to thank the experience, take time to thank yourself, for overcoming the experience. That you are able to survive that. And now you’re here on the other side.

Give thanks to that.

And as we keep being grateful, things will start shifting.

Now someone asked me if it will work.

The honest answer is I don’t know.

And at the same time, try it out, if it doesn’t work, try something else.

The main thing is to be in action, because that’s where shift comes in.

I hope this helps you. If you have any questions, put it in the comment line or send me a message.

I want to thank you for watching. I’m grateful for you in my life.

Sending you lots of love.