Mindful meditation is gaining more and more popularity now that we have more scientific evidence available to support this practice.

There are many different meditation techniques and the use of each technique is dependent on the goal. What is great about meditation is that you can actually combine different techniques to optimize your experience.

One very undervalued type of mediation is forgiveness. This is a practice that I have just begun to adopt and it has been life changing which is why I have decided to share it!

What is Meditation?

Where most people get confused or frustrated with meditation is in the understanding of how to practice it.
Many people think that to meditate you are to “clear your mind” and try to deny all thoughts that come into your head.

While this may be one form of meditation, I do not find it to be the best.

Think for a second on trying to block out all thoughts going into your head and you will see why this would become frustrating and why you would want to quit. This is why I like to consider meditation as intuitive thinking.

Intuitive thinking means that you are either choosing what to focus your thoughts on during meditation or you are allowing thoughts to enter your mind and focusing on each to see if you can gain a deeper understanding of your conscious. While the latter may be more challenging to someone new to meditating, the former is much easier.

Meditation that is centered around focusing your thoughts can involve thinking about gratitude, compassion, dreams, goals, and even forgiveness.

Meditating on Forgiveness

Of the many focused based meditation techniques, forgiveness is the hardest in my opinion. I learned this technique from Vishen Lakhiani, author of The Code of the Extraordinary Mind .

When adopting this technique you basically think back to a time where you were wronged or when you did something wrong. These should be things that you have not forgave people or even yourself for. Once you have this thought you should let the thought fester, let the emotions build, and let any anger or sadness that involved the thought take over your body.

After you have done this you must regain your composure and calm yourself down. It is time now to think of all the positives. Take a step away from the emotions and see the situation from a different point of view. Try to reason with why the situation occurred. Think about how it impacted your life and start searching for all of the positive that have come out of a situation. Let me give an example:

You have never forgiven a former co-worker because they passed along a picture of you partying in college from your Facebook to your boss. Your boss did not like what he saw and you were fired. This has led to you being resentful to the co-worker and boss for years. However, when you look back on the situation you start to realize that your co-worker passing on that photo led to you cleaning up your social media, getting a job that pays twice as much, meeting your current wife who you have 3 kids with, and relocating to the West Coast where you have met some of your best friends.

In this example, none of the outcomes may have been possible if you were not “wronged” by someone. But most people cannot see it like this. However, if you are able to look at things differently, you can become at piece with all of things that have been weighing on you!

The Power of Forgiveness

While this type of meditation may not be the easiest, think for a second on how powerful it could be.

We all have so many past life situations that, whether we realize it or not, are holding us back or causing us to think or act in a certain way. If we can come to peace with many of these past situations by not only forgiving them but also finding all the ways in which these situations actually helped us, then we can really achieve peace and harmony in our life.

Find the good in even the worst situations and watch your life change!