Are you still holding onto grudges or are you haunted by past negative friendships, family experiences and relationships? Is there an ex, a family member or a friend who has wronged you in the past and whom you have not forgiven? Do your thoughts ever turn to past relationship or family hurts, betrayals, jealousies, etc and are you ever worried that the same patterns will repeat in your current or future friendships and relationships?

The start of the year is a great time to learn from the past so that you can attract more fulfilling and loving friendships and relationships now and in the future. Holding onto grudges and the negative experiences from past relationships keeps you dwelling on the past. If your focus is on the past, you will stay in the past because you get what you focus on. When you let go and forgive, you set yourself free from being haunted by the past and give yourself permission to live in the present. So rather than being dragged into what happened in the past and potentially sabotaging your current friendships and relationships with your family and partner, you can enjoy creating the friendships and relationships that you desire now and in the future.

Learning from the past

Forgiveness includes accepting yourself and your ex partners, family members and friends for what happened. When you forgive, you learn from the situation rather than forget about it or condone their inappropriate behaviour. The main reason that people hold onto past friendships, family experiences and relationships is so that they can learn from them. Once we learn from them, it is easier to forgive and to let them go. By learning from the situation now you will avoid repeating the same lessons in the future.

Are you ready to forgive?

What is preventing you from forgiving your ex partners, family and friends? Do you want them to see or remember how much they hurt you or do you want to get back at them for what they did? They are probably unaware of your hurt so by holding onto lack of forgiveness you are only hurting yourself.

If you believe that your ex, family and friends have to do something before you will forgive them, you are focusing on things beyond your control and are choosing to remain stuck. If as you think about that situation, ex partner, family or friend, you feel emotions (e.g. anger, hurt, betrayal, etc) which are out of proportion to that situation, it is important to resolve those emotions. This will make it easier for you to forgive them.

The more you hold onto the past and what your ex, family or friend has done to hurt you the more you harbour those emotions, stored in the mind-body as trapped energy. If unresolved, these emotions can lead to health problems and drain you of energy.

Moving On

Remember that people are doing the best they know how with the resources they have, how they were brought up and what they have learnt along the way. Your ex partners, family and friends, like you, are human. Forgiveness can be achieved in many ways, either with or without the ex, family or your friend being present as you forgive them.

Firstly, look at how you participated in and contributed to the event in the past friendship, family experience or relationship - take responsibility for your part in the situation and consider how you could have done things differently. Ask yourself what you can learn from the situation because the positive learning will assist you to let it go and to move on. It is important that your learning is positive and about yourself (e.g. I can trust myself) rather than negative and about others (e.g. I can't trust other people).

In order to forgive your ex partners, family and friends, you need to forgive yourself. So if you are angry or disappointed in yourself about your past relationships and friendships, keep in mind that these events, ex partners, family and friends are there simply for you to learn from, rather than mistakes. Punishing yourself for what you did or did not do only hurts you and blocks you from attracting the relationships that you desire with your friends, family and partner. Ask yourself, "What is the one thing you could do right now that will allow you to fully and completely forgive yourself?"

Once you forgive yourself, you can more easily forgive your ex partners, family and friends, and free yourself from those haunted memories from the past. Then you can more easily attract the relationships and friendships that you desire and truly appreciate and be grateful for the people in your life right now.

Dr. Vesna Grubacevic is the founder of award-winning company Qt, an NLP Trainer, who holds a PhD in Clinical Hypnotherapy and a BEc. She is an author, speaker and the creator of breakthrough behavioural change techniques. For more techniques on improving your relationships and for your FREE gifts, visit www.qttransformation.com