I like to look up words that I've always assumed I understood the meaning. When I thought about forgiveness being good for health, I was motivated to look it up and see what the core elements of forgiveness were. Here is what dictionary.com said. It's a combination of "forgive" and "absolve", since absolve was used to define forgive.

1. To free from guilt or blame or their consequences
2. To cease to feel resentment against
3. To set free or release, as from some duty, obligation, or responsibility

It's just so powerful when it's broken down like this, isn't it? If you really think about it, you may have a whole lot of forgiveness to unpack, for yourself and others. It's not just about forgiveness for horrible crimes or injustices. It can be as simple as having negative feelings toward your body, or your eating habits, being too hard on yourself for making mistakes as a parent or a friend or as a son or daughter. If you go just below the surface, you'll see underneath all that blame, resentment and guilt lie your original expectations. Expectations of yourself or others that possibly were unreasonable or misplaced from the start. So you set yourself and the ones you love up for failure. By becoming more conscious of your expectations of yourself and others, and making adjustments to those expectations moving forward, you'll not only experience a lot less disappointment, but you'll have a lot less to forgive too! Until then, it's time to do some forgiving, which by the way, is much easier when you realize that maybe you were being too hard on yourself and others in the first place. The best part about practicing forgiveness, is that unlike gratitude, I'll let you do it privately, since the goal here is to improve your health. If you have overtly condemned someone else, who, after closer analysis you realize is deserving of your forgiveness, then just remember, happy relationships are good for your health, so keep it in mind, and maybe it's something you do a few months from now. One suggestion for working through forgiveness is to write a letter to yourself or the person that you need to forgive. Work through what happened, identify your expectations and try to see the situation from their perspective, based on who they are, not who you want them to be. You don't have to send the letter, actually burning it and watching it disappear in front of your eyes is powerful symbolism for putting something behind you. Managing expectations, plus finding the strength for forgiveness when necessary, will provide you more long term emotional stability, which is very good for your health! So who are you going to forgive today? Yourself or someone else? Why? If you're willing to share, please comment below. Want to get daily text reminders during our ReNu Challenges? Sign Up Want to join the ReNu Challenge Email List? Join Here What is the ReNu Challenge? Many of us spend years of our lives living with an all-or-nothing mentality, especially when it comes to taking care of our health and our bodies. We’re either eating the “perfect” diet, following our NuSpecies programs, and exercising every day OR we act destructively, eating anything that is in front of us, not taking our NuSpecies, and not exercising, all while feeling guilty, ashamed, unhappy and unfulfilled. NuSpecies ReNu Challenge is a monthly reminder from Jillian, NuSpecies Co-Founder, that everyday is a new opportunity to make a better choice for your health. Every meal is a new opportunity. Every interaction today is a new opportunity. Just because you ate a bacon, egg and cheese for breakfast, doesn’t mean you can’t have a salad for lunch. Just because someone else isn’t being a decent human, doesn’t mean you should go down to their level. Life isn’t black and white and living on the all-or-nothing roller coaster isn’t sustainable. Each day during the week of NuSpecies’ ReNu Challenge, Jillian will challenge you to take one simple action that protects your health.