The Other F Word: 7 Days to Forgiving Anyone

By Juliana Ericson

Does the thought of forgiveness make you cringe? Do you hate the idea of forgiving someone who has wronged you, believing its a waste of time? Then THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU! If youre like most people, you probably have a certain person you blame for why youre not happier, why you arent wealthier, or any other condemnation that keeps you stuck.

Learn how an ancient method of letting go can help you move mountains and take your power back in just 7 days. Forgiveness Coach, Juliana Ericson, will show you step-by-step how to regain your peace of mind and heart. She shares numerous examples from hundreds of her clients who began with a story of disgust or rage, then successfully turned them into peaceful and empowering situations.

This book uniquely addresses blocks to happiness that exist in our conscious memories, and those hidden in our subconscious minds that may have originated early in our childhood, at birth or even in the womb. Ericson explains this deep core programming, and helps us connect the dots from what we experienced at our beginnings to limiting beliefs we may now experience as adults.

Grab this wondrous and sacred opportunity to begin anew. You dont have to do it alone; youll have Julianas help this time. And it only has to take seven days. Imagine what your life could be if free from resentment and anger. Just imagine the possibilities!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Aug 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452578491

Juliana Ericson

Juliana Ericson is a Life Enhancement Coach, a Conscious Breathwork Coach and a specialist in prenatal and birth psychology. For seventeen years, she has been teaching the power of Forgiveness to people who want to break free from their stuck, boring or painful lives. Ericson brilliantly explains how our subconscious negative beliefs can be affecting us. 20 years ago Juliana lost most of what to her was important: her fiancé, daughter, dream home, life savings and self-worth. She discovered how to climb out from her dark hole of depression using an ancient forgiveness process she specifically explains in this book. Juliana Ericson maintains a practice in Nashville, Tennessee.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 Juliana Ericson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1-[phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7848-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7849-1 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 8/8/2013

CONTENTS

POETRY BY JULIANA ERICSON

FORWARD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

Benefits of Thinking Like a Cat

CHAPTER 2

Consider Forgiving Yourself First

CHAPTER 3

Drop the Rope

CHAPTER 4

Womb & Birth Experiences Well Worth Investigating

CHAPTER 5

Forgiving Fathers

CHAPTER 6

Children and Forgiveness

CHAPTER 7

Mothers

CHAPTER 8

Culture, Family Patterns & Formative Archetypes

CHAPTER 9

Authority Figures & Mean People

CHAPTER 10

Addicted To Pain And Suffering

CHAPTER 11

Challenging Relatives

CHAPTER 12

How to Do the 7-Day Forgiveness Process

CHAPTER 13

Q&A on Forgiveness & the Forgiveness Process

CHAPTER 14

Physical Healing and Forgiveness

CHAPTER 15

Prosperity Released Through Forgiveness

CHAPTER 16

The Journey Keeps Goin’ On

CHAPTER 17

The Role of Gratitude

CHAPTER 18

Some Anger Management Ideas

CHAPTER 19

Creating Your Own Garden of Forgiveness

CHAPTER 20

Sacred Quotes of Forgiveness

CHAPTER 21

Support Sources, Traditional & Not

Dedication

This book is dedicated to The Holy Spirit, my teacher, my friend and my guide.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The stories I have written in this book are about many of my clients who had the courage and intention to heal. Without them, there would be no book. They were the inspiration and they were the subjects, although I’ve changed the names to protect their privacy. It was their courageously changed thinking, their shifts in perception, I compiled for this book. I thank my children, Shannon and Heydn, for supporting me in this work and for being shining examples to the world of what love looks like. I thank my parents for showing me the art of finding silver linings. I thank my teachers, Margo Powell, Debi Miller, Kelly Walden, Sondra Ray, Tony LoMastro, Maureen Malone, Leonard Orr and Patricia Brennan, for teaching me this work and continuing to live out its integrity and message of profound healing. I thank my cat Mozart, who passed on in 2011, for teaching me unconditional love.

I thank Sondra Ray from the bottom of my heart for writing her groundbreaking book The Only Diet There Is, from which I originally learned the 70 times 7

Forgiveness is the unconditional love of God that we share between people. It is the language of the Divine, the understanding of the heart. - Juliana Ericson

POETRY BY JULIANA ERICSON

Becoming Alive

Good Enough

I Am Willing To Be Willing

Reflections

Worthy

Original Innocence

The Gift

Statement of Truth

Choice Is My Power

The Miracle

I Am Safe

The Truth about Me

Now

Something I Know For Sure

One Precious Thing

Trusting the Flowing Process of Life

Being Peace

Looking For the Good

The Whole World Says Yes To Me

My Love Is Important

With Help, I Can Do It

FORWARD

I believe that real love, not just hearts-and-flowers-love, is the most powerful force in the universe: a force available within every person, which is able to create a bridge from hate to reconciliation. This book is my attempt to show you that this is possible in your life.

- Juliana Ericson, September 1, 2012

"Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die. - Anne Lamott from Traveling Mercies"

INTRODUCTION

What forgiveness is not: Most people confuse forgiveness with weakness, thinking it’s about giving in, or looking the other way when faced with a conflict. That’s not forgiveness at all. If we try to achieve peace with those methods, it’s likely to come back at us later, disguised as bitterness, loneliness, sickness, or worse. Pushing away a raw, angry feeling, pretending it does not exist, is not peace. That is not healing. Since peace and healing is our desired state, we need to try something different.

It is true that conflict comprises a huge part of life on earth, but we do not have to live with conflict in our own lives. By choosing constructive methods of working with conflict we create a greater opportunity to live in peace. Forgiveness does not justify the wrong, nor does it deny the other person has hurt you. You can forgive the person without excusing the act. Forgiveness elegantly brings a kind of peace that helps you get on with your life.

The process I have written about in this book is really very simple. It involves no one other than you. The only difficult step in the whole process is that you have to choose to do it! The Other F-Word: 7 Days to Forgiving Anyone is a compilation of true stories out of hundreds of my clients who have experienced significant and previously unimagined positive changes in their lives with this powerful 7-day process.

I just don’t know where I’d be today if I hadn’t found this Breathwork and Forgiveness. It has saved my life! - Marla, Nashville

My new business venture and new relationship has materialized totally because of my work with you, Juliana. My sessions marked the most profound change I’ve known in my entire life. - Mary, Nashville, TN

I have witnessed so many outstanding changes in people’s lives! I simply had to share the miracles with people like you, who may need one more little nudge to make the final step into the life you want and deserve.

You’ll find out how this life-changing process removes the pain, removes the problem and miraculously changes the facts.

I cannot believe how the universe has turned around and is showing me such love and reflecting such happiness on me since beginning my work with you! - Shannon, Nashville teacher

It is common after suffering for years to feel a need to try something different, anything, to relieve the emotional pain. We may not even know what different would look like. That’s the point! We have been angry or blaming so long, we do not know how to see things differently. As it says in A Course in Miracles, a book I use as a guide in my life, we must choose to see things differently. And with that choosing we give conscious permission to be changed. We change by taking our lives back when we see we are no longer a victim, no longer powerless in the negative situation.

So, it is at this point we must get some extra support. We ask for help according to our spiritual tradition: Holy Spirit, God, Divine Mother, Krishna, Our Inner Knowing, Great Spirit, . . . In biblical terms they speak of having the faith of a mustard seed and you can do great things. All you have to do is have the willingness of this i’s dot, the size of a mustard seed, and God will take care of the how.

Carolyn Myss teaches, Say ‘yes’ not ‘how’! This yes we say shouts to the whole universe of our intention. It is from this point that we begin to experience the shift in our perception of the experience which has angered us. Some people see this change as a shift in dimension, which in some ways it is. Things are different with that discordant relationship. The way you feel toward the person with whom you were angry is changed. Even more remarkable is that the other people do not have to change; they do not even have to know that we are in the process of forgiving them. WE do the changing; we change our minds to see the situation differently.

I hear people defend their anger-thinking with, I’ve tried forgiveness before, and she is still just so hard to get along with! or Yes, I’ve done forgiveness work on my dad. It’s just that he’ll never change and I’ve learned to deal with it. These are not reflections of forgiveness; they’re stuffing-it feelings, I-don’t-want-to-waste-any-more-time-on-him feelings.

I have been a transformational Life Coach and Breath Teacher for 17 years, helping my clients move through their stuck places and on to happier and more fulfilling lives. Through assisting people in this way I have evolved into what I consider to be a Forgiveness Coach. More often than not people are stuck in blame, not realizing they’re holding themselves back and creating their own toxic victim-thinking. That is what’s creating the unacceptable lives they resent. It’s a vicious cycle; anger can be seductive. Like a gerbil on its wheel, we can choose to step off at any time. We are always at choice.

Do you really want to change?

It takes tremendous courage to choose to be happy and to choose peace. Notice I wrote courage, not difficulty or long-suffering. The courage to which I am referring is the kind that is willing to accept change, to accept being changed, and accept a changed life. You may say you want it, but do you really?

Many people are privately afraid of what change will bring into their lives. What will the new me look like, act like, be like? Will I fail at being the new me? Will my friends still want to be with me? Will the unknown be scary? Will my partner accept the changed me? Common fears such as these are subconsciously preventing most people from creating the dream lives after which they are endlessly chasing.

In her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway Susan Jeffers wrote about how even great achievers feel fear. But they do not let fear stop them. They feel it and move forward. I challenge you to feel your fear of forgiving that certain someone in your life, and do it regardless of what fear you may be experiencing. This book will help you in many ways. It will give you real-life examples of others who have felt their fear, moved forward, and experienced peace and joy beyond their wildest imaginings. You can do the same. Take one small step: say yes to letting go. Your willingness is your power.

"The most significant spiritual growth in my life has happened since I was introduced to Breathwork and you with your Forgiveness teaching." - Jim, Nashville singer/songwriter

I know this process works because it works in my own life and in the lives of my clients with whom I have worked. This book contains true stories of people who have forgiven others they once hated, and now live lives full of peace and happiness. If you will commit to complete the small amount of writing required, this Forgiveness Process can also transform your life, in a more gigantic way than you can imagine! I am not making hollow promises here. I am sharing the truth from my own experiences and from those I have personally witnessed through 17 years of my Coaching & Breathwork practice.

Radically different!

There are two approaches to Forgiveness that make this book unusual: First, this Forgiveness process only takes a week to complete. Second, there is the prenatal and birth information I have included in the details of some of the Forgiveness stories. I have been studying since 1996 how our experience in the womb and the circumstances surrounding our birth affect our adult lives, and I am excited to share this valuable information with you. These findings are part of groundbreaking scientific advances in the worlds of prenatal and birth psychologies and psycho-science. One of these sciences is Epigenetics, about which Dr. Bruce Lipton writes in his book The Biology of Belief. I have included prenatal and birth psychology information throughout the book, pointing to possible deep-seated reasons for why we are angered at certain people without knowing the reason. This unique book addresses blocks to peace that may exist in our conscious memories, as well as those locked in our subconscious minds. (Concentrated information explaining this unique subject is covered in Chapter 4.)

You will find some action suggestions at the end of each chapter meant to support you in making small steps towards your transformed life. You don’t have to know how to change. You merely need to bring your mustard seed of willingness; the rest is Divine Intervention. Relax and enjoy the ride of your life!

BECOMING ALIVE

I have wrongly considered guilt and blame

to be my friends and protectors.

We would have long conversations

about what wrongs had been done to me in such great detail.

The more I would talk about my past hurts

with my friends, Guilt and Blame,

the larger the hurt became and the darker my vision became.

These conversations about my story

made me bitter and resentful,

angry at the other, but angrier at myself.

I realize Guilt and Blame are not my friends at all.

They have prevented me from joining life.

Today I choose to divorce guilt and blame from my mind

and begin to replace them with forgiveness,

beginning with myself.

This is a good day

because I am reborn to the living.

– Juliana Ericson

If anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.

- Colossians 3:13

(English Standard Version)

CHAPTER 1

Benefits of Thinking Like a Cat

Here is my cat, Mozart, sitting next to me as I am writing this book. He has been one of my greatest teachers: of patience, of gratitude, of being present, of unconditional love, even of forgiveness. Many people’s version of forgiveness is about judging others as wrong or bad. Many, even deeply spiritual people, see forgiveness as a bitter pill to swallow, or maybe a giant monster they must stuff into a little box within themselves. Sometimes people think forgiving a wrongdoer would be even worse than holding a gun to your head, then pulling the trigger!

So how does my cat fit into all of this? He shows me how upside-down my thinking really is. Mozart’s view of Forgiveness is not to judge in the first place. His perspective is more like what I think God’s view is: Forgiveness is not necessary, because He does not judge that we have done anything wrong. God sees us perfect, whole and complete, as we were created to be and still are. Our Divine Creator sees ONLY what HE made in us, which has never changed. We see only what WE HAVE made. Therein lies the problem.

This may sound all sweet and fuzzy. It