I recently watched a powerful video by Iyanla Vanzant as she was being interviewed by Jessica Ortner. I sat through the whole video, took notes, and I was impressed as usual by this powerful woman! I wanted to share what I learned with you today.

Letting Go of Revenge & Moving into Love/Acceptance

Iyanla reminded me that revenge should have no place in our lives, especially when we are healing – or trying to. The reason I think this is so important is that with IBD we usually are holding massive anger within. Anger at the disease itself, at the doctors, the medications, and at any abuse or traumas we suffered. All of this is understandable! But the question arises, what emotion will we let dominate? Will we allow the healing emotions to surface, like LOVE, or the bitterness and hurt that comes with hate and revenge?

Please give deep thought to this – how you can extract any hate within and learn forgiveness?

Iyanla states: “Revenge – it doesn’t work. You hurt them and hurt yourself in the process. Like holding a whip in your hand you strike them, but then the whip comes back and hits you.”

Along with forgiveness of others, comes forgiveness of SELF. These two go hand in hand! On the other side of forgiving someone else, is forgiving yourself.

Iyanla says:

“To forgive someone else is the realization that the ONLY person I really have to forgive is ME.”

Now you may be sitting there thinking, “Oh no! I’m not to blame for the______ I suffered!” And you’re absolutely right, but Iyalna explains that usually on a cognitive level we tend to blame ourselves in SOME way for what happened. Whether this is guilt from not stopping what happened, or carrying the belief we’re not good enough – or a million other things!

If bad things happened to us, especially as a child, our cognitive skills were not fully developed. So, it makes sense that to some degree we carry some of the blame and guilt… because that is, perhaps, the only way we know how to explain why such bad things happened.

There is a big difference between self-help vs. self-punishment. Negative thought patterns like, “I’m stuck where I am because I should have done ___” will get you no where. What you should focus on is, how to move forward?

If you currently use acupressure tapping as a mind/body/spirit tool, then you know how powerful it really is! And if you are not familiar with it, Jini recently created a course on exactly this. I encourage you to join her for a free session if you have not tried this wonderful tool yet.

If you are currently using EFT or Lazer Tapping as a method of healing, here is a great snippet from Iyalna’s video to speak aloud while tapping:

“______is not where I want to be. So HOW do I move forward? Not, why did _____ happen…?”

WHY gets you nowhere, and it distracts you from where you’re trying to go. Even IF you found out reasons for why _____ happened, does it make that _____(what they did/said) right? Or change that it still happened?

Iyalna recommends saying the following during your tapping session:

“I forgive myself for BELIEVING that person who _______ (state what they did or said to you) still has any power in my life.”

That statement gave me chills because she is so on point with this!

Continue tapping with this statement….

“I forgive myself for believing the way to protect myself was to stay mad at them.”

I also would like to add that many times we cling to the belief that, “there’s nothing I can do.” This puts ourselves into a victim mentality, and this takes away our power. Either of these beliefs do not make us feel safe or protected!

So, let’s get our power back. How? Well, one way is LOVE.

Iyalna quotes this beautiful expression from a man named Earnest Helms:

“There is no wound deep enough that LOVE cannot heal. Nothing that Love cannot bridge.”

If you are familiar with Jini’s tapping sessions, then you know this statement made in almost every session:

“Even though I feel ______, or I did _______, I choose to love and accept myself anyway…”

This is incredibly powerful! Many people find it hard even uttering those words, as they don’t know how to love and accept themselves. This is why tapping is so powerful, as it really helps us get into this place of love and self-acceptance. Please check out Jini’s 4-week course to help you arrive at that place!

If you find you are struggling with the above statement I would like you to take this gem from Iyalna with you:

“I’m willing. I’m really learning. I’m choosing to love and accept myself anyway.”

This can help you begin the road to love and acceptance without triggering a bunch of resistance along the way!

Happy tapping your way to healing!

And here is the video I am referring to. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching! I’m sure you too, will be inspired like I was.

What are your go-to mind/body/spirit tools? Have you tried EFT tapping before? Tell me in the comments!