The second root cause of blaming is justification. This occurs when you tell yourself (and others) why it is that you are entitled to be angry or upset in this situation.

Many people fall in love with their suffering. Their past problems become a primary focus of their lives. They think about what happened all the time.

Whenever they get into a conversation for any period of time, they bring out their suffering, like a trader in a bazaar, and display it to the other person

when you discipline yourself to stop justifying your negative emotions by continually rehashing what happened and what the other person did or didn’t do, and when you instead calmly accept that “stuff happens” in life, your negativity accompanying the other person or situation dies away.

The Law of Forgiveness says that “you are mentally and emotionally healthy to the degree that you can freely forgive anyone who has hurt you in any way.”

Every person—including you—has experienced destructive criticism, negative treatment, unkindness, rudeness, unfairness, betrayal, and dishonesty from others over the years.

It is one of the most important types of decisions that you make in your own life if you truly want to be happy. What’s more, it is a true test of your mental and spiritual discipline.

Each person has a “Forgetting Curve,” or what is often called a “Forgiveness Curve.”

You can have either a flat forgiveness curve or a steep, downward sloping forgiveness curve.

If your forgiveness curve is flat, this means that you continue to be angry for a long time, sometimes for years or even decades at the same level as when the event occurred.

There are countless people who are still angry about something one of their parents did or said to them decades ago. Furthermore, they will tell you about it at the drop of a hat.

Every psychologist and psychiatrist who deal with unhappy people are employed because their patients have flat forgiveness curves.

Their primary conversation in therapy is talking about what someone did or didn’t do to them or for them at some point in the past—and how unhappy that person still feels about it today.

Truly healthy people, on the other hand, have downward sloping forgiveness curves.

They have had just as many difficulties and problems in life as anyone else, but they have disciplined themselves by resolving to forgive and forget quickly so they can get on with their lives.

The discipline of forgiveness is the key to the spiritual kingdom.

It is only possible for you to enjoy high levels of peace of mind when you develop the habit and discipline of freely forgiving other people for everything and anything that they have done to hurt you.