New Year, Clean Slate: How to Start 2025 With a Bang

Whatever heartaches you've experienced in 2024, you have the ability to leave them behind in 2025.

If you're looking to move past being offended, lied to, hurt, used, abused, rejected or misunderstood, these important pieces of advice will help you get a fresh start and have the best year of your life.

To forgive is to wipe the slate clean, to pardon, to cancel a debt. It’s a good way to start the new year because it works. Forgiveness is at the core of making your life better, happier and more fulfilling. If you are at a standstill at this time, if nothing good seems to be happening, then it’s time to do something about it. Why carry around all that negativity when you can let it go by forgiving?

The dictionary defines forgiveness as the act of no longer blaming somebody or holding onto feelings of anger toward somebody who has wronged you. Psychologists will tell you that forgiveness is a conscious and deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or retribution.

Money is a big part of learning to forgive. Lending money often leads to bad feelings when it isn’t paid back by a certain date or in full, or it’s used for something you don’t like. When you loan money, you must do it with the assumption that you will never get it back and that there are no strings attached.

That way you won’t carry around resentment toward the person you loaned it to if you never see it again. Consider it a gift and ask that person to pay it forward to somebody else who needs it. This is a gift of forgiveness for yourself! It’s another way of letting it go.

Genuine forgiveness is a challenge to one’s ego. It’s hard to forgive someone who did something bad to you. But carrying the burden for years or even decades causes more damage to your body, mind and soul than you can imagine!

Some people thrive on feeling hurt, betrayed and used. They play the martyr and complain endlessly. They use these bad feelings as weapons to destroy relationships and reputations. But weapons can cause you to self-destruct as well! If you don’t want to go down in flames, start your acts of forgiveness with one person.

Repeat three times every day: “I forgive so-and-so for hurting me. I release that hurt.” The more you do this exercise, the easier it gets. It is important to remember that forgiveness is not granted because a person deserves to be forgiven.

Instead, it is an act of love, mercy and grace — more for you than for the person causing the hurt. Yes, it will be hard to learn the art of forgiveness.

But try it anyway. People guarantee it will give you a feeling of release, peace of mind and physical well-being. And while you’re at it, forgive yourself for mistakes you’ve made along the way and for things you might have said or done to hurt others. Instead, use those experiences as lessons in making you a better person.