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Art of Forgiveness

Forgiveness takes effort for most people, but with practice anyone can improve their forgiveness skills. Professionals recommend first exploring your anger through journaling before beginning the forgiveness process. Don't feel pressure to forgive quickly - it may take days, weeks or months. If true forgiveness seems impossible, consider acceptance instead of holding onto anger. Reframe your "grievance story" about how others have wronged you into a "hero story" about how you coped with the situation. Focus on calming your mind and body in the present rather than dwelling on past hurts. Make forgiveness about finding your own inner peace rather than seeking validation from the offender. Take gradual steps towards forgiveness, starting with smaller hurts before tack

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229 views2 pages

Art of Forgiveness

Forgiveness takes effort for most people, but with practice anyone can improve their forgiveness skills. Professionals recommend first exploring your anger through journaling before beginning the forgiveness process. Don't feel pressure to forgive quickly - it may take days, weeks or months. If true forgiveness seems impossible, consider acceptance instead of holding onto anger. Reframe your "grievance story" about how others have wronged you into a "hero story" about how you coped with the situation. Focus on calming your mind and body in the present rather than dwelling on past hurts. Make forgiveness about finding your own inner peace rather than seeking validation from the offender. Take gradual steps towards forgiveness, starting with smaller hurts before tack

Uploaded by

CJ Restauro Gultimo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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BY LINDA WASMER ANDREWS | SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

Some people can easily forgive others, but for most people, forgiveness takes some
preparation and effort. The good news is anyone can improve their forgiveness skills.
Frederic Luskin, PhD, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project at Stanford
University, likens the process to mastering a sport: “If you practice forgiveness, you get
better at it. And professionals can teach you skills that help you do it even better.”

Here are some pointers to help you get started:

Lay the groundwork. Robert Enright, PhD, a professor of educational psychology at


the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder of the International Forgiveness
Institute, recommends first taking some time to explore your anger. Have you faced
your anger, or have you avoided dealing with it? How has the anger affected you,
mentally and physically? Have you been obsessing over the grievance or the offender?
Has the situation caused a permanent change in your life or the way you view the
world? Enright suggests writing about these issues in a journal. Set aside time each day
(10 or 15 minutes) for that purpose, but don’t pressure yourself to write a certain
amount. Just keep up the daily writing until you’ve answered the questions to your
satisfaction.

Don’t rush the process. “Forgiveness should be a joyous gift, not a grim obligation,”
Enright says. If you try to force it, you’ll just end up feeling pressured – and perhaps
guilty if you’re unable to follow through. Set your intention to forgive, and then do it at
your own pace, knowing it might take days, weeks or months. If you find you aren’t
making any headway after months of focused intention and exercise, you might want to
consider working toward acceptance rather than forgiveness. Like forgiveness,
“acceptance is a life-affirming, authentic response,” says clinical psychologist Janis
Abrahms Spring, PhD. Acceptance involves making a thoughtful decision to face what
has happened and deal with it in a way that’s in your best interest – even if you feel that
true forgiveness is not an option. You can still stop obsessing over the hurt and move
on with your life.

Change your story. Do you have a longstanding “grievance story” that you constantly
repeat to yourself and others? “A grievance story typically describes how somebody
else ruined your life,” Luskin says. “And it’s not true. In reality, somebody else did
something painful or difficult. Then you didn’t handle it well.” Turn your grievance story
into a hero story that focuses on what you did to recover from or cope with the situation.
“By shifting from ‘poor me’ to ‘here’s what I did,’ you no longer cast yourself in the role
of victim,” he says.

Focus on here and now. You may feel upset about something that happened in the
past, but what’s distressing you at this very moment are the feelings, thoughts, and
physical reactions you’re having right now, Luskin points out. Actively calming the body
and mind for even six to 10 seconds can help short circuit your ongoing stress
response, he says. His suggestion: Take a few moments to “breathe deeply, pray, look
at something beautiful or remember how much you love someone.”

Make it about you. You might have a chance to tell the person who hurt you that you
forgive him or her. Or you might not. You might receive heartfelt gratitude and
reconciliation in return. Or you might not. Regardless, Luskin says, you can still choose
to forgive. The aim is to find peace for yourself, with or without the offender’s help.
Whatever the outcome, you can still free up the personal energy you’re spending on
holding a grudge and begin using it for more constructive purposes.

Take baby steps. “You wouldn’t walk into a weight room for the first time and try to lift
300 pounds. You’d work your way up to that heavier weight gradually,” Luskin says. The
same principle holds true when learning to forgive. “Don’t start with the worst thing that
ever happened to you,” he advises. “Begin with something smaller, and work up.”

Have elastic expectations. Forgiveness won’t necessarily erase all your pain. “When
somebody has deliberately betrayed you, and something reminds you about what that
person has done, it’s natural to still feel hurt or resentment or even spasms of hate,”
Spring says. “Forgiveness doesn’t mean you lose all negative feelings forever. But it
does mean that the hurt is no longer center stage.”

Forgiveness is best regarded as an evolution rather than a one-time event. Especially


for egregious offenses, you may need to revisit the process repeatedly, but it should get
easier each time. Eventually, you’ll realize that your feelings about the other person’s
choices and behavior have changed in a deep and abiding way. That’s when you’ll
know you’ve learned to forgive for good.

This originally appeared in “Forgive and Forget” in the November 2005 issue of
Experience Life magazine.

Linda Wasmer Andrews

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