Benefits of Forgiveness

Forgiving is not about forgetting, or excusing another's behavior. 

There are enormous personal gains derived from forgiving others, as you will see in chapter two on the benefits of forgiving. The most important payback from forgiveness may have been identified by Dr. David Simon, co-founder of the Chopra Center, “Forgiveness is a prerequisite for inner peace."

Forgiveness requires the right mindset and attitude, an appropriate level of humility, and acknowledgment of the human values of the other person — combined with strong willpower and fortitude based on deep-seated self-understanding.

Forgiveness does not excuse the other person’s behavior or words. Forgiveness does, however, prevent their behavior and words from razing your emotions, flattening your spirit, and destroying your heart.

Forgiving is not necessarily about forgetting. Giving forgiveness to someone does not erase the unpleasant or acrimonious past. However, forgiving does prevent you from being imprisoned by this past. While grievances are not erased or deleted through forgiveness, forgiving enables you to focus on a better future, rather than a bitter one.

Forgiveness also means abdicating and releasing your instinctive and innate feelings of the “right” to retaliate. Human nature is automatically stimulus-response based:  you hurt me and thus I will hurt you back. You cause me pain, so I will cause you pain.

Forgiveness is not pretending what someone did or said was right, acceptable, or even okay. More important, it is also not pretending that you were not hurt or that their actions and words do not matter.

Forgiveness is a release. It is effectively saying, “I am going to let this go. I am not going to let this matter chain me to unwanted emotions and thoughts any longer.” 

You can spend months, even years, thinking you hate someone for their words or actions, when in truth you really just want to let them know how hurt you feel and the pain you feel they have caused you. Of course, they did not cause you the hurt or the pain, this was caused by your reactions to what they said or did. 

You do have a “right” to whatever emotions you wish to carry with you in response to a person or event. You have the “right” to be bitter, hurt, spiteful, angry, resentful, and scores of other emotions and feelings. However, you owe it to yourself to understand how these emotions affect your mental, emotional, and physical health.

Forgiveness is a process. It takes time. The process starts with ourselves. We have to stop and admit that our strung out emotions, thoughts, hurt, and pain were caused by our reactions to someone’s deeds and words, or to an event or situation that happened to us.

It is little wonder that Marianne Williamson says, “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.” 

This article is excerpted from our book Project You: Forgiveness Words of Wisdom. Today (November 21st) is the final day to download this book for free in the Kindle store.