Forgiveness is Lacking in Families | Results from Global Survey on Forgiveness

Absence of Forgiving Prevalent in Family Relationships and Society 

We were stunned by one result in the 2016 Project You Global Survey on Forgiveness — 39% of the respondents said their own families were not forgiving at all, while another 16% said that their family members were not forgiving "very often." 

Admittedly, we had suspected that the lack of forgiveness is a major cause of family dysfunction. But we had not anticipated the severity of these results. 

With 55% of respondents indicating there is little or no forgiveness within their own families, it is little wonder that people do not feel there is sufficient forgiveness in the world today (88% of the respondents to our survey, who come from 18 different nationalities, agreed that there is not enough forgiveness in today's world). 

Contrast these results with the responses to our questions on forgiveness in the workplace and within the countries in which respondents lived.

While both country level and workplace level forgiveness were deemed to be highly situational, the level of forgiveness in each was remarkably higher than indicated for families. 

For instance, only 19% said forgiveness happens "not very often" and just 3% said forgiveness does not happen at all in the countries in which they live. So that's a 22% lack of forgiveness at the country level compared to the 55% within families.

As for the workplace, just over 14% said that forgiveness in the organizations in which they work happens "not very often" or "not at all." That's about one-fourth the level of the absence of forgiveness in families. 

You can download the full results of the survey here:  2016 Project You Global Survey on Forgiveness. 

Personal Year of Forgiveness 

The lack of forgiveness within families is one of the biggest ills of society. We had suspected that this may only be a problem in the materialized western world. But the responses were fairly consistent across all 18 different nationalities that responded to our global survey on forgiveness. 

We also see the lack of forgiveness occurring frequently in other aspects of today's world. We all witnessed the anger, fury, and antagonism that surrounded last year's Brexit vote and the lengthy U.S. election process. Numerous studies are also showing increased incivility in the workplace across the globe. 

Hence, Project You is calling for 2017 to be a Personal Year of Forgiveness. 

We want to start a dialogue on forgiveness. We want to encourage acts of forgiveness at the family, workplace, and national levels. 

We ask that you help start this dialogue by sharing this blog post and our two previous blog posts (Research Confirms Forgiving Is Difficult and Why Are We So Hesitant To Forgive?) with your family, friends, and colleagues. And please share these in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and elsewhere. 

And most important, please share with us and your fellow readers in the comments section below your own ideas on how we can stimulate a Personal Year of Forgiveness with everyone. 

Thank you. 

Parenting: Life's Biggest Job

Give Children the Habits of Love, Humanity, Creativity and Spirituality. 

Passing knowledge on to one’s progeny has been an age-old concern. Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher from the 1^st Century, wrote, “Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.”

Years later, English philosopher and educator Richard Whately wrote “A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune.” 

That was probably a good philosophy for the industrial 19^th Century, when industriousness was needed to sustain one’s family. Today, in the globally linked Information Age of the 21^st Century, our children need the habits of love, humanity, thinking, creativity, and spirituality. These are the core values that will sustain our children, and our children’s children, into the middle of this century.

In more recent times, David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, stated, “The most important domestic challenge facing the U.S. at the close of the 20^th Century is the re-creation of fatherhood as a vital social role for men.”

The words of famed educator and former President of Columbia University Grayson Kirk certainly ring true in today's rapidly changing world: “Our greatest obligation to our children is to prepare them to understand and to deal effectively with the world in which they will live, and not with the world we have known or the world we would prefer to have.”

Of course, parenting is not something we learn in school or at university. While there are many books on parenting, none of us really have a fool-proof parenting book at hand. 

Perhaps one pundit got it right when he said, “If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.” 

Unfortunately, the cynical comments of clergyman Charles Wadsworth also have a ring of truth to them: “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”  

If your children look up to you as they enter the early years of adulthood, you have made a success of life’s biggest job.

This article is partially excerpted from our top-ranked personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, which is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon. 

Your Family Life

Families Build Each Other 

Vic Conant, the President and CEO of Nightingale-Conant, the premier publisher of audio personal development programs in the world, wrote: “If you’ve had wonderful family relationships, you will be able to call yourself a true success in life no matter what else you’ve achieved.” 

Edith Schaeffer, a Christian author and co-founder of L’Abri (an evangelical community that welcomes people who are seeking answers to questions about God and the meaning of life) wrote:

A family is a formation center for human relationships. The family is the place where the deep understanding that people are significant, important, worthwhile, with a purpose in life, should be learned at an early age.

The following concept from the author Gail MacDonald is one that would go a long way in fixing some of the dysfunctionalities found in many families:

Once, when our children were about five and eight, they were caught arguing. I can remember my husband stopping them and saying, “This is home. Now, outside of these four walls people are going to hurt you, they’re going to call you names. But inside these four walls we build each other. Do you understand? We build each other.”

Many people seem to operate their families as some sort of organizational enterprise, where all they do is rush from one sporting event or commitment to another, or try to get by day-to-day without some sort of emotional confrontation.

It is little wonder that, if asked to play the word association game, the first word many people would apply to “family” would be dysfunctional. Not laughter. Not love. Not joyousness. Not even happiness. Simply dysfunctional.

When it comes to our own families, perhaps these words from Jim Rohn can provide guidance: “Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing.” 

For the following week, make your family life your#1 priority. See what a difference this makes in how you think and feel about your family.  

This article is partially excerpted from our top-ranked personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, which is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon.