Many of us suffer for years from grievances we are not willing to give up. We hurt our psychological well-being, our relationships and our physical health by holding on to our grievances. Beside the anger and hurt, the loss of love, joy, and intimacy mar the lives of those who do not forgive. Please choose to NOT be one of those people. Forgiveness is for YOU not the offender.
First: Take responsibility for how you feel. This does not mean that what happened was your fault.
Responsibility means that we are in control of our emotional and behavioral reactions. While you did not cause the hurt to happen, you are responsible for how you think, behave and feel since the experience occurred. It is your life and they are your reactions.
Make the effort to appreciate the good in your life. Pain is a normal part of life; keep our hurts in perspective. Remember, you are not the only person who has suffered this particular hurt.
Focus on gratitude, love and appreciation of nature. We can choose what to see, hear and experience in life. Take each one of these and develop a long list of points upon which you can meditate.
Forgiveness is the practice of extending your moments of peacefulness. Learn how to feel good more often during each day by focusing on what you are grateful for, people you love, and the beauty around you.
Second: Challenge your unenforceable rules. Your list of 'shoulds' can not be enforced. Other people have their agency and will live according to their own rules. Even though you think your rules are the 'correct' ways to behave, if you continue to take personal offense every time someone breaks one of your 'shoulds', you will continue to suffer hurt and anger.
1) Recognize you feel hurt, angry, alienated or hopeless.
2) Remind yourself you are feeling badly because you are trying to enforce an unenforceable rule.
3) Challenge your thinking regarding your demand of the 'should'. Do other people have the right to exercise their agency and live their lives the way they want? Have you ever truly been able to effectively control someone else?
4) Change your demanding that you get what you want from a 'should' to 'hoping you get what you want'.
5) Notice that when you wish or hope things to be the way you want, you can think more clearly and be more peaceful. (Isn't this the same thing God says to His children? "I hope you will keep the commandments/ covenants but I acknowledge and have atoned for your agency / your ability to decide for yourself the life you will live")
It is not our desires, wishes and hopes that get us in to trouble. The problem arises when we demand that our friends and family be the way we want them to be. Accept the fact that people can be hurtful but your goal is to hurt and suffer less and forgive more. When we hope for something, we leave room for possibly having to make other plans (the same way God did when he said, "If they give in to temptation we will provide a Savior for them...").
Some common unenforceable rules:
My partner should have been faithful
Life should be fair
People should treat each other kindly
My life should be blessed/easier because I am obedient
My past should have been different than it was
My parents should have treated me better
These first two steps are a huge undertaking.
My anger was turned around, initially, by reading James Allen's book From Poverty to Power which was written about 1902. It fit into my gospel perspective:
You say, "How can I love the hypocrite, the adulterer, the murderer? I am compelled to dislike and condemn such people." It is true you cannot love such people emotionally but...it is possible to attain to such a state of interior enlightenment as will enable you to perceive the train of causes by which these people have become as they are, to enter into their intense sufferings, and to know the certainty of (the possibility of) their ultimate purification. Possessed of such knowledge it will be utterly impossible for you to any longer dislike or condemn them, and you will be able to think of them with perfect calmness and deep compassion. If you love people and speak of them with praise until they in some way thwart you, or do something of which you disapprove (violate your 'shoulds'), and then you dislike them and speak of them with dispraise, you are not governed by that love which is of God.
Again, this does not mean what happened was your fault or that you have to think what happened was okay or that you have to stay in an addictive relationship. The beginning of forgiveness is to challenge your thoughts and reactions. When God gives you the grace to be able to see your offender truly as a child of God, with every opportunity to repent and eventually attain exaltation, you will begin to let go of your grievances- your taking the offense so personally. (I'm still working very hard on the "perfect calmness and deep compassion".
One way I have achieved a measure of that compassion has been my determination to not share details of his addictive lifestyle with my children. He spoiled the marriage relationship with his choices but why would I want the relationship with his children to be spoiled? Enduring the anger and judgments of some of my children has helped me to feel stronger and in control of my life.
Of all the books which have come into my life as "packets of help", this one by James Allen is my all-time favorite. I read a chapter just about every day and meditate on how I can apply the concepts. Next to the scriptures, this book has been most influential in changing my life.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Preconditions to Forgiveness
Not that I am THERE but here are some ideas that have moved me along the path. These are taken from Forgive For Good by Luskin:
When you are hurt, you form a grievance; either something happened that you did not want to happen or something did not happen that you wanted to happen. The foundation for the grievance is your "unenforceable rules". These are all the "shoulds" you have created and are holding on to. He/I should have done this; he/I shouldn't have done that.When you try to enforce any of these "shoulds", you will feel frustrated, angry and helpless. If you are experiencing these feelings over a prolonged period of time, you are probably trying to enforce your 'rules' of correct behavior on someone and you have not realized yet that, in actual fact, you have no control over another human being's agency.
My friend holds up her palm to her face and points out, "This is the extent of my control over other people and their choices!" When you can acknowledge and accept this, you can begin to think in terms of "hopes" instead of "shoulds". I hope that ____________ but I acknowledge that I can not control anyone's choices/behaviors except my own.
Forgiveness is a choice. It does not happen by accident. We have to make a conscious decision to forgive. We will not be able to forgive just because we are 'supposed to'. We can not be forced (by ourselves or others) to forgive. We did not form a grievance by accident; just because we were hurt does not mean we had to create a grievance. It was a choice and because it was a choice we also have the power to choose to get rid of it.
Forgiveness takes place by undoing each of the steps of the grievance process. You balance the personal nature of the hurt with the impersonal. Yes, you were hurt by ________ who did ________ but you are not the first person to have suffered in this manner. Then you take responsibility for how you feel. "I feel angry, betrayed etc" Lastly, you change the grievance story (blaming, replaying the hurt over and over) to a hero story where you become the hero instead of the victim.
1) Know what your feelings are about the hurt (they may change from day to day)
2) Be clear about the action that wronged you (not minimize or exaggerate)
3) Share your experience with one or two trusted people. (NOT the person who hurt you or family members who are unsympathetic) Tell how you feel and why what was done was not O.K. If you share this with more than a few trusted people, you might be sharing in order to denounce the offender and let everyone know how you have been victimized. Do you want to prolong feeling like a victim or do you want to feel better by moving past the offense?
When you have taken these three steps, you are ready to forgive.
When you are hurt, you form a grievance; either something happened that you did not want to happen or something did not happen that you wanted to happen. The foundation for the grievance is your "unenforceable rules". These are all the "shoulds" you have created and are holding on to. He/I should have done this; he/I shouldn't have done that.When you try to enforce any of these "shoulds", you will feel frustrated, angry and helpless. If you are experiencing these feelings over a prolonged period of time, you are probably trying to enforce your 'rules' of correct behavior on someone and you have not realized yet that, in actual fact, you have no control over another human being's agency.
My friend holds up her palm to her face and points out, "This is the extent of my control over other people and their choices!" When you can acknowledge and accept this, you can begin to think in terms of "hopes" instead of "shoulds". I hope that ____________ but I acknowledge that I can not control anyone's choices/behaviors except my own.
Forgiveness is a choice. It does not happen by accident. We have to make a conscious decision to forgive. We will not be able to forgive just because we are 'supposed to'. We can not be forced (by ourselves or others) to forgive. We did not form a grievance by accident; just because we were hurt does not mean we had to create a grievance. It was a choice and because it was a choice we also have the power to choose to get rid of it.
Forgiveness takes place by undoing each of the steps of the grievance process. You balance the personal nature of the hurt with the impersonal. Yes, you were hurt by ________ who did ________ but you are not the first person to have suffered in this manner. Then you take responsibility for how you feel. "I feel angry, betrayed etc" Lastly, you change the grievance story (blaming, replaying the hurt over and over) to a hero story where you become the hero instead of the victim.
1) Know what your feelings are about the hurt (they may change from day to day)
2) Be clear about the action that wronged you (not minimize or exaggerate)
3) Share your experience with one or two trusted people. (NOT the person who hurt you or family members who are unsympathetic) Tell how you feel and why what was done was not O.K. If you share this with more than a few trusted people, you might be sharing in order to denounce the offender and let everyone know how you have been victimized. Do you want to prolong feeling like a victim or do you want to feel better by moving past the offense?
When you have taken these three steps, you are ready to forgive.
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