How To Forgive Someone: It’s An Art, Not a Science
It would be nice if we could all just pick up a formula for how to forgive someone, apply it to ourselves, and simply forgive everyone who ever hurt us. Imagine how happy we’d be! Our world is preoccupied with results “if I do X, it’ll result in Y”. Science sometimes offers us these quick fix solutions. If only working out how to forgive someone was that easy. It’s an art, not a science. It takes time and effort, and even then, the results can be mixed, but often spectacular.
I was at a dinner last Friday, and got chatting to another member of the party. He was obviously struggling to find his way towards how to forgive someone, and of course, as soon as I mentioned the book, the conversation went there (as it seems to do quite a bit).
What Does Real Forgiveness Look Like?
Finding real forgiveness is a subtle art. Living in Western societies, we love to believe that we’re masters of our destinies. With many, their heads tend to emphasize that they must forgive the person who’s hurt them – either because they believe it’s the “right thing to do”, or they know the unforgiveness will come back to hurt them at some point.
In this case, our friend, let’s call him JimBob kept saying he’d forgiven them, but displayed body language which implied he was still angry with them. He worked with them, so every day offered the potential for fresh wounds to be inflicted by his persecutor.
In my books on forgiveness, Cheaper Than Therapy, I discuss the “Fear and Anger Spectrum”, the concept that when we are hurt, it usually results in us feeling fear and anger towards the person, and future situations similar to this we find ourselves in. When we get to a point where we no longer feel the attachment of anger or fear towards people or similar situations, it frees us to make decisions with unparalleled clarity – do we stay in the relationship, or do we sever it for a time? Do we seek justice or show mercy?
Our friend JimBob was convinced he had forgiven them, but he realized that it wasn’t “heartfelt forgiveness”, because he didn’t mean it. He kept trying to override his heart with his head.
The test of where we’re at, is to imagine we bump into them in the street. Would you say hi, or would you cross the street and blank them? It doesn’t mean you’d allow any more interaction with them than that (they may do the same thing again).
How To Forgive Someone
How to Forgive Someone
Frame the Question Right
I usually start with making sure we’re asking the right question. Most of us look at what someone did to us. The action or words that impacted us negatively, and caused us to feel anger, fear or other emotions.
This is really only half of the coin.
The question we really need to ask is “What should they have done?” You see, in most relationships, we have expectations. The closer a person is to us, the more we trust them and the more we expect from them. When someone close to you lets you down, it creates a “debt”. If we can start thinking in these terms, we can start looking at all the ways someone failed your expectations of them, and forgive them for the times in a relationship they dropped the ball. It’s why we say “You owe me an apology”.
Forgiveness Happens In The Heart
Just like our friend JimBob, if you want to improve your chances of forgiving someone, you have to recognize that it happens in the heart, not the head. The subtitle of my forgiveness book“Cheaper Than Therapy” is Falling in forgiveness, because I believe that forgiving is more like falling in love than simply making a decision. It’s not as easy as waking up one morning and declaring “All is forgiven”. If your heart doesn’t agree, good luck.
This means that we’re looking at something that is more of an art than a science. You can do everything, but if you are deadest against it, you won’t forgive someone. Having said that, just like when we’re in love, we can maximize our chances of success. Let’s look at love for example.
It starts with preparing your heart, being ready for love when it sneaks up on you. You need to look presentable, but also deal with all of your baggage in past relationships to be ready to seize the moment. You can get on dating websites, you can determine to meet more people by joining groups etc. You can go on more dates. If you’re really keen, you can even Facebook stalk a few people (I probably wouldn’t recommend this one).
How Do I Get My Heart To Agree?
It’s an art form, which means there are no secret formulas which work for everyone. But any art form you can practice and get better at with time. You can go from 2nd grad finger painter to Leonardo DaVinci the second with enough practice. It just means you do it over and over again, work on your technique by learning from people who are good at it, and getting feedback on how to improve. Probably the most important elements are motivation, and repetition.
Hope this helps. Any feedback , email me or leave a comment.
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