I recently sent a tweet, “When you forgive, the person who benefits most is yourself.” Someone replied, “I”ll never forgive because what they did was unforgiveable.”
I understand that feeling because I’ve experienced it myself.
When you’ve been betrayed by someone you trusted or have been injured by someone who had power over you (like your boss or parents) or have been violated when you were innocent, it can feel like you’re letting them off the hook if you forgive them. It’s like saying what they did was ok.
In fact, anger can give you a sense of power in a situation where you are otherwise powerless.
The question of forgiveness can haunt us at work and in our personal lives. It’s something almost all of us have had to grapple with in some form or another.
➤ Were you treated unfairly by your boss? Perhaps passed over for a position you deserved or unfairly judged on your performance review?
➤ Were you unfairly accused of something you weren’t responsible for? Perhaps a project went south and fingers pointed at you?
➤ Did a coworker let you down? Perhaps not following through on a commitment that left you in a bad position?
➤ Did someone you loved and trusted lie to you or worse betray your trust?
Anger is a natural reaction. It’s your body’s way of discharging the negative energy. But sometimes we don’t fully discharge and instead continue to harbor the anger, perhaps even fanning the flames.
The problem is you can get trapped by your anger, and eventually it hurts you more than it hurts anyone else.
You cannot reach your full potential if you are partially stuck in the past. Although you might move forward in some areas, a part of you stays stuck in a certain spot, spinning your wheels, going over what happened. And people who devote their energy toward making another person accountable or exacting revenge marry their misery.
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies
Common Misbeliefs that Keep You From Forgiving
“If I forgive, it will mean what they did was ok. They don’t deserve to be forgiven.”
Forgiving does not mean what they did was ok. They are still responsible and accountable for their actions.
There are natural consequences for actions. A leader may forgive an employee who steals but still need to terminate their position. Someone might forgive their spouse for infidelity but still decide they cannot continue to be married.
You’re not letting them off the hook. You’re letting yourself off the hook. When your energy is focused on wanting them to suffer as much as you did, you prolong your own suffering more than theirs.
When forgiveness is present, consequences are driven by logic, not by the need for revenge. And there can be sadness without blame and anger.
“If I forgive, I’ll have to have a relationship with them.”
Actually, you have a stronger relationship when you don’t forgive because you are allowing that person to rent space in your mind. They are part of your thoughts, and it provokes unpleasant feelings. When you forgive, they stop occupying space in your mind, and you have more freedom.
Forgiving does not mean you have to like them. Or feel compassion or anything toward them. Forgiveness is not about how you feel about them. It’s about how you feel about yourself.
Forgiveness allows you to acknowledge what happened, without getting eaten up inside.
Forgiveness allows you to decide whether you want a relationship with that person. You reclaim your power and the choice is yours.
“There must be someone to blame, and it’s not me!”
Blame is one of the biggest roadblocks to forgiveness.
You’re right. You should not be blamed for what happened to you. And if you believe someone needs to be blamed, of course, you would need to blame someone else.
But what if you took a step back and saw more of the complexity of the whole picture. What if you saw a bigger picture where each person was doing the only thing they could at the time? What if no one was to blame? What if it’s just really, really sad?
“If I forgive, I’ll have to forget what happened.”
If someone has been stealing from you, you would be foolish to give them carte blanche to your checking account. If someone has broken your trust, you might want to work with them to rebuild it. But it would be foolish to expect that the problem will not be repeated if you simply forget about it.
When you forgive and see a bigger picture with a more realistic view of the whole situation, you may discover that some of the things you believed are not accurate. And that’s what you may decide to forget. For example, is that person really an evil person?
As you begin to see from a different perspective, space opens up, and you have more choice in where you focus your energy and freedom in how you live your life.
“Forgive and Live” instead of “Forgive and Forget.”
You can’t release your hurt and anger until you experience it.
It can be scary to fully experience the depth of your anger. We believe we will be overcome by it. As a child you might have been told it’s not ok to get angry.
But there’s a big difference between feeling angry and acting out your anger. It’s acting out anger that causes problems. When you allow yourself to feel angry, without acting it out, it flows through you and naturally transforms. Once your anger is released, it might lead you to a deep sadness. But it is in that well of sadness that healing begins to occur.
Wonderfully written. Thank you, Jesse.
Thank you, Larry. So glad it was meaningful for you.
Forgiveness is not a choice. It is a long process of detachment, reprioritization, and eventually reattachment to something or someone else. What you have to work through before forgiveness is even an option is the mechanism of conditioned response. Your mind has been trained to respond to specific stimuli in very specific ways, and yes, aggressive defense is what comes naturally and quickly to many people. Sometimes, we have to go through the process of shutting all emotions down for a while in order to stabilize our minds which may give us the impression that we have become anti-social or even sociopathic. What that is, however, is the Detachment process which, through a lot of careful and personal growth, should eventually allow us to invite a few moments of emotional response as we learn how to use our emotions once again.
It’s your mind’s way of trying to start over.
Hi Adam, I agree that forgiveness is not something that happens through our thinking minds. However, it’s a good place to start as it shows us why it’s a good idea. You have to want to forgive before you can get there. I read your description of the process of forgiveness with interest. Thank you for sharing it.
Hi Jesse,
Thanks for the response. Here’s a couple more thoughts…
Yes, we do have to want to forgive before the process can start. However, anger (and pride) are both defensive responses and hard shells to cover up fear, pain and sorrow. Those mechanisms allow us to put on a temporary power suit of sorts to help cover up for and override feeling powerless. To use a kid-friendly example, think of the Incredible Hulk who goes from being a quiet/passive guy to being huge, loud, green, and full of rage.
In some ways, anger, or any strong overriding emotion for that matter, can almost start to feel like having a split personality. It is the person we become when we don’t think our base personality is strong enough.
I have processed through decades of anger/rage myself, and I have spent more than five years tracking how a lot of this works in my own mind. So, while I agree with some of what you’re saying about forgiveness being necessary, the “mechanics of anger” is something that I don’t see a lot of dialogue about in the mental health industry.
You almost have to create a series of treaties with your own mind/inner self to trade the short term power achieved through reactive response with an understanding of the long time strength achieved through vulnerability and the admission that fear, pain, and sorrow is actually there.
It’s quite complex.
This is a wonderful posting. I usually look to your column for my business advice but today you have given me a life lesson. I do believe that forgiveness is a choice. It is a choice between life and death and I choose life. Thank you, Jesse.
Truly! Forgiveness is an act of choosing life.
So glad you appreciated this article, JoAnn. Although forgiveness has huge implications for our personal lives, I do think it is also an important business issue. We are better leaders when we are fully present, without acting out emotional baggage. Peter Senge calls it “personal mastery.”
Love this topic. Thanks Jesse.
“Forgiveness is letting go of all hopes for a better past”
from a fantastic book on forgiveness.
Gerald Jampolsky – “Forgiveness, the Greatest Healer of All”
Thanks again for all you do !
Al
This! -> “Forgiveness is letting go of all hopes for a better past”
Thanks for adding to the conversation, Al!
I love this dialogue, Jesse. Thank you.
I think it is safe to say that we all experience some loss of trust at some point along the way. Disappointment, hurt, let down and betrayal comes with the territory of being human. Forgiveness is an essential stepping-stone for healing to help us let go and move on. When we hold on to our anger we hold ourselves back from health relationships and life itself. Some of my deepest lessons about life and insights about myself have come through forgiveness. While I would not want to necessarily relive the pain of betrayal, I am grateful for how the lessons learned have strengthen me as a person.
Thanks so much for weighing in, Michelle. I thought of the great work you and Dennis do on “Trust” as I wrote this post.
Your last paragraph is so powerful / so important: “But there’s a big difference between feeling angry and acting out your anger. It’s acting out anger that causes problems. When you allow yourself to feel angry, without acting it out, it flows through you and naturally transforms. Once your anger is released, it might lead you to a deep sadness. But it is in that well of sadness that healing begins to occur.”
Feeling anger and sadness is so very natural – I might suggest necessary – when some type of wrong has been committed. Acting out our anger might seem to address our sadness as well; but it doesn’t!!!
I also agree that there almost certainly were multiple contributors to the situation. Those contributions will never surface if the anger pours out!
Thanks for another great post! What we choose to put ourselves through is amazing…
I used to tell our kids that holding a grudge, being angry about a wrong that someone did continues to upset them – without the other person doing nothing further, maybe even already having moved on!!! Forgive but don’t forget… Do something, maybe try to dialogue, maybe not interacting at all, maybe punching them in the head (fully accepting the consequences of course), … BUT as you write, get them out of your head!!! In many ways, they are controlling you by doing essentially nothing.
What you used to tell your kids about holding a grudge reminds me of the Buddhist story of “The Second Arrow.” The Buddha once asked a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?” The student replied, “It is.”The Buddha then asked, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?” The student replied again, “It is.” The Buddha then explained, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional. Thanks for your insights, John!
I agree Jesse. I have wasted too many hours, days, weeks, months, perhaps years of my life on resentment. That is no way to live. Yes, anger does make you feel powerful, but it is an illusion. Forgiveness is hard, but we must do it in order to move on. I find that often the person who is hardest to forgive is myself. As we learn to forgive others, we must also learn to forgive ourselves. Things happen. Sometimes we don’t make the best choices. Most of the time we are doing the best we can with what we have at the moment. The same is true of others. Their harm done to you may simply have been a by-product of something else and not intentional. Even if it was intentional, there is no need to continue hurting yourself by carrying negative thoughts around with you.
I like the phrase “Forgive and Live.”
Well said, Martin. I appreciate your brining up the issue of self-forgiveness. Self-forgiveness does not mean we condone our actions. When we truly forgive ourselves, not only do we see that we were doing the best we could at the time, but we are also able to more clearly see what happened and to feel deep sadness for the hurt we have caused.
This post and all these comments, especially Martin’s are amazing! Only thing, if you don’t forgive, they don’t “rent space in your mind,” they take up space without even paying rent!
Indeed. And if you don’t forgive, they’ll eventually take permanent possession through squatter’s rights!
There is a saying that inside all of us are two wolves: the bad wolf and the good wolf. The one that grows is the one you feed.
Not forgiving feeds the bad wolf. And I think forgiveness is like grief. There is no timetable for grief. What does happen, in the timetable of the individual, is that grief becomes transformed. Not forgotten, but transformed. So too with forgiveness. Forgiveness transforms the anger. We resolve to move forward, to learn. We then begin feeding the good wolf.
I appreciate your thought about the timetable. It seems to me that we cannot rush the timetable for healing, but we can choose to delay it, which as you say, feeds the bad wolf. Your point about the relationship between grief and forgiveness is spot on. Much thanks for sharing your insights, Eileen!
Jesse – This is such an important post. Thank you for sharing and for emphasizing what forgiveness is and what is it not.
I grew up believing in the concept of forgiveness, fueled by my faith and by the understanding that forgiveness is healthier than allowing the anger and bitterness to destroy your life.
And then I was faced with the most difficult situation of my life, and struggled and struggled and struggled to forgive. (I really tried to, and could not let it go.) When someone pointed me back to a specific story in The Bible and emphasized some things I’d never noticed, I was instantly able to stop focusing on myself and forgive. Instantly I was released from all that anger and bitterness and filled with peace.
It never made what happened ok, and it never meant that I had to trust the people involved again. But the healing was so deep that I am able to see the hurting humans underneath the behavior and pray for their healing as well.
Your personal journey is so inspiring, Chery. As Adam Read pointed out, and as you so clearly demonstrate, deciding you want to forgive is an important step, but you can’t think your way to forgiveness, and you can’t force yourself into forgiveness. We must find a way to open our heart as well. I’d love to know what it was that opened your heart. I’m so glad you were able to find your way to deep healing. It’s a blessing.
Thanks for a very thoughtful artile. Curios, how would you forgive in the following situation?
Boss, a new hire into organization, that you help spent multiple years bringing up-to-speed, showing them ins & outs, understanding politics only to have them turn around belittle you, lie directly to your face, attend meetings behind the back & without telling that you should attend among others. And, now you have taken over their job and they have been moved to another job but you still need to work together.
What specific actions would you take to get yourself past that hurt? To forgive? If you were in my shoes, what would do?
P.S. Awesome awesome point: you don’t forgive because you are allowing that person to rent space in your mind
This is the hardest question – how do you forgive someone who is still hurting you? It’s easier to contemplate forgiveness after the event is over. You are in a really difficult situation. But there are examples of people who have done it, and they became better people as a result – Nelson Mandela forgave his jailers while he was still in imprisoned. Viktor Frankl found a way to forgive while still in a Nazi concentration camp. I believe the only way to do this is to see forgiveness as a way of life, an ongoing practice, not a one-time activity. I’m going to share more of my own thinking on this in my next post. Good luck to you!
“Forgiveness as a way on life, an ongoing practice, and not a one-time activity…”
Good concept, Jesse. Those waters run very deep. It would be interesting to discuss that topic among a wide variety of audiences, as the response to that might vary greatly.
One offshoot of that conversation might be how to gauge whether or not insecurity can play into our minds, insulate us from reality, and cause us to begin assuming that we are the eternal victims when we are the ones who are actually victimizing others.
It’s the other side of the forgiveness equation, I guess, and it gets into a much more complex dynamic.
It is often much easier and convenient for us to assume that others are hurting us because that means they are the ones at fault and not us. Assuming the opposite is not nearly as attractive, as I rarely see articles become popular whose titles are along the lines of “I’m the one hurting others.”
I also recognize and acknowledge the role of faith in many of these posts. Although, the greatest lessons I have learned about the mechanics of forgiveness…and the dynamics of anger…were after I left the church. It is both strange and amazing that people can take away such different lessons from the same religion.
I know many people who have trouble with forgiveness. Some say they can’t forgive, others say they won’t. I don’t understand them, but I forgive them for being stubborn. They are hurting themselves and it shows. On the other hand a girl in a community close to mine was shot by a crazy taxi driver. She has been weeks in the hospital and is not missing a leg. She was on the local news and her words were so bold. She said I want to hate him, but I don’t. And I am working though my feelings so I can forgive him. This proves that we can forgive – but it’s up to us.
Powerful story and example, Jane. Thanks so much for sharing it!
You are a “delicious” soul. Sharing some of your quotes on our Project Forgive facebook page. Adore.. Dr. Shawne ♥
Delighted to hear that. Thank you for your kind words!