“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”
Nelson Mandela
Amidst all the work we will do to reach our goals and live up to our intentions, there will certainly be setbacks. There will be times when, for days or even weeks, we don’t do the things we said we would do (meditate, exercise, etc.)
That’s okay.
We might start getting hung up on questions like, “Why didn’t I do this YEARS ago?” or “What if I had decided to take that other job….” We might start blaming ourselves for our current situation. While there’s certainly a place for reflecting on our past decisions and mistakes, if it turns into a big old hate-and-blame session with ourselves, there is nothing we will learn from it. We’ll just make ourselves miserable.
All of this brings us to the powerful practice of forgiveness, which many researchers believe to be one of the most important practices we can work on for our mental well-being. We need to be able to forgive others, AND ourselves.
So what exactly is forgiveness? We have a lot of misconceptions about it — for example, that it means being weak, not demanding justice, excusing reprehensible behavior, or letting yourself be treated badly. (It’s not any of those things.)
Forgiveness means giving up resentment. It’s often far less about the person we are forgiving than it is about ourselves. As one of my mindfulness instructors says, forgiveness lets YOU off the hook, not the person who wronged you.
And how do we do that? How do we forgive?
In her book Triumph of the Heart, Megan Feldman Bettencourt’s explores the difficult terrain of forgiveness, looking at parents who have forgiven those who murdered their children, spouses who have forgiven their partner’s infidelity, genocide victims who have participated in restorative justice programs, and siblings who have forgiven the Columbine shooters for taking their family members. If those people can learn to forgive, certainly we can, too.
Researcher Robert Enright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison identifies four steps in the process of forgiveness:
- Uncovering your anger — how do you experience your anger? how is your anger and resentment affecting you?
- Deciding to forgive — is your anger working for you? can you set the intention to forgive?
- Working on forgiveness — can you fully experience the pain this person caused, and develop a level of understanding of the offender?
- Discovery and release from emotional prison — have others suffered as you have? can you find some meaning or purpose in your suffering?
So how do we do that? Here’s one of my favorite lines from Bettencourt’s book: “As I studied forgiveness in practice, it struck me that the daily habits that facilitate forgiveness seem to especially overlap with Buddhist practices.” Well, of course.
Forgiveness is not a one-time thing; it is a habit.
Learning to forgive requires acceptance — acknowledging that what happened happened, “instead of wishing it were different.” We may need to reframe the story that we keep telling ourselves about our pain, but we cannot change the past.
It involves nonjudgment as we agree to let go of poisonous anger and resentment. One of the researchers Bettencourt interviewed described the process of “finding ‘the impersonal in the hurt’ by realizing how many other people have experienced a similar offense or disappointment and how common it is, as well as acknowledging that most offenses are committed without the intention of hurting anyone personally.”
And forgiveness absolutely needs compassion — a fundamental component of forgiveness practices is attempting to understand the offender. This doesn’t mean that you condone their actions, but that you see them as a flawed human being who struggles with the same human condition that you do.
One of the most important points Bettencourt makes in Triumph of the Heart is that, based on research in psychology and anthropology, forgiveness is just as natural a human behavior as vengeance. Given our evolutionary predispositions to both destroy and forgive trespassers, the crucial determinant of which choice we will make is our environment.
Do we live in a community that embraces restorative practices? Have we been taught how to reframe our life narrative and find meaning in the broken places? Do we know that we are hard-wired for compassion and empathy? Have we been taught practices like mindfulness and meditation, that teach us to stay with the unease and to recognize when our thoughts are making us suffer?
There are so many ways we can structure our communities, our schools, and our families so that we encourage cooperation and forgiveness rather than vengeance and resentment. I would agree with Bettencourt that mindfulness is one of the best vehicles to get us there. I loved her description of mindfulness as a practice that,
“allows us to explore and know our own suffering, wandering its halls and running our fingers down its walls, to eventually arrive at the gilded room that is compassion for everyone, including ourselves.”
You can find a helpful guide to forgiveness, of yourself and others, from Jack Kornfield here.
And the wonderful Tara Brach has a guided practice on forgiveness here.
Self-Compassion
Another powerful practice we can engage in when things get hard is self-compassion. One of the most important parts of self-compassion, as studied by Kristin Neff, is self-kindness: when we become aware of our own suffering, our negative self-talk or our “negative” emotions, can we be kind to ourselves? Dig into your self-care toolkit and treat yourself kindly.
The next component of self-compassion is mindfulness (yay): can you hold your experience without judgment? Can you simply stay with the difficult feelings, the frustration, the unmet goal, instead of letting your thoughts run wild? (We’ll learn lots of practices for this in the next component of the course).
And the final component is common humanity: recognize that what you suffer with, many other people suffer with, too. Think of how many other people have missed an important goal, made a mistake, or suffered a setback. Know that you are not alone in experiencing failure or frustration.
Begin Again!
As I’ve said many times in this class, life is a do-over! We can always begin again. Though it’s nice to have a new calendar and a New Year to inspire new beginnings, you can declare it your new year whenever you need to!
We always have chances to begin again. So take a deep breath… the next moment is entirely new, and entirely up to you.