Forgiving: Resources To Help

Stuck in the past? Time to forgive.Since the publication of my new book, The Forgive Process, I have had lots of conversations over the topic.  Enough to know that it is an incredibly important topic… and a thoroughly misunderstood topic.  Myths abound.  And many people just don’t know how to do it… even if they wanted to!

I knew that when I wrote the book.  But I have become even more clear about it over the past month.  People see the book and have a question.  Which generally leads to a conversation about wanting or not wanting to forgive.  Those who want to just don’t know how.  And those who don’t want to often misunderstand what forgiving is about.

So, I wanted to provide some resources to help clarify and even start the process.  Each link below will take you to a special training to help you make a shift toward forgiving.

FORGIVE RESOURCES:
Misunderstanding Forgiveness
Why Even Forgive?
Find Freedom From Forgiving
How To Forgive
The Forgive Process Book

What Thriving People Know About Forgiving and Moving On

Forgive and Move OnForgiveness is such a loaded term in our culture.  You are told by some to forgive, as if it is a burden that must be done.

Others tell you not to forgive, but to hold on to the hurt — so the other person is held responsible, I suppose.

Forgiveness, to me, is an opportunity.  Not an obligation or burden.  But an opportunity to step into a new future without the binding of old pains.

The cultural baggage around forgiveness has created some “myths” about forgiveness.  We misunderstand what forgiving is about, what it means, and how to do it.

Over the years, though, I have realized that people who thrive in life have mastered the skills of forgiving.  They do not see it as obligation, but simple opportunity.  It does cause us to look closely at ourselves and re-take control (and responsibility) for life.  That is a thriving opportunity.

Listen in to discover what forgiving is really about — and how to do it (6 simple steps).

Anatomy Of An Apology: #13 ThriveNation

ThriveologyApologyHave you ever apologized, only to have it backfire on you, the other person even more angry than before?  Have you ever had someone apologize to you, but for some reason, it left you feeling more frustrated?

I’ve been there — on both sides!  And after watching countless apologies in therapy sessions (some good and some more like a politician’s “apology”), I noted some “rules” to apologies that work.  An apology that works is one that a) takes responsibility for actions, and b) leads to reconciliation.

Would you like to know the 4 rules to an effective apology?  I cover it in this week’s Thriveology Podcast, the podcast for thrivers.

Take a listen and let me know in the comments area below, what rules did I miss?

Why Is It So Hard To Forgive? And How To Do It: Episode 11, Thriveology Podcast

How to forgiveMany of us agree:  forgiveness is a good thing.

Then why do we find it so hard to forgive?  I believe it is because the reasons to forgive (or not forgive) tend to flip in our minds, even when we know better.

There are two very clear and different paradigms for what forgiveness is, and even what is forgivable.  One paradigm keeps us stuck.  The other frees us.

Which paradigm do YOU carry around?

And if you choose to forgive, how do you do it?

In this week’s podcast, I tackle forgiveness and offer a structure on how to forgive.  I also take on some “myths” of forgiveness.

Take a listen and tell me what you think!

The Rules: A Starting Point

OK, so let’s set some parameters for these 99 rules of thriving.  You see, these rules are not pulled out of thin air.  They come from my frame for what I understand are the elements of a thriving life.

As I have studied this, four areas of concern emerge in the pursuit of a thriving life.  Each area is important, but it is the presence of all four that really put the whole thriving life into motion.  Here are the four areas:

thriving life graphic

thriving life graphic

So here is a brief overview, and we will begin to enlarge as we move through the rules:

Thoughts and Mind: This broad category basically means that a thriving person understands the role that thoughts play in creating our reality, weaving our paradigm.  In fact, I maintain that the majority of people misuse a major resource in life:  their mind.

I believe that we have come to have very poor mind hygeine.  We let our thoughts rule us, not us ruling our thoughts.  We fail to notice that we are just thinking, and instead believe that our thoughts are reality.

Let’s face it:  our mind was designed to think, to create thoughts.  But it is up to us to decide on whether this will be a productive or destructive process.

Letting Go and Moving On: Our capacity to let go of something that is on our mind, has happened to us, or has not happened to us, is in direct ratio to our capacity to thrive.  I would use the term “forgiveness,” but there is a great deal of extra baggage attached to that term.  So I will say that forgiveness is a subcategory of this.

And in order to thrive, we must be able to take the next step past letting go of something; we must move on.  People who thrive have discovered how to keep moving forward, regardless of the circumstances around them.

Gratitude and Appreciation: A hallmark of thrivers is the ability to experience gratitude.  No, let me change that:  to choose gratitude.  Not only do they live in gratitude, they live in appreciation, the application of seeking out gratitude.

This is a choice in the stories we tell.  Am I upset that I don’t have a big bank account, or am I grateful I have been able to pay what is necessary to keep going, for instance.  This is partly about optimism, but is slightly different.  Optimism is about how things will be in the future.  Gratitude is choosing to be grateful for what already is.

Gratitude and appreciation helps to shift us out of the scarcity “what I don’t have” model to abundance.  This keeps us from feeling desperate, which then leads to creative responses.

Meaning and Purpose: This is the final element of my model.  It is the most important, and yet the most difficult to master.  It is not the question “what is the meaning of life?”  Instead it is the question of “what is meaningful to me?”  Having a sense of meaning keeps us moving ahead, regardless of what is going on around us.  Purpose is the way we live out that meaning.

When we have discovered our sense of meaning and how we find it, our purpose, then life becomes a joy to live.  Too often, we pursue happiness, forgetting that this grows out of a meaningful life, lived with purpose.

Misunderstanding Forgiveness

A recent AP Story:

Families can’t forgive Nebraska mall shooter

Nebraska Mall Shooting

Nebraska Mall Shooting

OMAHA, Neb. – Christmas decorations are in place and holiday music fills
the atrium, yet a gloom punctuates the shopping season at the Westroads
Mall.

Employees, their families and friends planned to gather Friday at the steps
of the Von Maur department store in remembrance of the eight people killed
a year ago in the deadliest mall shooting in U.S. history.

“I carry the visible signs of Dec. 5,” said 62-year-old Fred Wilson, who
nearly died that day. “Other employees saw things I didn’t. They may carry
their wounds on the inside.”

Wilson went back to work part-time at the mall after Memorial Day. He says
there was never any question in his mind that he should be there.

He can no longer wrap gifts at work – his right arm is still in a sling,
and he can barely move his fingers.

“I came to a degree of forgiveness … when I was in the hospital,” Wilson
said. He tries to help others learn how to forgive, speaking at churches
and schools and seminars.

“I was blessed to have lived,” he said. For those whose loved ones did not,
he understands it’s a different story.

Nineteen-year-old Robert Hawkins gunned down eight people on Dec. 5, 2007,
before turning the gun on himself.

Hawkins entered the Von Maur department store in west Omaha and briefly
looked around before exiting. He returned a few minutes later with an
assault-style rifle hidden under his sweatshirt.

He took an elevator to the third floor and opened fire.

Police found no connection between Hawkins and his targets, only a suicide
note that said he wanted “to take a few peices (sic) of (expletive) with
me.”

The upscale department store, decked with Christmas decorations, lost six
employees that day. Two customers also were killed.

Ron Jorgensen lost his wife of “50 years and three months.” Her voice
remains on his telephone answering machine. The American flag continues to
wave at half-staff in his front yard.

“I’ve lost everything,” he said. “I will never forgive Robbie Hawkins or
his parents.”

Greg O’Neil prefers not to even speak Hawkins’ name.

“I don’t know when, or if ever I’ll ever be able to forgive him,” he said.
“I can’t even put those words into a sentence including that person.”

O’Neil worked at Von Maur as a loss-prevention manager for nearly five
years before finding a new job in 2006, so he knew most of the people
killed or injured. He left his job so he could date employee Angie Schuster
without violating company rules. They later got engaged.

“Just remembering her smile. Oh, her smile,” he said. Her belongings still
fill his home. He visits her grave every couple of weeks.

On Friday, Von Maur employees have the option of taking the day off, said
company president Jim von Maur.

“We don’t want to put pressure on those employees who don’t feel they can
do it,” he said.

In Moline, Ill., the family of the youngest victim planned to gather to
remember the good times they had with Maggie Webb, who also worked at the
store.

“We’re going to encourage friends and family to light a candle,” said
Webb’s sister, Bre Clark. “And we’re going to light a bonfire and shine a
light to her in heaven.”

But forgiveness isn’t likely to be mentioned. Clark doesn’t believe she
could offer that to Hawkins.

“I honestly believe forgiveness is something that the killer needs to ask
for from the Lord and not from me,” she said.

Hawkins was well-known in the state’s juvenile courts and social services
agencies. A habitual drug user and troublemaker, he was in and out of
foster homes.

During his time as a state ward, he was diagnosed with depression,
attention deficit disorder, impulsiveness and a malady characterized by
hostility toward authority figures. He was convicted of third-degree
assault and attempting to sell drugs at school.

Hawkins spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and
foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002. Before the
shooting, he had broken up with a girlfriend and lost his job at a
McDonald’s.

A year after Hawkins’ deadly rampage, Von Maur employees try to busy
themselves with the holiday shopping season. Security guards stand on the
balconies. A plaque at the bottom of the escalator memorializes the victims.

By ANNA JO BRATTON and JOSH FUNK     Associated Press Writers

First, let me say that my topic today will upset some folks.  But I will be upsetting most of them out of a misunderstanding of my thrust.  Let me say that I feel great compassion for people who have suffered tragedies.  In fact, I feel so much compassion that it pains me on how much hurt is added to ourselves.

I am not “picking” on the folks involved, and certainly not wanting to make an example out of the victims.  Because the truth is, what I am addressing is so widespread that I would say it is a rampant belief.

Here is the belief:  “I can’t/won’t forgive ______ (fill in the blank) because,” then pick your reason:

  • They don’t deserve it.
  • That lets them off the hook.
  • Then I have to forget it.
  • Life isn’t fair.
  • I want justice.
  • etc., etc., etc.

Let me point out what is behind the belief:  somehow, forgiveness is FOR the other person.

And that is the problem, the fallacy of this.  After helping people to move toward forgiveness, thinking about the topic, teaching on the topic, and trying to apply this to my own life, I have realized their are two paradigms of forgiveness.

  1. I forgive for the other person.
  2. I forgive for myself.

Many of us keep getting caught in paradigm #1.  So let’s explore that for a moment.  This assumption is really built on several factors.

The first factor is biological.  Your brain is designed to keep you alive.  It holds onto threats, locks them in, and is unhappy about letting them go.  So, our biological design is to keep a filing cabinet full of potential and past threats.  But when our thoughts, our mind, grab hold of those threats, we shift them to resentments.  We store them as memories to play over and over in our minds, with a commentary about how we were hurt.

It is one thing to have a brain watching for threats and a mind constantly playing through our hurts.  One is protective.  The other weighs us down.  The first keeps us safe, the second keeps us captive.

Then we have all the religious and cultural messages about how we “have to forgive.”  In other words, our culture betrays us and tells us we have to forgive the other person for that other person.  It misses the true message of forgiveness.  Too bad.

You see, in this case, the truth is behind door #2.  We forgive for ourselves.  We choose to forgive so that we can move forward.

I am reminded here of one of Buddhism’s understandings:  every life has joys and every life has pains.  They are inevitable.  Suffering is optional.  Suffering is becoming attached to the pains.

That is what NOT forgiving is about.  When we refuse to forgive (it is a choice, whether we recognize that or not), we are attaching ourselves to our pain.  We end up suffering.

Forgiveness is about refusing to be held captive from what has happened.  It is choosing to move forward, to take back our lives from tragedy.  It is refusing to lose ourselves to what has happened.  It is about choosing the life we want to live.

In this context, there is nothing that is unforgivable, because it is no longer about holding the other accountable (in this case, a dead man), but in choosing to move forward.

The whole notion of something as unforgivable is caught in the paradigm that forgiveness is for the other person.  That traps us.  And generally, it has no effect on the other person.

Let me be clear:  people have to work through their grief at their own pace.  At some point, for there to be real healing, forgiveness must be part of the process.  And anytime we slow that process down because we have convinced ourselves that forgiveness is for the other person, we have merely increased our pain.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.—Unknown

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.–George Herbert

Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.—Unknown