Forgiveness: The forgotten secret to happiness

When we think about how to achieve happiness, it’s easy to think about how we can increase the positive things in life. But learning to achieve true happiness also means letting go of the bad things. (I talk about to some degree in the blog posts What’s holding you back from success? and How to use Stress Signals to reduce stress).

Happiness can only be truly achieved in our lives if we learn to forgive others. However, forgiveness isn’t popular in our world. We want justice and retribution and revenge and restitution. We want people to get what they deserve. We want the wrongs in the world to be righted. That’s human nature to feel that way… and there ARE times when those responses are appropriate.

However, harboring anger/hatred/bitterness toward someone else in your life isn’t healthy. It’s like poison. It feels good at first to nurse that inner rage — perhaps waiting for the day when you can return upon the person the same problems they caused you. But that rarely happens (and when it does happen, it’s not the cathartic experience we were hoping for).

The better response is to forgive. Unfortunately, it’s hard to forgive. It’s not what our human nature wants.

But it is SO freeing.

If you want to be happy, here’s a happiness challenge for you:
Get a piece of paper and a pen and go somewhere private where you can be quiet and alone. A park is nice, if it’s quiet. Plan to spend a couple of hours there.

Spend some time — like a good 20 or 30 minutes — just assessing your life. Think about your past experiences — the good and the bad — and what you want to do with your life.

Next, direct your thoughts to the past. Think about all the people who have done you wrong. Some of those will be easy to think of. Write down those names. Keep pressing back in your mind, thinking of all the people in your life who have done something against you. Push. Push hard. Dredge up your memories. Go as far back as you can remember. Open the old dusty closets of your mind. Look for the big, obvious stuff — abuse, insults, bullying — and keep pushing into the smaller stuff. Write down even those who may have said something hurtful but didn’t mean it to be.

Keep at it. Spend a long time on this. An hour (or longer if possible). Write down every name you can think of… or something to identify them (when I did this, one of the unnamed people I wrote down was: “The guy who robbed me at gunpoint.”). Two things will happen:

• You may, at some point, become emotional. You might cry, you might not. I just felt empty. That’s a good sign.
• Around that time, you will probably run out of names.

Keep quiet for a few minutes longer, just in case other names come to mind.

Then (and this is the hardest part), go through the list and forgive each person for the specific thing they did to you. If possible, do so out loud. (If you can’t do it out loud because someone is listening then say the words in your head).

For example, “I forgive John Smith for insulting me at work the other day and making me question how good I am at my job.” or “I forgive the guy who robbed me at gunpoint for making me fearful and taking away a sense of control over my own destiny.”

Once you’ve gone through each person, destroy the list. Tear it up and throw it in the trash. Or, better yet, burn it. Let it go. As you get rid of the paper, think of all of those negative feelings and poisonous thoughts leaving with that discarded/destroyed paper.

Lastly, make sure you guard against any returning feelings that you might about that person. Watch out for them and push them back down when they appear. Say to yourself, “no, I’ve forgiven that person. I’ve freed myself from feeling these poisonous feelings.”

Happiness is achievable but the only way we’ll achieve the truest, fullest happiness is by practicing the forgotten art of forgiving others.

Posted on February 16, 2012