Use This Simple Method To Forgive Someone (Even If They Don't Deserve It)
When you refuse to let go, your present emotional state is chained to the past.
KoolShooters from Pexels It doesn't matter whether you need to forgive the world, forgive yourself, or forgive another person — I want to teach you how to practice forgiveness. You don’t have to forgive someone, but you gain tremendous peace of mind if you do.
If you learn how forgiveness works, then you're on the path to forgiving the world, your enemies, and yourself.
People more easily hold grudges than forgive trespasses against them. It's cathartic and feels correct to carry malice towards someone who wronged you. However, the only real way to improve your well-being and find peace is the act of forgiveness.
What is forgiveness? What does forgiveness mean?
In the purest definition, “Forgive” means “to give completely without reservation.”
Most people have misunderstandings and misconceptions about the process of forgiveness. They don't know what forgiveness means.
Forgiveness is not:
- A truce with someone.
- A friendship with the one who wronged you.
- Letting the anger subside.
- Getting even with the person who hurt you.
- Letting go.
- Condoning what someone did.
- Forgetting what someone did.
When we forgive, what exactly are we “giving”?
We're giving up our need for vindication, our desire for retribution, and our thirst for revenge. Any negative feelings we hold towards the past and the people in it let them go. We are, literally and figuratively, wiping our emotional ledgers clean and abandoning the idea that we're owed anything from anyone for the pain we've experienced.
Why is it hard to forgive?
It's hard to forgive because we see life a certain way. We feel like the world needs to be balanced and everything should have an equal and opposite reaction. We feel often feel like we're owed at least an apology when someone wrongs us, but forgiveness does not require an apology.
Apologies don't actually fix the pain the injustice caused.
It doesn’t make sense that an abuser can abuse and not receive a response of equal intensity. We feel like they must suffer, whether at the hands of government or street justice.
The most powerful thing you can do is give up your revenge or reconciliation and attempt to forgive the past. Not only do you have to eat your losses on the emotional balance sheet, but you cannot dwell on them.
5 Steps to Take to Forgive Someone
1. Take nothing personally.
When you think about it, the world is a messed-up place, full of pain and suffering. It’s also a beautiful place, but there are a lot of things that will hurt you. By virtue of existing in it, things will happen to you. Some of them will be awful.
If you can accept that last statement, then you can accept what happens if you follow it to its natural conclusion:
None of the bad things that happen to you are personal attacks. It is simply the cost that we all pay to exist in the world.
Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. We want the universe to behave rationally, but it does not care for balance.
We don't know how the universe works, but we do know how it doesn't work.
We know that the universe does not care about:
- Where you're from.
- What you've done.
- Why you want something.
You can do things to make the desired outcome more likely or decrease the likelihood of an adverse outcome, but there are no guarantees. There is simply life and probability.
Sometimes the coin lands on the wrong side. Sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and the victim of someone expressing their pain in the world. This doesn't make it right, but realizing that you were never a specific target is the first step to forgiveness.
2. Remember that every person is the same.
We all want the same thing. Unfortunately, the offender went after what they were missing–approval, acceptance, love, relief, etc–in a way that caused harm to you and your surroundings.
Remember, forgiveness isn’t a replacement for justice. The perpetrator still must answer for their crimes, but you need a way to cope with the emotional damage you suffered from their actions. No amount of justice or revenge will undo the trauma their actions caused.
However, the next step in forgiving them is realizing that their ugliness is no different than your ugliness.
You and the person you must forgive are operating on the exact same interests, drives, and desires.
I know that it's a stretch to imagine that you have the same desires as a criminal, but humans are — despite the technology, law, and order — just one blown power grid away from returning to our true nature.
For most of human history, we have been savages towards one another. It's only modern convenience that allows us to transcend our base nature. Anyone who's ever been to a dense, inner-city, low-income area can attest to the fact that people are only as evolved as their options.
This makes me think of a lot of the violence I witnessed and suffered growing up.
A lot of those kids only knew one way to relieve their frustration, feel empowered, or earn approval. For whatever reason, I got those feelings from video games and achievement. They got it from getting into trouble trying to impress other hoodlums. However, we had the exact same motivation.
This doesn’t mean I didn’t fight back, but it does make it impossible for me to take it personally and hold a grudge.
It doesn’t change the past. It doesn’t exonerate them. It just gets me to see through the illusion.
The second step for forgiveness is seeing that you and the offender are the same, but they chose a different way to express themselves.
The way you interpret their actions goes back to the first step: None of this is personal. It's just a consequence of living in the world.
3. Release the past.
Forgiveness takes time.
No matter how many times you relive the past, or how bad you feel about it, you can't change it. This is why obsessing over it will destroy you. The past is a thing that is no more real than your imagination, but you let it control you as if it were in the same room.
People resist forgiveness because it asks them to leave the past in the past. This is highly unnatural and counterintuitive, but forgiveness only works if you're to recognize that the past doesn't actually exist.
You hold a grudge because deep down, you believe that somehow your negative emotions will balance the scales if you can only satisfy them. You don't forgive because you've fallen for the illusion that you hold onto your grudge tight enough and long enough, you'll actually undo what happened.
Holding a grudge is like self-gratification for your emotions: It feels good at first, but it's only in your imagination that someone else is getting payback.
The more you do it, the more raw and numb you become. Your emotional impotence leaves you bitter, weak, and completely ineffective. You realize that you're only hurting yourself.
Eventually, you will act in a way towards someone that will force them to forgive you so they can move on. Grudges are the exact opposite of forgiveness and their goals are diametrically opposed.
The hardest thing for you to accept is the most obvious — you can't do anything about what happened.
Your anger will not change what happened. Your tears will not wash away the past.
The desire for revenge binds you to the event. Grudges are shackles to the past. Because you refuse to let go, your present emotional state is held hostage by memories.
4. Let it go.
How do you truly forgive and let go?
Forgiveness asks you to cancel an emotional debt that you are owed.
Whether through vengeance or the passage of time, people only feel like they can let a grievance go after the emotional debt is paid. What forgiveness asks you to do is to wipe the books clean, even when you feel like you deserve closure.
When people talk about receiving closure, they’re really expressing a desire to settle the debt for pennies on the dollar.
They no longer require an eye for an eye. Instead, they’ll settle for a toe or a finger. However, this will never be enough. It will never be enough because no matter what they give you, it can't undo the past and this is what you really want when you seek revenge.
This is why revenge and closure never work. According to Psychological Science, "Behavioral scientists have observed that instead of quenching hostility, revenge can prolong the unpleasantness of the original offense and that merely bringing harm upon an offender is not enough to satisfy a person’s vengeful spirit. They have also found that instead of delivering justice, revenge often creates only a cycle of retaliation, in part because one person’s moral equilibrium rarely aligns with another’s."
Revenge is like junk food for the soul. It tastes great when you eat, but it only deteriorates your mind, body, and emotions.
5. Don't try to get "even."
You can’t balance the scales. Even mortal justice — our best attempt — does a poor job at this.
Balance is impossible. Getting even with someone is impossible. You have to move past the entire concept of justice, revenge, and balance for forgiveness to work.
We have justice to minimize the need for forgiveness. We have forgiveness to minimize the need for justice. Both are equally important, but justice doesn't heal trauma.
I always tell people: I don’t believe in revenge, only discouraging future trespasses. The actions taken to accomplish this may seem like vengeance, but this is another illusion.
Forgiveness is for the self. Justice is for the world.
Execute only forgiveness, and you'll become a weakling. Execute only justice, and you'll become someone to be feared. The goal is to remember that each has its place.
Let justice do what justice does, but do not expect it to fix you. Only you and forgiveness can do that.
Bonus — A Quick Method To Truly Forgive Someone
A quick method for forgiveness:
- Understand what forgiveness is and why it matters. Your emotional, spiritual, and mental health are at stake.
- Practice forgiveness. The more you try to do it, the easier it gets.
- Address your inner pain. You can't forgive unless you admit to yourself that something needs to be forgiven. This means accepting that you've got hurt feelings.
- Develop empathy. When you can see the world through the eyes of others, you realize that we're all the same. This makes it harder to hold a grudge and easier to forgive.
- See the purpose in the pain. If you look at your pain as an opportunity to get better at handling pain, suddenly it becomes a gift.
- Forgive yourself. We're often harder on ourselves than we are on others. This is unfortunate because we spend the most time with ourselves. The better you get at forgiving yourself, the better you'll be at forgiving others.
Forgiveness doesn’t change someone and it doesn’t alter the physical world.
Forgiving someone changes you and your relationship with it. It’s the only way to move beyond the desire for retribution and crushing guilt.
Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that anything in the world or the person has changed. It doesn’t even mean that your perspective of them has changed.
It just means they no longer command real estate in your mind and heart. Only a sucker would forget why a person required forgiveness in the first place.
In this way, it's the only way we can learn from our mistakes.
Ed Latimore is a retired American professional boxer, influencer, and best-selling author. His work focuses on self-improvement and a practical approach to stoic philosophy.