New Study Results: People Who are More Forgiving Sleep Better–and Have Better Health
Researchers from universities in Iowa, Michigan, and Massachusetts have discovered that you will sleep better (and feel better) if you just “let it rest” by learning to forgive.
As part of a national survey, those researchers asked 1,423 American adults to rate themselves on how likely they were to forgive themselves for the things they did wrong and forgive others for hurting them. The participants also answered survey questions about how they had slept in the past 30 days, how they would rate their health at the moment, and how satisfied they were with their life.
The results demonstrated that people who were more forgiving were more likely to sleep better and for longer, and in turn have better physical health. They were also more satisfied with life. This was true of people who were more forgiving of others, and people who were more forgiving of themselves—although forgiving others had a stronger relationship with better sleep.
Forgiveness of self and others “may help individuals leave the past day’s regrets and offenses in the past and offer an important buffer between the events of the waking day and the onset and maintenance of sound sleep,” wrote the researchers, led by professor Loren Toussaint at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Otherwise, as many troubled sleepers have experienced, we might have too much on our minds to get any rest.⊗
The Sleep Study was supported in part by the Fetzer Institute as part of the John Templeton Foundation’s campaign for forgiveness research, by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, and by a Faculty Research Grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan.
