Author Archive: directorifi
New Book Strives to “Make Forgiveness Easy”
“Forgiveness is like a superpower that hardly anyone ever uses.”
“Forgiveness, once you know how to do it, is transformational. It will bring you a freedom and a peace that will make your whole life feel easier.”
“This book. . . is your opportunity to meet forgiveness afresh and learn how to use it to change your life, and your world, for the better.”
Barbara J. Hunt enthralls her readers with precious nuggets like those in the introduction to her new book Forgiveness Made Easy: The Revolutionary Guide to Moving Beyond Your Past and Truly Letting Go.
Yes, those snippets are all from just the introduction. Wait until you read the gems in Chapter Two – Forgiveness Is For You; or those in Chapter Six – Resentment; or the seven-step forgiveness process she lays out in Chapter Nine – The Forgiveness Made Easy Process; or. . . well, I think you get the idea.
Forgiveness Made Easy is crammed not only with real-life forgiveness guidance but also with real-life accounts of how Hunt has helped real people learn how to forgive and create a new life for themselves. Those stories come from Hunt’s more than 25 years of experience as an international mentor, life coach and facilitator.
“I wrote this book because I see forgiveness as a fundamental life skill that is rarely taught. Or, if it is, not taught at the necessary depth to be effective, let alone transformational,” Hunt explains. “I offer a forgiveness practice that is simple, effective, and easy.”
Hunt closes out the book with an invitation, as well as a challenge: to join her in connecting with the grandest vision for forgiveness–achieving global peace, one heart at a time.
“Forgiveness is the laying down of arms and defences,” she writes. “When you put aside your personal weapons and surrender the shield over your heart, your forgiveness becomes an act of amnesty for humanity. Together, we can be the (r)evolution of peace.”
Purchase the book at: Amazon.com
Read the book’s Table of Contents and Introduction
Learn more at the Forgiveness Made Easy official website
Visit the Barbara J. Hunt website Evolutionary Coaching
This book review was written by Dennis Blang, Director, International Forgiveness Institute.
Can fear be reduced when a person forgives?
Yes, as people forgive, they become less fearful of their own anger. They now know that they have a safety net for reducing that anger if they think about the injustice they have experienced. Yet, not all anger is reduced. As an example, suppose a woman forgives her husband for having an affair. He apologizes, accepts the forgiveness, and yet has another affair. He has broken trust and so her fear that he will continue with affairs likely will occur (if they stay together). The fear can diminish as the husband truly shows remorse, repents, and shows behavior of fidelity. The diminishing of the fear in such a case can take time and is centered on both the forgiving and on a genuine reconciliation in which trust is restored.
Our Theory of Forgiveness
Our Theory of Forgiveness: Excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Forgiving Life (APA Books, 2012)
Our theory starts with the premise that all people need to both give and receive love to be healthy and to have psychologically healthy families and communities. I am not alone in this view when we study the ancient literature, going back to the formation of the Hebrew nation, thousands of years ago, with the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. I am not alone when we turn to modern-day heroes such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, or Mother Teresa. Unconditionally loving others, despite their blemishes and faults, was at the heart of their message.
I am not alone in this view when we consult modern philosophy, in which Gene Outka has shown the centrality of love for morally good human interaction. I am not alone in this view of the primacy of love when we examine the earliest roots of psychology, going back over a century to the pioneering work of the psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, who made the famous statement that each person’s purpose is to work and to love if genuine mental health will result, a theme which continues to resonate with psychoanalysts in the 21st century. Contemporary social scientists such as Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon make the compelling biological case that love is at the central core of who we are as humans.[1] I continue not to be alone in this view when I ask people of good common sense about what is of the utmost importance to them.
All people require love, both the giving and the receiving of love; this is not an option. Robert D. Enright
On this issue, people who use the method of religious faith to understand the world, some people who use the method of deductive logic and philosophical analysis, some people who use the method of psychoanalysis, and some people who use the method of modern biological and social science are in agreement—The essence of our humanity is to love and be loved.
Robert
Please tell me which theory is used for forgiveness?
The first chapter of my book, The Forgiving Life, describes our theory, which is based on Aristotelian philosophy with the end point of human existence being agape or service-to-others love.
Lewis Smedes in his 1984 book, Forgive and Forget, instructed us to “see with new eyes” the one who has offended. I talked with my friends about this idea (of seeing with new eyes) and they thought it was just a game people play on themselves. They say that seeing the offender with new eyes is a way to just let him or her off the hook. Can you offer advice so that I can convince my friends that Smedes’ advice is not just a bad trick we play on ourselves?
You can see the offending person “with new eyes” and still say that what happened was wrong, is wrong, and always will be wrong. In other words, you do not reframe the actual situation, but instead reframe who the offending person is. That person is more than the wrong behavior. If your friends see that the behavior continues to be seen as wrong, then perhaps they will see that “seeing with new eyes” is not a trick centered on the behavior itself.
