Tagged: “hurtful event”

I hurt someone and now I feel guilty. What are some pointers you can give me to seek forgiveness for what I did?

As you seek forgiveness you can:

• practice humility, that insight that you are not perfect.
• You certainly are deserving of respect because all people are special, unique, and irreplaceable.
• You can apologize and then
• wait patiently for the other to consider forgiving. Just because you are ready to receive the other’s forgiveness does not mean that the other is on the same timeline.
• Change the behavior that led to the difficulty.
• Then go in peace knowing you are doing your best in this.

For additional information, see: Learning to Forgive Others.

Can you show me one culture in which forgiving is expressed differently than in the United States?

Yes. There is a film entitled, Fambul Tok, in which small communities in Sierra Leone, Africa come together around a bonfire at night. The aggrieved person states the injustice and then the offending person emerges to explain the injustice from that vantage point. They express the seeking and the granting of forgiveness. This is done in front of the community. It is important to keep this in mind: This ritual does not change what forgiveness **is.** It changes how forgiveness is **expressed** relative to how we usually go about forgiving in the United States.

Learn more at What is Forgiveness?

I am someone who is part of what they call the “minority” in my country. Quite frankly, I am unhappy with it, with the subtle “put-downs” and the like. People in my country have the expression of, “Fight for justice.” So, then, what place is left for forgiving?

We need to realize that forgiveness and justice are not mutually exclusive. Some people believe that to forgive is to take too soft an approach in striving for justice. In other words, they think that to forgive is to lose what they deserve. Yet, this definitely need not be the case. As people forgive, they can see more clearly through the fog of anger. They can see what is truly fair and then ask for that fairness in a way that is civil. They just might have a better chance of getting fairness than if they let anger dictate how they respond and for what they ask.

For additional information, see Forgiveness Defined.

Are there acts so terrible that you should not, as you say, “give a gift to the other?”

Some people will not forgive certain people for certain acts. Yet, other people will forgive others for the exact same kind of act. Thus, it seems to me that it is not the act itself that is out of bounds to forgiveness. Instead, the one who was injured is not ready to offer forgiveness. We have to be gentle with people under these circumstances. We are not all ready to forgive others at the same point of the injury. We have to be careful not to condemn those who need more time or who are ambivalent about forgiveness in a particular circumstance.

For additional information, see Forgiveness Defined.

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.