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Explore a gentle practice for releasing resentment and finding freedom through forgiveness.
How To Do This Practice:
- Prepare Your Space and Body: Find a quiet, safe place to sit and take slow, grounding breaths. Notice any tension in your body and gently release it with each exhale.
- Identify Who You’re Ready to Forgive: Bring to mind two or three people who have hurt you, and start with the one whose actions feel least painful. Reflect on how this hurt still affects your emotions and body.
- Acknowledge the Hurt: Recognize what happened and how it impacted your life, trust, or well-being. Allow yourself to feel the pain without judgment.
- Seek to Understand (Without Excusing): Consider what struggles or past hurts might have influenced the other person’s behavior. This step is about seeing their humanity, not condoning their actions.
- Make the Choice to Forgive: When you feel ready, make an inner decision to release resentment and let go of the burden it carries. Offer kindness, respect, or simply your intention to move forward.
- Reflect and Offer Yourself Compassion: Notice any small sense of softening or relief, and honor where you are in the process. End by thanking yourself for taking a step toward healing.
Today’s Happiness Break Guide:
DACHER KELTNER is the host of The Science of Happiness podcast and is a co-instructor of the Greater Good Science Center’s popular online course of the same name. He’s also a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Related Happiness Break episodes:
A Science-Backed Path to Self-Forgiveness:
A Note to Self on Forgiveness:
Make Uncertainty Part of the Process:
Related Science of Happiness episodes:
Nine Steps to Forgiveness:
The Science of Letting Go:
The Contagious Power of Compassion:
This episode was supported by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation as part of a Greater Good Science Center project on “Putting the Science of Forgiveness into Practice.”
We’d love to hear about your experience with this practice! Share your thoughts at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
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Transcription:
DACHER KELTNER: This episode is part of “Putting the Science of Forgiveness into Practice,” a project by Greater Good Science Center that’s supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
I’m Dacher Keltner, welcome to Happiness Break, where we share practices to help support you in your life, whether that’s a gratitude exercise or a reflection on our interconnection with nature.
We’ve all experienced hurt and betrayal. And we know how that pain can linger.
We also know that forgiveness can help us let go of the pain that keeps coming back when we remember those moments.
Forgiving activates parts of the brain that help us be more resilient, feel closer to others, and move through pain with more energy, openness, and connection.
Getting there is rarely quick or easy, but we do know there are steps to help to make the process of forgiveness more approachable.
The steps we’re exploring today were developed by Dr. Robert Enright, a leading researcher on forgiveness.
Before we begin, remember this journey looks different for everyone and if you’re working through trauma, it may be best to do this with the support of a trained clinician.
And remember, forgiveness — according to research — doesn’t mean excusing what someone did, forgetting about it, or ignoring justice. Forgiveness also isn’t the same as reconciliation. Reconciliation means rebuilding mutual trust, and you might choose not to do that with the person you’re forgiving.
When you’re ready, find a comfortable and safe space to sit.
Notice your body and any tension you may be holding there. Without trying to change anything, gently breathe into the spaces.
Now let’s a take a few breaths together. We’ll take a gentle breath in through our nose, and even more gentle exhale, twice as long, through our mouth.
When you’re ready, make a mental list of people who have hurt you deeply enough to warrant the effort to forgive. It doesn’t have to be a long list. Maybe 2 or 3 people in your mind.
Now, order the people on this mental list from least painful to most painful…
Think about one thing the first person on your list did—the one that hurts the least.
You can ask yourself, “How much pain am I still carrying from the way this person treated me?”
“How does remembering this affect my mood?”
“How does it feel in my body?”
Reflect on the harm it may have caused you, and how your views of humanity and trust of others may have changed as a result of this offense.
Recognize that what happened was not okay, and allow yourself to feel any negative emotions that come up.
Take another breath in through your nose, and slowly out your mouth.
Ask yourself: What past hurts might they have carried that could have shaped the way they treated you?
What struggles may they have faced?
These questions aren’t about excusing or condoning their actions. They’re meant to see the person as human, with vulnerabilities. Now take another breath in through your nose, and twice as long gently out your mouth. Know that you are safe now, and nobody is harming you.
When you’re ready, make a decision to forgive, to extend compassion toward the person who hurt you.
In doing so, you’re reducing your own resentment toward this person. Taking that weight off of yourself.
You can offer them kindness, respect, generosity, or even love. Whatever feels right to you.
Breathing it in, and out. Check in with your body again.
Notice if your heart softens, even just a little, and you start to feel a hint of compassion for the person who hurt you.
Maybe you start to feel softer emotions toward them. Maybe not. That’s ok too.
Once you’ve gone through the forgiveness process with one person, and if it feels right, move on to the next person on your list. Keep going, step by step, until you reach the person who has hurt you the most.
Listen to your own intuition of where you are at in the process. Always prioritize your feelings, your emotional safety no matter what. If forgiving this person is too painful or traumatizing right now, that’s ok, honor that.
Even reflecting on forgiveness can be helpful.
Now take a moment to offer yourself gratitude and compassion for what you did today.
Thank you.
