The Alternative To Forgiveness

Given that many people find themselves feeling bad about things that have been done to them in the past, and given that one of my missions on the planet is to help people have more influence in how they feel and the life they want to create, I (and others) have spoken and written often about the value of forgiveness.

While I do believe in this concept when it means letting go of grudges, or choosing not to hold on to images of being harmed in the past as a way to stay safe in the future, I have come to the opinion that the word “forgiveness” may be getting in the way of the message. This is easy to understand, because, traditionally, being “forgiven” has meant being given a second chance, or wiping the slate clean where the person being forgiven is no longer held responsible for any harm they may have caused.

The problem with this perspective is that few people are motivated to let those that have harmed them “off the hook,” so to speak, and therefore have defended the value of not forgiving. Or, some form of that which often sounds like, “I will forgive but I won’t forget!”

While this is understandable, it still results in the person who has been harmed holding on to images of what was done to them and how it made them feel, which we now know triggers the same stress-related chemicals that were triggered in the past and compromises our health and happiness.

Several quotes that I have used in the past come to mind that speak to this problem…Holding on to a grudge is like being stung to death by just one bee…Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die… and my favorite, Holding on to anger and resentment is like grasping a hot coal while blaming our misery on the person who started the fire.

What these quotes (as well as the latest brain science) tell is that holding on to negative images of what has happened in the past only serves to compromise our present and future. Therefore, I am going to shift from talking about forgiveness to simply letting go of the past.

The problem is that the part of the brain that remembers being harmed (the limbic system) doesn’t want to forgive, or let go of the past because it is afraid that if we don’t remember the bad things that happened to us, we will let them happen again. Therefore, I suggest we allow the more purposeful part of the brain to take over in situations like these, and begin to focus on what we do want versus what we don’t want.

For example, I’m guessing that most of us want to be more clear, confident, and creative in the future. We want to be able to access our best interpersonal skills and problem-solving skills, and generally become better at creating the life we want. If this is true, then it’s easy to see how holding on to the bad things that have happened to us in the past doesn’t help. It traps us in the lower reactive brain, and, as mentioned, actually has us re-experiencing what we are trying to avoid.

Therefore, I suggest that we not get hung up on whether we want to forgive people or not, and instead focus on making decisions that serve our highest purpose, or the life we want to create. I suggest that we look to the present and the future versus the past, and focus on what we want and who we are rather than wasting our time on things that were said or done in another place and time.

When we are willing to choose this more purposeful focus, we then can go about the process of creating our life from the most purposeful part of the brain. And… isn’t this what we would recommend to those that we love?