Just One Thing (JOT) is the free newsletter that
suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more
fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind.
A small thing
repeated each day adds up over time to produce big results.
Just one
thing that could change your life.
(�
Rick Hanson, 2010)
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This newsletter comes from Rick Hanson, Ph.D., neuropsychologist, founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, PsychologyToday.com contributor, and meditation teacher.
See Rick's workshops and lectures for therapists and the general public. | |
My Offerings
� Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom - Written with a neurologist, Richard Mendius, M.D., and with a Foreword by Daniel Siegel, M.D. and a Preface by Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., it's full of effective ways to use your mind to change your brain to benefit your whole being. � Stress-Proof Your Brain -Meditations to rewire neural pathways for stress relief and unconditional happiness. � Meditations to Change Your Brain - Three CDs of powerful guided practices, plus practical suggestions, for personal transformation. � Meditations for Happiness - Downloadable program (3 CDs worth) on gratitude, inner protectors, and coming home to happiness.
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Are you holding onto feeling wronged?
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Why?
Forgiveness is a tricky topic. First, it has two
distinct meanings: � To give up resentment or anger � To pardon an offense; to stop seeking
punishment or recompense Here, I am going to
focus on the first meaning, which is broad enough to include situations where
you have not let someone off the hook morally or legally, but you still want to
come to peace about whatever happened. Finding forgiveness can walk hand in
hand with pursuing justice. Second, there is
sometimes the fear that if you forgive people, that means you approve of their
behavior (like giving them a free pass for wrongdoing). Actually, you can both
view an action as morally reprehensible and no longer be angry at the person
who did it. You could continue to feel sad at the impacts on you and others -
and to take action to make sure it never happens again - but you no longer feel
aggrieved, reproachful, or vengeful. Third, forgiveness
can seem lofty, like it only applies to big things, like crimes or adultery.
But most forgiving is for the small bruises of daily life, when others let you
down, thwart or hassle you, or just rub you the wrong way. Fourth,
paradoxically, in my experience, the person who gains the most from forgiveness
is usually the one who does the forgiving. One reason is that we often forgive
people who never know we've forgiven them; much of the time they never knew we
felt wronged in the first place! Further, consider two situations: in one, someone
has a grudge against you but then forgives you; in the other situation, you
have a grudge against someone but then let it go. Which situation takes more of
a weight off of your heart? Generally it's the second one, since you take your
own heart wherever you go. Fundamentally,
forgiveness frees you from the tangles of anger and retribution, and from
preoccupations with the past or with the running case in your mind about the
person you're mad at. It shifts your sense of self from a passive one in which
bad things happen to you, to one in which you are active in changing your own attitudes: you're a hammer now,
no longer a nail. It widens your view to see the truth of the many, many things
that make people act as they do, placing whatever happened in context, in a
larger whole. And most profoundly,
as you forgive yourself (next week's JOT practice) - which can coincide with serious corrections in your
own thoughts, words, and deeds - your own deep and natural goodness is
increasingly revealed.
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How?
As best you can, take
care of yourself and those you care for. Protect yourself against ongoing
or potential harms. Do what you can to repair the damage done to you. Keep
making your life a good one. Ask for support.
We are intensely, viscerally social animals. It is much easier to forgive your trespassers
after others bear witness to the ways you've been mistreated. (This point also
speaks to the importance of bearing witness to harms done to others, whether it
is the impact of a teenager's coldness on your mate, or the impacts of
religious prejudice on millions of people.) Honor the wound.
Try not to be overwhelmed, but open to the shock, hurt, sense of injustice,
anger, or other aspects of the experience. Allow the thoughts and feelings and
related desires to have breathing room, and to ebb and flow over time with
their own organic rhythms. Forgiveness is not about shutting down your
feelings; opening to the experience in a big space of mindful awareness is an
aid to forgiveness. Check your story.
Watch out for exaggerating how awful, significant, or unforgivable the incident
was. Be careful about assuming intent; with modern life, most of us are pretty
stressed and scatterbrained much of the time; maybe you unfortunately just
bumped into someone else's bad day. Put the event in perspective: was it really
that big a deal, given all the other good things about the person who upset you?
Maybe it was, but maybe it wasn't. Appreciate the
value of forgiveness. Ask yourself: what does my grievance, my resentment,
cost me? Cost others I care about? What would it be like to lay those burdens
down? See the big
picture. Consider the "10,000 causes" upstream from the person who hurt you,
like his or her life and childhood, parents, finances, temperament, health,
mental state just before whatever happened, etc. Try not to take
wounds so personally. There's an old saying: each day wounds, and the last
one kills. We all get wounded. This doesn't mean making yourself a target or
letting wrongdoers off the hook, but it does mean recognizing that the price of
being alive includes some inevitable pain - and the risk of serious injury in
one form or another. It's not personal. It's life. We don't need to feel
offended by it. Help yourself
come to peace. Accept that the past is fixed and will not change; the bad
thing will never not have happened. Disengage your mind from your story,
narrative, "case" about the events. Steer clear of people who fan the flames of
outrage. Focus on the good things in your life, on gratitude. It's bad enough
that people have harmed you; don't add insult to injury by getting caught up
with them inside your own head; for example, they may have gotten away with
some of your money, but don't also give them your mind.
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