Page 6 - Priorities #30 2005-April

Community Forum Give Up Your
increases hopefulness, decreases anger, increases emotional self-confidence and helps heal relationships, the studies show. These positive improvements lead to fewer health problems and improved quality of life. Additionally, forgiving can help limit the degree to which anyone gets emotionally hurt in the future, he claims.
Dr. Luskin is an expert on health and happiness. He was the director and co-founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, the largest interpersonal forgiveness training research project ever conducted. He is currently a senior fellow at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation and co-director of Stanford- Northern Ireland HOPE Project, which researches the impact of forgiveness training on victims of political violence. He is author of Forgive for Good and numerous articles. His most recent book Stress Free for Good, just came on the market.
Forgive for Good urges us to land our grievance planes and provides a clear plan for how to get closer to this goal. It is crucial to understand that forgiveness is neither a weakness nor a defeat. Quite conversely, by forgiving those who have hurt us, we free ourselves from the role of a victim. We learn how to stop those people or events that have hurt us from continuing to affect our lives negatively. Moreover, forgiveness does not necessarily require reconciliation or condoning the actions that hurt you. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else.
So, what exactly is forgiveness then? Dr. Luskin defines it as the “peace and understanding that come from blaming less that which has hurt you taking
the life experience personally, and changing your grievance story.” Forgiveness training helps people
to stop getting upset about unenforceable rules, to
stop blaming others for feeling unhappy (and thus continuing to feel so), and to consciously look at positive things in their lives. Even though it sounds like a very difficult task, forgiveness training works and it has been successful even in situations as difficult and
Grudge—You’ll Feel Better!
Stanford’s Dr. Fred Luskin has the research to prove it. And he will show you how it’s done.
By Zuzka Fedorkova Priory Class of 2000
“Remember that a life well lived is In the past few years the media have been flooded your best revenge.” with publications and programs that deal with stress.
Research shows that stress is unhealthy both physically – Dr. Fred Luskin and emotionally. The majority of us would probably
describe our lives as often stressful, but we don’t really know if we want to change or how to do it.
What could forgiveness possibly have to
do with it? Fred Luskin, a leading authority on forgiveness and emotional competence, who recently spoke at the Priory, addresses these issues in his Stanford-based research. Stress can come from many sources, not just from simply “having too much work.” It also can be caused by unhealthy relationships, unresolved emotional problems, or continuing grievances,hesays. Recentstudiesshowthatfailure to forgive may be a factor in heart disease as well as higher blood pressure and weaker immunity. And we haven’t even started on what it does to quality of life!
Imagine all your unresolved grievances as planes circling on a busy screen of an air traffic controller, Dr. Luskin says. While most planes land and disappear from the radar screen, the unresolved ones continue circling, taking up precious space. In his book, Forgive for Good, Dr. Luskin argues that “the grievance planes” become sources of stress, often negatively affecting health. Forgiveness training reduces depression,
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