- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 1
-
Sparkle (0)
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent
of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned. ” -Buddha
Few people fully realize the huge impact the ability to forgive can
have on their happiness, nor do most people think of this as a skill
that they need to teach and practice with their children. But important
it is: forgiving people tend to be happier, healthier, and more
empathetic (and like the Buddha, more serene, agreeable, and spiritual).
The inability to forgive, on the other hand, tends to make
us into those people—we all know a few—who can’t seem to stop plotting
revenge or ruminating about how they’ve been wronged. Researchers find
unforgiving people tend to be hateful, angry, and hostile—which also
makes them anxious, depressed, and neurotic. So unless we are okay with
our children embodying those qualities, we need to teach them how and
why to forgive others.
Part of going through life with other human beings
means sometimes experiencing hurt and betrayal, injury and loss.
Childhood can be particularly fraught with meanness and bullying.
Children don’t emerge into the world with perfect social competence,
and as we are learning to become kinder and better people, we
inevitably make mistakes. One of the most difficult but important
lessons we can teach our children is that when we hold a grudge—for
something large and seemingly justified, or for something small but
irksome—we continue to injure ourselves.
Preoccupation with a transgression or hostility towards another can
actually make us physically sick. And when we hold onto negative
emotions like anger, bitterness, and hatred, we all but eliminate the
possibility that we will experience a positive emotion in that moment,
because we can’t experience joy when we are expressing resentment, or
gratitude when harboring anger.
How to Forgive
We teach forgiveness when we forgive others ourselves because our
children learn from what we model. We also need to teach our children directly how to forgive. But forgiving other people is challenging. It is not about forgetting, as the adage would have us believe, but about letting go, about choosing positive emotions over negative ones.
Research shows that forgiveness training raises the self-esteem and
hope of people who’ve been hurt and lowers their anxiety. Here are some
exercises adapted from Sonja Lyubormirsky’s book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, to teach kids (and ourselves!) how to forgive
