Time Required
5 minutes for writing about the offense and doing the visualization.
How to Do It
Bring to mind a situation when you hurt, offended, wronged, or mistreated someone—but that you were not able to resolve, fix, or work out at the time. Spend a few minutes writing about what you did and what happened.
For the next two minutes, consider what it would feel like to accept responsibility and regret for your role in committing the offense. Imagine that you felt so humbled and repentant that you wanted to be forgiven, confessed, repented, and committed to do what is right. Imagine that as you look at your own actions of causing hurt and humbly repenting, you embrace mercy and forgiveness for yourself. Imagine that you embrace this kindness and compassion for yourself as you commit to do what you believe is right. During your imagery, actively focus on the thoughts, feelings, and physical responses you have as you think about fully embracing forgiveness of yourself.
Why You Should Try It
As we move through life interacting with other people, we are bound to do things that hurt others. But we don’t always take the time to acknowledge these mistakes or let them go. We might hang on to excessive amounts of self-criticism and guilt.
We can deal with these experiences by seeking forgiveness from the person we hurt, but sometimes that’s not possible. Perhaps they have passed away or we no longer have a relationship with them, or they simply refuse to forgive us. In those cases, we won’t receive forgiveness from outside—but we can still forgive ourselves.
Imagining self-forgiveness affects our bodies, helping reduce our heart rate and reduce sympathetic nervous system activity (related to stress) compared to ruminating about what we did. It can also ease our anger, anxiety, sadness, and guilt.
Why It Works
Visualization is powerful. The activity in our brains is similar whether an event actually happens or we simply imagine it happening. It can evoke emotions, change our physiology, and affect our behavior and feelings in the future.
In particular, this visualization isn’t just about letting go of negative emotions. Research suggests that taking responsibility and making repairs or changing our behavior can help us forgive ourselves. This visualization incorporates these different components of self-forgiveness so we can truly move past what happened and let it go.
Evidence That It Works
Da Silva, S. P., Witvliet, C. V. O., & Riek, B. (2017). Self-forgiveness and forgiveness-seeking in response to rumination: Cardiac and emotional responses of transgressors. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(4), 362–372.
Participants wrote about a time they hurt someone, and then spent two minutes either ruminating about it or imagining they asked for forgiveness and were begrudged, asked for forgiveness and were forgiven, or forgave themselves. People who imagined being forgiven or forgiving themselves had lower heart rates, higher respiratory sinus arrhythmia (a sign of health), and reduced anger, anxiety, sadness, and guilt compared to people who ruminated.
Sources
When someone hurts you, are you more likely to turn the other cheek—or seek revenge? Take our quiz to find out.
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The Greater Good Toolkit
Made in collaboration with Holstee, this tookit includes 30 science-based practices for a meaningful life.
The Greater Good Toolkit
Made in collaboration with Holstee, this tookit includes 30 science-based practices for a meaningful life.