Chapter One Renting Too Much Space to Disappointment

Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

— Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning

Thank you for joining me on this journey to well-being through forgiveness. Together we will see how a grievance is formed, how to forgive, and how to create a meaningful story of what happened. Remember that the process I teach has been proven to work in four careful research studies. In those studies people with hurts big and small made positive changes in their physical and emotional health. I have countless testimonials of how forgiveness has changed lives, and I will share with you many of those stories. I am convinced that when you learn these methods and practice what I teach, you too can Forgive for Good. In order to understand the process of forgiveness, it helps to see how a grievance begins. In the early chapters, I will explain how a grievance is formed, examine the parts of a grievance that make your life difficult, and help you test for the signs that a grievance has taken hold. I have seen that when people understand how a grievance is formed they emerge ready to heal. How a Grievance Forms

A grievance emerges when two things coincide. The first is that something happens in our lives that we did not want to happen. Then, second, we deal with this problem by thinking about it too much, or what I call renting too much space in our minds. In this chapter I will explain these two ideas and show you how each occurs.

The difficulty at the core of being hurt is how to remain peaceful when someone hurts or disappoints you.Another way of stating this is to ask, how can we be hurt but not end up with a smoldering grievance? Each of us has at some point in our lives been hurt or mistreated. But some people adapt better than others. Some talk about their wounds for a long time and some let them go. If you are one of those who have not let go of what has hurt you, then this book is for you.

It is not easy to recover a state of peace when we are mistreated. Everyone to a greater or lesser degree struggles when facing injury, abandonment, cheating, or lying. At the heart of the myriad of wounds is the simple fact that a grievance results because some event or thing we really hoped would happen simply did not occur.

While I may sound repetitious, I want to stress the importance of this concept. At the very core of creating a grievance or grudge is that something happened that we did not want to happen. Alternatively, something we really wanted did not happen. In either case, a grievance begins when part of our life turns out radically different from what we expected. Faced with the unexpected, we lacked the skills to manage our feelings. Here are two examples.

Dana is an account executive at a large software company in Silicon Valley. She has worked for this company for almost ten years and has a successful career. Often she stayed late and toiled for long hours, missing precious time with her two children. Recently she was passed over for a promotion. Dana was told her job performance was excellent but that her company had instituted a new policy to hire some executives from the outside. Yet even with this information, she was furious at being passed over and talked about how her continueddedication to work was causing her health to suffer.

When I met her, Dana was bitterly complaining about her bosses, life's unfairness, and the wasted time she had spent at her office. She clearly stated that she was owed this promotion and that it was unfair she did not get it. Dana was now reappraising her ten years with the company and finding slights she had previously ignored. The story she told was of many years of unfairness, not just of a missed promotion. What I saw was a woman who did not get a promotion she felt was owed her and in response created a whopper of a grievance.

Mike works at an Internet start-up company. He works all of the time at a place where everyone else works all of the time. It is common in this work culture for employees to do whatever is needed to make the company successful. Mike was originally hired to help with Web design, and because he enjoyed this work, the seventy-hour weeks did not bother him. However, as the company grew, managers hired more Web designers and found they now needed technical writers. Mike was asked to take this on, and soon his days at work became a drag. While he is good at technical writing, he does not enjoy it. He wanted to be a design person and now complains to everyone that he is wasting his time.

When Mike came to my forgiveness class he was disgruntled and bitter. He had invested a great deal of time and energy in his company and did not feel ready to leave because of the chance he could make a lot of money if the company went public. Mike felt trapped in a job he did not like. He complained that he had been cheated out of the opportunity to do work he enjoyed and was forced to do work he hated.

Both Danaand Mike had to cope with disappointment. Dana did not get promoted, a perfect example of not getting something she wanted. Mike had to do work he disliked, an example of getting something unwanted. The problem is the same either way.

Dana and Mike's stories show how difficult it is to deal with things not working out. However, it is not only at work that we struggle...

Luskin has developed an accessible guide to understanding and overcoming the negative effects of anger, bitterness, and resentment. This book provides both the tools to learn how to forgive and the scientifically-proven research on the ways in which true forgiveness can lead to greater happiness.

Includes bibliographical references.

Based on scientific research, this groundbreaking study from the frontiers of psychology and medicine offers startling new insight into the healing powers and medical benefits of forgiveness. Through vivid examples (including his work with victims from both sides of Northern Ireland’s civil war), Dr. Fred Luskin offers a proven nine-step forgiveness method that makes it possible to move beyond being a victim to a life of improved health and contentment.

Fred Luskin, Ph.D. is the author of Forgive for Good and one of the world's leading researchers and teachers on the subject of forgiveness. He is the director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, a series of research projects that investigate forgiveness methods. He holds an appointment at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation as a senior fellow and is an associate professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He lives in Palo Alto, California.