An Exercise In Forgiveness—To Help You Let Go Of Anger and Find Peace

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Excerpt: Forgive—even if the relationship isn’t one you want to save. Not so you can let people off the hook, but so you can cultivate inner peace.

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We are at our best when we’re radiating the warmth of love. Not towards one person, per se, but towards all of life.

And warmth, the way I see it, is a composition of patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude.

Which means, a great question to consider as you go about your day and handle tasks, requests, surprises, confrontations, challenges, manipulations, curveballs, frustrations, adversities, irritations, unmet expectations, etc., is:

How can I use this or how can I respond to that in a way where it feeds the fire of my love (aka my patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude)?

Because if you’re unable to find a way to have it do any of those things… then the byproduct will be a more blocked love. It’s a binary path. We’re either feeding the fire of our love or blocking it.

And unless we’re finding ways to constantly feed those inner flames… it will slowly cool, fade, and eventually suffocate. And that’s the last thing we need in this already cold, harsh world.

What we need are more people who have found ways to perform at their best and can serve as brilliant sources of warmth and light—not just for themselves… but for us all.

Below, you will find a powerful exercise in forgiveness shared by Jay Shetty that will help you do exactly that—feed the fire of your love. Which is the real reason for forgiveness. Not so we can let people off the hook for wrongdoing, but so we can let the anger go from inside and expose that cold harshness to some warmth.

…So that we can be at our best for the people who truly deserve it. And the people who don’t, don’t get to cause more harm than they already have.

This is why we forgive.

And this exercise below will help show you the way. I hope it helps. Enjoy.

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Enter Jay Shetty:

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In this exercise we try to untangle the knot of pain and/or anger created by conflict. Even if the relationship is not one you want to salvage or have the option of rebuilding, this exercise will help you let go of anger and find peace.

Before you start, visualize yourself in the other person’s shoes. Acknowledge their pain and understand that it is why they are causing you pain.

Then, write a letter of forgiveness.

1) List all the ways you think the other person did you wrong. Forgiving another person honestly and specifically goes a long way toward healing the relationship. Start each item with “I forgive you for…” Keep going until you get everything out.

We’re not sending this letter, so you can repeat yourself if the same thing keeps coming to mind. Write everything you wanted to say but never had a chance. You don’t have to feel forgiveness. Yet. When you write it down, what you’re doing is beginning to understand the pain more specifically so that you can slowly let it go.

2) Acknowledge your own shortcomings. What was your role, if any, in the situation or conflict? List the ways you feel you did wrong, starting each with the phrase “Please forgive me for…”

Remember you can’t undo the past, but taking responsibility for your role will help you understand and let go of your anger toward yourself and the other person.

3) When you are done with this letter, record yourself reading it. (Most phones can do this.) Play it back, putting yourself in the position of the objective observer.

Remember that the pain inflicted on you isn’t yours. It’s the other person’s pain. As Wayne Dyer once wrote, when you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. When you squeeze someone full of pain, pain comes out.

Instead of absorbing it or giving it back, if you forgive, you help diffuse the pain.

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If you enjoyed this excerpt from Think Like A Monk, you should read Jay Shetty’s book in full. It comes highly recommended: