S3E38 Researching Forgiveness: The Science of Letting Go

Friend,

What if forgiveness has less to do with excusing what happened to us and more to do with how we carry what happened?

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Frederic Luskin, director and cofounder of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects. For more than 30 years, Dr. Luskin has studied forgiveness and its impact on our health, relationships, emotional well-being, and spiritual lives.

In our conversation, we explore some challenging questions about forgiveness. What happens when we take what other people do personally? Is everything that happens to us actually about us? And what changes when we stop allowing someone else’s actions to have so much power over our lives?

Although I approach forgiveness from a Catholic perspective, forgiveness is not limited to people who are religious. You don’t have to share a particular faith, or have a religious belief at all, to wrestle with resentment, hurt, anger, or the need to forgive.

At the same time, Dr. Luskin and I discovered meaningful common ground around spirituality and the role it can play in forgiveness. We talk about the connection between forgiveness and the spiritual life, and why forgiveness may be more than simply a psychological exercise.

Whether you’re carrying a grudge, struggling to make sense of something that happened to you, or wondering what forgiveness could look like in your own life, this conversation offers a different way of thinking about what it means to let go.

Dr Luskin’s Links:

Website: fredluskin.com

Books:

Forgive for Good: https://a.co/d/056u7uS6

Forgive for Love: https://a.co/d/052zPgnn