In our last post, we discussed some concepts from Frederic Luskin, Ph.D. and his writings about forgiveness. We told the story of our CEO being cut off in traffic and becoming frustrated with the offender, but working through the four stages of forgiveness, and learning to acknowledge that courteous driving is an internal rule that he, nor any of us, can enforce.

To follow up on those stages, here are a few key statements Luskin also makes in his books and website:

• “I don’t want to waste my precious life in the discomfort caused by anger so I will choose to feel differently.”
• “I know how it hurts when people don’t forgive me.  I do not want to hurt other people by my anger so I will let it go.”
• “Life is filled with incredible beauty and I am missing some if I am experiencing anger.  I forgive myself for getting sidetracked.”
• “People do the best they can and if they err I can best help them by offering understanding.  The first step in this process is to forgive the specific offense.” This is reminiscent of one of MAX values: “We believe the best about people first.  We trust people and believe everyone is doing the very best they can.”

 And finally, here is an especially powerful closing paragraph from Luskin:

“These four stages of forgiveness will not be followed in the same way by all people and in all relationships. There are some people for whom we feel such love that we are almost always at stage four: open-hearted and ready to forgive. There are other people for whom we feel so egregiously hurt and our well of good will for them is so dry that we can spend years at stage one. What is critical to remember is the power of personal choice and the importance of exercising that choice to forgive so that we can bring peace and healing into our relationships and ourselves.”