Skip to main content

Forgive for Good - A Book Review

 

Forgive for Good

A Proven Prescription

for Health and Happiness     

By

 Fred Luskin

Reviewed by

Geoffrey W. Sutton

 


In Forgive for Good, Luskin invites us to forgive for our own benefit. His well-written book reads like a story—indeed, he has many stories to tell as he reveals each of the three-part scientific-how-to drama.

In part one, we learn about grievances. We create grievances when we review the times we have been mistreated. Luskin calls this replaying of hurts “renting space in our minds.” We tend to focus on blame rather than recovery. And we focus a lot on the pain we have experienced.  Another problem we may have is creating rules or expectations that are unenforceable yet, despite our lack of power to force someone to abide by these rules, we can become obsessed with punishing the offender for breaking the rules. Luskin isn’t denying our right to feel angry or pain. He wants to help us avoid hurting ourselves.

 

Part two is the story of forgiveness. Luskin speaks from experience as the director and cofounder of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. In addition to research, he has helped people learn to forgive.

Like many others, Luskin begins with the offensive experience and asks us to be clear about what happened and how we feel about that experience. Forgiveness is a choice because we can forgive and restore a relationship with the offender or not. Either way, we get to move on without present lives. In this section, he reviews research on forgiveness but of course, since the book was written, we have nearly two decades of support for forgiveness.

The third part is titled, Forgive for Good. Here, Luskin offers pathways to healing. I w ill note several strategies.

Change the channel on your remote control. We have a choice when it comes to the focus of our attention. So, we can choose to turn away from past hurts and focus on such things as gratitude, beauty, and love.

Breath of Thanks. This is an encouragement to slow down during a day, focus on our breathing, breathe and relax, and repeat the phrase, “Thank you.”

Heart Focus. This strategy encourages us to follow a relaxation routine and experience a pleasant memory.

Forgiveness: The Practice. This is an intentional focus on safe and beautiful scenes that bring peace rather than the feelings of upset over past hurts.

When hurtful experiences recur, Luskin suggests an approach in the acrostic, PERT, which stands for Positive Emotion Focusing Technique. We are encouraged to engage in relaxation steps and positive imagery.

In later chapters, Luskin offers strategies to combat thoughts about expectations and focus on healing.

 

Forgive for Good is available on AMAZON and  GOOGLE BOOKS

 

For a list of other books on forgiveness, CLICK HERE.

 

Reference

Luskin, F. (2002). Forgive for good a proven prescription for health and happiness. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

 

 

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Changing Our Mind by D. Gushee - Review

Changing Our Mind   by David P. Gushee    Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton Changing Our Mind by David P. Gushee is a transformative book that explores the author's evolving views on LGBTQ inclusion within Christianity. Gushee, a prominent Christian ethicist, shares his journey from holding traditional evangelical views to advocating for full acceptance of LGBTQ Christians in the church. He examines biblical texts and theological positions, encouraging readers to reconsider their beliefs in light of new understandings and the lived experiences of LGBTQ individuals. The book is a call for empathy, inclusivity, and a more loving faith community. ***** I read the Kindle version of the third edition of Changing Our Mind as part of my research into Christian worldviews focused on Christian moral perspectives toward people who identify as LGBTQ. I had previously addressed the topic from the perspective of moral psychology in A House Divided (2016) and in a few research studies co...
Post a Comment
Read more

JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE - A book review

  JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE How White Evangelicals        Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation By    Kristin Kobes Du Mez Reviewed by    Geoffrey W. Sutton   Kristin Kobes Du Mez begins and ends her assault on militaristic white American evangelical men with their contemporary sociopolitical leader, former president, Donald Trump. In the Introduction we learn the short doctrinal list of what it means to be a Bible-believing evangelical, but the author posits that American evangelicals are more than a set of theological statements. Instead, since the early 1900s they have embraced a John Wayne view of what it means to be a Christian man—a powerful warrior for country and God—a man who leads his troops into battle to uphold the values of God’s chosen people, the Americans. It was the title, Jesus and John Wayne , that was off-putting. I didn’t grow up with John Wayne films or a love of American westerns. I was after...
Post a Comment
Read more

Denial of Death and the Meaningful Life- Book Review

  The Denial of Death   by Ernest Becker A Review by Geoffrey W. Sutton The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.  — Ernest Becker, xvii I completed a recent reading of this old classic yesterday (13 December, 2015) because I was interested in Becker’s contribution to Terror Management Theory, which I find so helpful in understanding the ways U.S. leaders are publicly responding to terrorist activities. Becker’s ideas are more than forty years old and many have not withstood the test of time. However, his basic premise that we deny the reality of death in many ways...
3 comments
Read more