Forgiveness: We Know We SHOULD. But HOW?

April 26, 2012 - PRLog -- Everyone who understands forgiveness knows that we SHOULD do it.  When someone does not want to forgive, it is almost always as a result of bad teaching.  For instance, many of us learn “forgive and forget,” but in his latest offering, Conway says that we should not forget.  We should learn, and learning requires remembering.

“The difference is that we do not hold the action against the person.  It is a ‘data point,’ meaning we know that given those particular circumstances that this individual person was willing to do that sort of thing.  If, later, we see that they have changed, we can set it aside.  It is not a weapon to use in future arguments, but it is a warning light in case we see the same sort of thing again.”

“More importantly, we should learn from it.  We should gain insight, understanding… wisdom!  We do not simply pretend it never happened.  That is in balance with letting go of our hurt, anger and any guilt we have so we can move forward from there.”

There are a lot of people who teach about forgiveness, but not many teach really concrete techniques on HOW.  Conway does that in his book.

“My basic technique is Five Step Forgiveness.  Over the years, I’ve found this to be the most thorough and useful technique.  It lets you forgive the particular event, and it helps you deal with the emotions.  It lets you get rid of the dysfunctional lessons (such as ‘all men are jerks’) that will do damage in your future.  It lets you pick up the real lessons for real wisdom that can help you. “

He does not stop with his signature technique.  He provides a variation that he says is “used for patterns of behavior. This is when there are too many individual events to forgive one at a time.”  It’s called Symbolic Forgiveness, and he shows us how to do that one.

Techniques include a Courtroom Pardon Technique.  “I’ve seen this done wrong,” Conway points out.  “I’ve seen it done where the counselor has the client declare the person ‘innocent.’  But that’s back to a version of ‘nothing bad happened’ that I am so against.  Something wrong did happen.  It was bad.  We never want it to happen again.  You ‘pardon,’ which is ‘you’re guilty but we’re letting it go.’ It makes all the difference in the world.”

“If you can worry, you can visualize.” Conway says he is quoting Brian Tracy with this.  “That’s what worry is.  You are visualizing possible bad outcomes.  We can harness this same skill and use it to help forgive.  We take control of the pictures in our head, assume personal responsibility for them, and we work our way and pray our way through.  It’s very powerful.”

What about people who have poor visualization skills?  Conway provides an answer to that, too.  His book contains a series of exercises to help us with our visual memory and our creative imagination.  They are divided into three levels: basic, intermediate and advanced.  Follow that system, and you, too, can control the pictures in your head.

The full name of Conway’s book is We’re Told in The Bible Forgiveness Is Important: A Five Step Way to Do It!  It is available for the Kindle at Amazon.com.  Search “Scot Conway” on Amazon, or use this link: http://www.amazon.com/Were-Bible-Forgiveness-Important-eb...