One thing you will know for sure if you hear someone offer the platitude, “Forgive and forget” is that they are swimming upstream.

One of my pet peeves is that many people, some who should know better, offer advice without direction. “Forgive and forget” falls into that category.

Forgiveness is not something that you can consciously do. You can set an intention to forgive yourself or someone else, but you can’t just make it happen by saying so. Forgiveness, as I’ve written about before, is like the Christian concept of grace. It comes to you when it comes, not when you consciously decide.

How many people have you stated you’ve forgiven but haven’t? That’s because the feeling of forgiveness hasn’t arrived yet. If you could aver your way to forgiveness, there would be a lot more of it present. From my vantage point, that is not the case.

Forgetting is also not possible unless you are mentally impaired.

You are not going to forget something, especially something that caused you any sort of pain. The memory will be there as long as you have a memory.

So what are the directions to forgive and forget?

Willingness and updating your response.

Willingness is the catalyst that sets a process in motion. Once you are willing for something to happen, it has a much better chance of happening. You just can’t state willingness; you have to be open to it.

It’s like trying something new. “Ugh, I’ll never eat sushi” is an unwillingness. If you ask, “What’s the harm in trying?”, you have experienced the act of being willing.

Willingness is necessary to open the door to forgiveness. It’s not a guarantee, but you have just exponentially increased the odds of forgiveness walking into your life.

Again, regarding forgetting, you’ll never forget, but you can update your response to that unforgettable event.

The moment is a stimulus and “not forgetting” is your reaction to that moment. What if you could choose a different response? Would that be helpful? You bet.

Our mind updates things all the time. Look back on some pictures of you in high school and notice the clothing, hairstyle or adornments you had going on. You laugh. Those things were very appropriate for you then but not now. You didn’t forget them; You outgrew them. You’ve updated your response to those memories.

Not forgetting is living now like it’s still then.

Updating your response begins by noticing that it’s now, not then.

Ask any therapist about the number of clients still reacting to long dead parents as though they are here now.

That memory contains pain. There is a way to outgrow the pain. I learned the following technique from Dr. Dave Dobson. He would ask a client to rehearse themselves over and over again in a sensation that was pleasant to them so they could produce that sensation at a moment’s notice. Then he would ask them to retrieve the unpleasant sensation that went along with the problematic memory. The second they felt the unpleasant sensation, they were to call up the pleasant sensation. He would have them do this over and over again.

The results were amazing. After some practice, the pleasant sensation replaced the unpleasant one automatically. By doing the exercise, they updated their response or, as I like to say, “they outgrew it.”

If, after reading this post, you still choose to live in past pain, please be willing to forgive me for offering a strategy to try, and forget that I mentioned it.

All the best,

John