Fred Luskin: Forgiveness Requires Gratitude

if we practiced every single day thank you and I appreciate you and this is beautiful and I am blessed and let me see what good I can do to the world you'd have almost no grudges and it wouldn't have mattered so much whether you were loved at 19 or 26 or 31 or whatever because you'd be creating a mind-body experience that's healthy and a healthy mind body very rarely wants to strike out at anything occasionally it does but rarely and so you know it's funny because I teach forgiveness but at the heart of forgiveness I see that most of us have issues with gratitude and compassion that we have marked deficits in gratitude and compassion so that we make our unforgiveness seem normal and it's because we make it seem normal that we don't work that hard to change it but if you had like a real thankfulness for your very life right now good better and different if you embodied it if you if you could only touch the sacred mystery of being here and I'm a secular teacher I mean you know when I say sacred mystery I don't mean it in like a wool sense I just mean it's amazing you're breathing and it's amazing that breathe triggers like hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions that you know is your life and that it's going to be short the fact that you're here and conscious and able to love is staggering and if you just could remind yourself to deeply feel that you create a kind of alignment inside of yourself that doesn't want to harm anybody that couldn't imagine unless it was absolutely necessary harming someone in word or deed why would want to do that but we're so out of alignment and we're so self-centered that don't create the conditions inside of ourselves where forgiveness is normal worth where it's a part of our relationship to the whole you know we're little dots and there's six and a half billion of us and one of my little dot can do is let go of my negativity when possible that's part of what the whole asks of us so that the whole can stay healed whenever possible but the piece that we just miss so deeply is just the simplest like thank you and my god there's so much suffering why am I so wrapped up in mind there's so much pain there's so much horror there's so much loss what am i spending nineteen years just obsessed about mine or twelve years or 15 years or or six years and what these together help us do is detach a little from the drama and remind ourselves that you know we could actually be of help but I know that and you know the thing is the the center I mean I was teaching this stuff way before there was a positive psychology which made it so much harder for me because there was no language but I used to stand in front of an audience and say you know if you want to be happy they care a little more for other people care a little less about yourself complain a little less and appreciate what you have a little more and you'll be happier okay another duh I mean there there are so many times when I feel like what I'm teaching is that book everything you needed to know you learned in kindergarten because it's true

Channel: Greater Good Science Center

Views: 30,549

Rating: 4.9571428 out of 5

Keywords: Psychology, forgiveness, gratitude

Id: GKDM5QH_wlo

Length: 5min 39sec (339 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2010