A Brain on Forgiveness

Most people have been judged in ways that bring to question their very mission in life. Far fewer find an amygdala‘s mental tools to forgive, accept without expectations, and move on.
Well beyond harsh judgments or words that leave you feeling like a slug on skid row, lies the brain’s ability to embrace genuine reconciliation.

It’s true – your brain comes with equipment that segues into peace and recaptures gratitude, hope and joy. It’s rarely easy to pardon though, and has little to do with showing your side of a story in defense. Rather than recycle guilt, see yourself – along with others – as worthy of care without demands for change as a condition.

Forgiveness literally alters the brain’s wiring – away from distortions brought about by the past, and beyond fears that limit the future. It leads from misery of a broken promise, to wellness that builds new neuron pathways into physical, emotional and spiritual well being.
How do brains forgive?

From a brain’s perspective, forgiveness takes far more than merely letting go. It takes deliberate decisions to move beyond another person’s judgment of you. Replace a sad or disappointing encounter with memories of events that stoke healing, for instance, and your brain shifts focus.
The willingness to drop any need to blame diminishes your need to explain your perspective. A brain forgives as a commitment to understand the other side, to feel empathy for another, or to regain compassion for a person you care about who hurt you.

The event that caused conflict in the first place may not change, but forgiveness opens new segues into empathy, delight, and care for another person. Pardon designs mental escape routes for your thoughts – that may otherwise be relegated into corners that distrust or fear.

Forgiveness rarely opens another’s person’s eyes to see your inner value. Nor does it validate hurtful words or callous acts. To exonerate is not even to quell harsh judgments. It simply adds a peace that allows you to move on, and to embrace your mission with new delight.
Forgiving brains fuel unconditional love. How so? Speak of another’s genuine value, rather than replay disappointment’s darts – and sorrow fades from the brain’s amygdala, like clouds float off on a sunny day.

Mental benefits emerge in forgiveness

Crave healthier relationships? Rewired brains can unleash kindness without demands, or enjoy perceptions not colored by past perspectives. Since care cannot co-exist in human brains alongside attempts to change another, simply enjoy each moment without such limitations.
Long to find new freedom with those you value most? One way to let go of hurts is to replace grudges with generosity. Make kindness more important than hostility. Extend gestures of care to others and you’ll rewire the brain from victim modes, into habits that default to healthy relationships.

Not everybody will value your strengths, and those you love most will likely spot your flaws first. Convert compassion into daily practices that show care though, and expect well being to follow. Project images, words and icons of acceptance, and these gradually become your perception of people who differ from you. Your brain rewires to delight in differences!
Stress defaults to unforgiveness

Stress comes from hostility – and while it gets dubbed by many names stress shrinks the brain and anxiety drains mental life. Simply stated, stress flips your brain into shutdown or shotgun mode.

You default to ruts or trigger further problems, because stress from unforgiveness masks as savior but it strikes as killer!

Forgiveness, in contrast, leads to:

~Healthy relationships where others see efforts to make peace larger than personal gain.
~Fewer loneliness tanks and higher spiritual and psychological peaks to wellbeing
~Stress-free friendships that sidestep hostilities by yielding personal desires for shared harmony
~Fewer risks associated with depression, stress, and substance abuse that follows

Brains holding grudges slow to the speed of a slug

Most people want trusted relationships, yet many seem unable to attain these, because fear confuses people and distorts perceptions about what’s going on. When hurt by people you trust and love, your brain slips into confusion and sadness tends to follow.

Replay painful incidents mentally, or dwell on hurtful events, and negative feelings begin to crowd out possibilities and you may drown in a sense of injustice. The brain’s basal ganglia stores every reaction to severe disappointments. And if negative or bitter – these reactions limit your chances for finding well-being in a similar situation.

Brainwaves slow to a grind and serotonin supplies diminish under excessive weights of a grudge. Over time feelings of anger, sadness or resentment can rob your contentment, because these can form the engine that drives behavior. If you repeatedly find yourself drowning in a sense of injustice or bitter disappointment – you may create a pattern of bitterness.

Toxins will follow you into new relationships, and the cost tends to be far higher than the pain of disappointment. Your actions become tainted by the sense of loss – so that you lose sight of your ability to enjoy the present. Unable to understand your feelings, you use anger to cover up your hurt.

Depression and anxiety spring from an inability to forgive. You begin to sense your life lacks meaning to others you love most, and you seem to be at odds with all that you hold dear. Unless checked – you begin to lose ongoing connections with those you care about most.

How does the brain deal with forgiveness?

Laugh more as you keep alive in you – that three year old – active, curious and ready to be surprised by joy from others. To forgive is to choose change and graciousness in spite of conflict or accusations encountered. The first stage of forgiveness is the awareness that to forgive is far greater than the need to be right. It’s typically about your calm reactions to conflict rather than about gaining ground in a difficult situation.

Forgiveness is measured in health and well being – in spite of injustices and disappointments. To forgive a person who judges or hurts you is to refuse the role of victim and to unleash a new chemical and electrical circuitry for letting go of grudges. Once you leap past hurdles of anger or grief, you often find yourself ready to enter new doors of compassion and understanding for others who face injustice.

If you demand justice as a door into well being, you’ll likely find it harder to forgive folks who fail to see the problem or admit the pain it caused. If you value a person deeply, forgiving that person is likely harder because your amygdala stores its memory and your mind replays each sting. It takes a stronger desire for integrity, peace and wellbeing to move forward.

You can sense forgiveness if you no longer feel stress or tension in that person’s presence. No longer will you need to be understood, when you begin to understand, what Khalil Gibrand pointed out:

If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.

Here’s where an open mind helps to sustain forgiveness – and it doesn’t depend on another person feeling regret or sharing in your hurt. Admit your own mistakes quickly and treat others as if you walked in their shoes when conflicts arise. The brain responds with a warmth of compassion, care and curiosity – as forgiveness reconnects you to people you cherish.

Ever see entire communities flourish, when one or two people project mind-bending forgiveness?

Contribution by eweber

The Brain-Science Of Change—Or How To Reset Your Brain

The mysteries of the mind and brain are many and complex. Neuroscience, through the magic of technology is just beginning to unravel some of them. Given that my livelihood revolves around creativity, I have become fascinated with neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is the mind’s ability to change the brain. Yes, you read that right. Neuroplasticity radically reverses ages of scientific dogma which held that mental experiences result only from physical goings-on in the brain, and we can’t do much about it. But extensive studies by neuroscientists confirm that our mental machinations do alter the physical structure of our brain matter. So, when you change your mind, you change your brain. This is great news for most of us.

The issue all of us grapple with is change. Whether it’s kicking a bad habit, coming up with new and original ideas, shifting a business focus, changing behaviors, changing company culture, or trying to change the world. At the heart of the issue is changing minds and mindsets—in other words, unlocking the brain.

My fascination led me to a number of visits to Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a practicing neuropsychiatrist affiliated with UCLA, and author of a book called Brainlock. The reason I sought him out is that he deals with one of the most challenging and debilitating afflictions, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). And here’s the thing, he doesn’t use drugs to treat patients. He teaches them to rewire their brain by changing how they think.

I’m interested in Dr. Schwartz’s methods not because I’m curious about OCD, but because if he can help people with that kind of mental rigidity, think what can be done with the mind that isn’t all locked up. He created a successful four-step approach, and as he described it to me, it seemed quite obvious that his method could easily apply to anything we want to change.

1. Relabel
The first step is to relabel a given thought, feeling, or behavior as something else. An unwanted thought could be relabeled “false message” or “brain glitch.” This amounts to training yourself to clearly recognize and identify what is real and what isn’t, refusing to be tricked by your own thoughts. You step back and say, “This is just my brain sending me a false message.” (For someone with OCD, instead of saying, “I have to check the stove,” they would start saying, “I am having a compulsive urge to check the stove.”)

This sounds easy, almost a trite affirmation, like what they give you at one of those weekend long shut-ins where you transform yourself into the someone you always thought you could be. It isn’t. It’s hard. Focusing on something completely different when your brain is sending long-embedded directions with overwhelming force, is incredibly difficult.

2. Reattribute
The second step answers the question, “Why do these thoughts coming back?” The answer is that the brain is misfiring, stuck in gear, creating mental noise, and sending false messages. In other words, if you understand why you’re getting those old thoughts, eventually you’ll be able to say, “Oh, that’s just a brain glitch.” That raises the natural next question: What can you do about it?

3. Refocus
The third step is where the toughest work is, because it’s the actual changing of behavior. You have to do another behavior instead of the old one. Having recognized the problem for what it is and why it’s occurring, you now have to replace the old behavior with new things to do. This is where the change in brain chemistry occurs, because you are creating new patterns, new mindsets. By refusing to be misled by the old messages, by understanding they aren’t what they tell you they are, your mind is now the one in charge of your brain.

This is basically like shifting the gears of your car manually. “The automatic transmission isn’t working, so you manually override it,” says Schwartz. “With positive, desirable alternatives—they can be anything you enjoy and can do consistently each and every time—you are actually repairing the gearbox. The more you do it, the smoother the shifting becomes. Like most other things, the more you practice, the more easy and natural it becomes, because your brain is beginning to function more efficiently, calling up the new pattern without thinking about it.”

4. Revalue
It all comes together in the fourth step, which is the natural outcome of the first three. With a consistent way to replace the old behavior with the new, you begin to see old patterns as simple distractions. You devalue them as being completely worthless. Eventually the old thoughts begin to fade in intensity, the brain works better, and the automatic transmission in the brain begins to start working properly.

“Two very positive things happen,” Jeff says. “The first is that you’re happier, because you have control over your behavioral response to your thoughts and feelings. The second thing is that by doing that, you change the faulty brain chemistry.”

Schwartz confirmed that his methods could be used to create change in any are of business, work, or life. “Since it has been scientifically demonstrated that the brain has been altered through the behavior change, it’s safe to say that you could do the same thing by altering responses to any number of other behaviors.

What all of this meant to me was that we can learn to improve our ability to defeat the traditional thinking traps we fall into when we try to change our view of whatever challenge we’re facing. We can override our default. We can retrain our brain by invoking the Apple tagline: Think different.

Contributed by Matthew E May