Altruism & Commitment

Goal

To cultivate gratitude, motivate altruism, and promote commitment

Gratitude & Altruism (Worthington, 2011, pp. 58, 62)

Scientists have begun to show that an attitude of gratitude can produce better health. In fact, just writing down things you are grateful for each day can result in better health. With regards to altruism, some people argue that no purely altruistic act is possible, but rather that all acts have some self-serving motive. Such debates can distract us from trying to practice altruism. Let’s not be distracted from acting in altruistic love at every possible opportunity.

“Forgive and forget” is a common cliché that suggests that once we forgive, we’ll forget about the transgression. This is incorrect in that true forgiveness implies that we don’t really forget. If we forgive, it is because we remember and then choose to forgive and often experience emotional forgiveness as well. When a person hurts us, they make it less safe to be around them. It is natural to be more wary-even if we have fully forgiven-about being harmed again. It takes a while for a person to regain their trust. Being prudent is not the same thing as being unforgiving.

Keep in mind that going through the REACH model of forgiveness probably won’t result in your bad feelings about the transgression totally being erased, but it will likely lighten the feelings. Reflect on what barriers you might have that could keep you from extending emotional forgiveness.

Receiving Forgiveness Exercise (Worthington, 2011, pp. 53-54)

Instructions (part 1): Think back to a time in your past when you hurt someone or did something wrong, needed forgiveness, and were granted forgiveness. This might be an incident from your childhood, a time when you were in high school or college, a time in your marriage or relationship, or an incident in some other relationship. What matters is that you had done something wrong and felt badly about it and that you were forgiven. Write a description of the event. Then, answer these questions:

• What did it feel like to be in trouble, to lose face, to lose respect or self-respect, and to need forgiveness?
• What did it feel like in your stomach? How did your palms feel? Other parts of the body?
• What would you call the emotions that you experienced as you realized that you had wronged another and needed forgiveness?
• What did it feel (or would have felt) like to ask the person you hurt for forgiveness and to have received it? Were you humbled?

Instructions (part 2): Focus for a moment on how good it felt to receive forgiveness and the feeling of freedom you received when the burden of guilt was lifted from you in that time in the past. Once you have been able to adopt this state of gratitude, reflect on these questions:

• If you were going to write a letter of gratitude for being forgiven, what would you say?
• What did it feel like to be forgiven?

Extending Forgiveness Exercise (Worthington, 2011, pp. 55, 57)

Instructions (part 1): Imagine the person who hurt you in the transgression you have chosen for this course. If that person were in trouble, would you help? Write about things you would be willing to do for that person.

Instructions (part 2): Draw a gift that you would like to give your offender as a sign of your forgiveness. Then, reflect on these questions:

• What is the meaning and significance of what you drew?
• Have you experienced 100% emotional forgiveness? If not, you may benefit from going through the prior exercises in this course again.
• If you have a history of multiple hurtful acts with your transgressor-perhaps some big hurts and many small hurts-you do not need to recall every hurt to effectively forgive your transgressor for their hurtfulness. You can forgive the hurtfulness by taking 3 steps:
  1. Pick 2-3 of the most hurtful acts.
  2. Work through those one at a time until each is forgiven.
  3. Decide that you have forgiven enough of the individual acts and have thus forgiven the person.

Letter Exercise (Worthington, 2011, p. 59)

Instructions: Write out what you would say if you were to write a letter to the transgressor expressing your decisional forgiveness-meaning that you have decided not to hold a grudge, but rather to treat the person as a valuable human being. Also tell the person of your emotional forgiveness-referring to having replaced negative emotions with positive emotions toward the person.

Tip: We are NOT recommending that you actually send such a letter. Sometimes that type of letter can offend the other person-especially if they aren’t aware you still held unforgiveness against them. Writing down your experience will help YOU.

Next Step (Worthington, 2011, p. 61)

Using this website (http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html), look up entries from whichever source you’re comfortable with that pertain to “gratitude,” being “grateful,” “thanks,” and “thanksgiving” (and other related words). To whom ought we to be thankful? To whom ought we to express our thanks? Do the same type of word-study with “altruism” or “unselfish” or the opposite-“selfish.”