This episode was supported by Jenner's Grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation as part of a Greater Good Science Center project on putting the science of forgiveness into practice.
I will always kind of say forgiveness has mental health benefits to the person who forgives.
It has physical health benefits, relational benefits, even spiritual benefits.
The empathy parts of the brain are activated when we forgive and also the frontal area that suppresses the executive functioning system that suppresses the nasty things we want to do and says no you can't do that you got to do something else and then the behavioral activation system says okay well what can I do?
People will report just these horrendous things that they were successful at forgiving,
and that gives them a sense of agency that they can forgive.
Even if they looked at this in the beginning and said,
my gosh, this is like jumping over a 20-foot fence.
I can't possibly get over that.
But, you know, they can lower the fence piecemeal.
Breivness doesn't have to do all of the heavy lifting.
We have all fallen short.
We have all done things that we don't like and we can appreciate forgiveness.
It's never easy, but it becomes easier to forgive somebody else.
Welcome to the Science of Happiness.
I'm Dacher Kiltner.
Today's episode is about something that can be hard to offer to others and ourselves.
Forgiveness.
Forgiveness can be complex.
It's a gradual process that takes honesty, courage, and time.