The concept of mindfulness

Mindfulness can be defined as a state of paying conscious attention to current moment

experiences, with an open and accepting attitude (Kabat-Zinn, 2013). Mindfulness also includes

acceptance, meaning that we give to our thoughts and whatever we feel without judging them-

without believing that there is a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a particular given

moment. Mindfulness, which sometimes is considered a new-age concept, is comparable to the

age-old process of cultivating awareness ( of everyday happenings and physiological and

psychological sensations ) in Buddhist traditions and to the modern therapeutic technique of

increasing attention in order to identify distorted thinking ( an aspect of cognitive and cognitive-

behavioral therapies; Miller, 1995 ). Mindfulness includes being non-judging, non-striving,

accepting, patience, showing trust, openness, letting go things, gentleness, generosity, empathy,

gratitude and loving-kindness. ( Biegel, Brown, Shaprio, and Schubert, 2009) used a stress

reduction technique, based on mindfulness, with adolescents dealing with various psychiatric

diagnosis and compared this in a randomized clinical trial to a control group. The group who

received the mindfulness-based stress reduction program in this study reported decreases in

depressive and anxious symptomatology and decreased somatic complaints as well as increases

in quality of sleep and positive feelings about themselves.

Concept of forgiveness

“Forgive” is defined as “to excuse for a fault or offense pardon” and “to renounce anger or

resentment against” ( American heritage dictionary, 1985). According to McCullough (2000;

McCullough et al., 1998), forgiveness reflects increases in pro-social motivation toward another

such that there is (1) less desire to avoid the transgressing person and to harm or seek revenge
toward that individual, and (2) increased desire to act positively towards the transgressing

person. Changes in motivation are viewed as being at the core of this theory ( McCullough et al.,

2000a, 2000b ), with the person becoming more benevolent over time; moreover, forgiveness is

seen as applicable only when there is another person who has engaged in transgression. ( Steven,

1999 ) defined forgiveness as ‘letting go of my right to hurt another person for hurting me’.

( Baumiester et al., 1990 ) described two dimensions of forgiveness; intrapsychic and

interpersonal. The former involves the emotional and cognitive aspects of forgiveness, and latter

involves social or behavioral aspects.

( Thompson et al., 2003 ) gave three types of forgiveness. He described forgiveness as

forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others and forgiveness of situation. Others forgiveness here

implies forgiving others.

Mindfulness and Interpersonal Forgiveness

Why and how would mindfulness be associated with interper-sonal forgiveness? To answer this

question, it is valuable to consider why people may find it difficult to forgive someone. When

offended and hurt, people may become quite strongly absorbed in their hurt feelings. Thoughts

and emotions may be experienced as an integral part of the self (Bernstein et al., 2015) and

produce a state that could be described as subjective realism: the content of one’s thoughts and

emotions are not reflected upon with meta-cognitive awareness but are experienced as reality

(Lebois et al., 2015;Papies, Pronk, Keesman, & Barsalou, 2015).

Being mindlessly immersed in one’s hurt feelings in this manner may have at least two

consequences that could obstruct responding in a forgiving manner. First, when identifying

strongly with current experiences of being hurt, an individual may be less likely to take the

offending person’s perspective. Perspective taking, defined as the cognitive skill to consider and

understand another person’s point of view (e.g., Davis, 1980), has been shown to be an

important facilitator of forgiveness (e.g., McCullough, Worthing-ton, & Rachal, 1997; Takaku,

2001). When pre-occupied with self-related thoughts and emotions, there simply may be less

attentional space to put oneself into the offender’s shoes (Lin, Keysar, & Epley, 2010; Leary &

Diebels, 2017), which could hinder forgiveness. Second, when immersed in experiences of being

hurt, an individual is likely to add ruminative thoughts to the experience (“I do not deserve this,”

“He is really mean,” “Should I continue this relationship,” etc.). Rumination in this context can

be defined as repetitive thinking about the causes and consequences of the offense and one’s own

feelings of hurt (cf. Smith & Alloy, 2009).

Previous research has shown that engaging in ruminative thinking indeed can further fuel

feelings of anger and retaliation, and hamper forgiveness (e.g., McCullough, Bono, & Root,

2007; Pronk, Karremans, Overbeek, Vermulst, & Wigboldus, 2010). In short, we suggest that

these two psychological barriers to forgiveness—the inability to take the offender’s perspective

and rumination about the offense—for an important part are driven by “mindless” immersion in

one’s hurt feelings, and the inability to step out of them. Secondly when one is hurt, an

individual is likely to add ruminative thoughts to that particular experience. Rumination in this

context can be defined as repetitive thinking about the causes and consequences of the offense

and one’s own feelings of hurt (cf. Smith & Alloy, 2009).
How to use mindfulness to forgive

each person had experienced some kind of pain in their past.for some it might had come from

their parent or from someone they were very close. For someone it could be the person or loved

one who had betrayed their trust. Mindfulness can be used to accept the feelings of negative

emotions like anger, sadness or betrayal that you have and it helps you to move on from them. It

makes your path free for you, it begins with knowing what is hurting you the most. Create the list

of people who you feel have hurt you deeply. You may have only one name on the list. The

names you write will need to be ranked from one to ten. How much pain you feel from that

person’s treatment of you. One should be the least amount of pain you feel and ten being the

most. Then list the offense that is bothering you. Did the person had betrayed your trust? Did the

person had said something that hurt your feelings? Did they treat you differently from someone

else. There could be different levels of harm both physical and psychological that can be

affecting you. Write how the offence is negatively affecting your life. Then look at their side of

incident was there something that provoked that attack. Was that situation arised due to your

behavior or is it something in their own behavior that created that situation. Being able to forgive

is to being able to recognize your feelings and your reactions to that situation, and how justified

the other person is in their behavior that created that particular behavior. Forgiveness does not

mean reconciliation. Reconciliation is about establishing mutual trust with the person again.

Forgiveness is about letting go of your feelings and the need for justice, while focusing on the

positives. Mindfulness is not asking you to condone the behavior or excuse the behavior of

others, but to look for understanding of why the other person have hurt you or have given you

pain.
Conclusion

Mindfulness is the way of accepting others, their feelings, thoughts without any question.

Mindfulness could be highly beneficial because we are able to let go of materialistic and un

materialistic thoughts and just exist in the moment. Mindfulness helps our body in fighting

illness. It increases our memory, empathy, learning and emotional regulation. It helps in

obtaining more focus and reduce our bad habits. Forgiveness is the overcoming of negative

affect and judgment towards the offender not by denying ourselves the right to such affect and

judgment, but by endeavoring to view the offender with compassion, benevolence and love while

recognizing that offender has abandoned the right to them. Keeping hurt feelings bottled up in

your brain only causes additional stress to your mind and body. Even if the memory is difficult to

confront, see if you can share how you are feeling. Sharing helps you expand your perspective,

and perhaps even see what happened through a different lens. Forgiveness isn’t a quick-fix

solution. It’s a process, so be patient with yourself. With smaller transgressions, forgiveness can

happen pretty quickly, but with the larger ones, it can take years. As you begin with the smaller

misdeeds and then move onto the harder ones, be kind to yourself, take deep breaths, and

continue on.
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