People are still logging on, but that's alright.
And we're recording this as well, so it's gonna be sent out to current students as well as prospective students, so they can enjoy the talk as well.
So I wanna welcome doctor Lauren Toussaint.
Thank you everybody for coming.
It's our now third IPS Global Lecture Series talk.
So we just started this year to give, people the opportunity to hear people in different areas of research.
Last talk we had on resiliency and marriage and family.
So a general topic in times of grief.
In the fall, we had a talk on leadership and virtue.
So we're very excited to have doctor Toussaint with us tonight, and he's gonna speak on forgiveness and human flourishing.
So I'm very excited.
Looking forward to your talk.
Doctor.
Toussaint is professor of psychology at Luther College, and, he's also vice chair of the Forgiveness Scientific Advisory Council, Templeton World Charity Foundation, has done a lot of work on forgiveness.
From the psychological side, he's a wonderful researcher, very experienced researcher.
He's president of the Forgiveness Foundation International and, just has, I think, a naturally integrative outlook, from his Catholic faith, seeing the person, as holistically and looking at forgiveness from a, I think, integrative and psychological perspective.
So I'm very excited to have you, share with us tonight.
We will have a presentation.
And then the last twenty ish minutes, we will have time for questions and answers.
So if you have questions throughout the talk, if you, the participants would just put it in the chat or the q and a, and then we will kind of I I will read the questions out loud in the end, and we'll work through the questions that way.
So right now, I'll hand it over to doctor Toussaint.
Thank you so much for being with us tonight.
Well, thank you for that very kind introduction.
It's, it's my honor, and, I have been looking forward to this since I think we first talked about it, but seems like maybe months ago now.
So, yeah, thrilled to be here, and it should be a lot of fun.
I look forward to the questions, and, discussion is always probably the most fun.
So I'll say a few things and then kinda get out of the way so people can, you know, get their specific things, asked and answered.
So the plan is I chat a little bit about forgiveness and human flourishing, and then we'll open it up to some questions.
And I'll I I really don't have a lot of formal stuff to discuss.
I mean, some ideas, I'll reference a little bit of research, but nothing real, too heavy lifting.
And I wanna start by saying so this would be my vision of what it looks like in DC right now.
And I'm assuming you're gonna tell me that's exactly the view that you get every day when you wake up in the morning.
Is that right?
Well, if you if you could see the weather that I endured today, you'd know why I was looking for a good picture.
So I wanted to start off on a light note, and, I hope that your spring is going well.
Your semester is moving along smoothly.
We're about halfway into our semester here just past through our spring break at Luther College, and so we're kind of into the home stretch.
And, it was a pretty drab and dreary day, but, the hope that tomorrow could be better is always out there.
And, spring is, you know, kind of eternal rebirth.
So looking forward to that, and I hope you are too.
I wanted to talk about forgiveness and human flourishing, but I wanted to talk about it at at multiple levels.
And one of the things I kinda wanted to focus on tonight was, you know, kind of the community level because it's often a part of forgiveness that we don't necessarily think about.
And I think, you know, the recent few weeks in our world have once again highlighted that, while forgiveness is a big thing that we have to contend with on an individual level, it's also a very big thing at community, societal, national, international, and global levels.
And so I'm gonna try to as I go, you know, kinda incorporate a little bit more of the community level, applied nature of, the work that I am either doing or or kinda hoping and planning to do.
So, you know, if we look at our, community environments, whether it be schools or families or workplaces, these are places where there's just a lot of conflict often, and it's really hard to sometimes think about how to get past that.
If you're anything like me, you know, the social justice call of of our faith is has got us in a bit of a bind.
You know?
We're I I think we're trying to do the right thing.
I'm just not sure that we always are, and, it's really hard.
The conflict, is just frankly really weighty.
And so some of the examples that I have on the screen seem like minor things compared to the kinds of things that we might be thinking about, that most be might be most salient to us, in the last few weeks.
But, nonetheless, you know, bullying in schools and workplaces, family, conflict, trauma, abounds in in our, societies and has for some time and probably will continue, for a long time to come.
And so the first place that I usually start with this conversation is to think about the notion of unforgiveness because, forgiveness is kinda more the answer, and and the problem is unforgiveness.
So the the the root cause of why we're here is that, you know, people hurt us.
There's some kind of injustice that is done, and that is, what precipitates the sense of unforgiveness.
And unforgiveness is something that's, stressful.
And so all of the aspects doctor Klausie mentioned, that, you know, my my view is, integrative, and and that's, you know, very true for the kinds of things that we think about when we think about the influence of unforgiveness on stress.
There's psychological.
There's behavioral consequences.
You know, it changes the way you think about things.
There's certainly psychoendocrine things going on in your, you know, your kind of hormonal system.
There's psychophysiological things going on that are, you know, changing heart rate and respiration and things of that nature.
And then, you know, last but not least, of course, is that there are social consequences of stress that we all could probably, you know, relate to.
So, that brings us to the concept of forgiveness because, you you know, to stay in that place where unforgiveness creates all of this stress and angst is not a very, it's a very pleasant place to be.
And so modern day psychology as well as, you know, our our centuries old church and many faiths have thought about what forgiveness is.
And, you know, recently, I've seen some really good things.
I don't know how many of you might be familiar with or part of Ascension Press.
I follow a lot of their work very closely.
They, are are right in my kind of backyard, so to speak, in Duluth, Minnesota.
And, so, I've seen some really good online talks there recently about differences between divine forgiveness and, human forgiveness.
And so we oftentimes think of human forgiveness as being this letting go of bad and replacing the bad with good.
I I typically say, especially when it comes to close relationships, you would hope that you could do more than just not hate your spouse again or your children again.
You you you'd hope that you could do better than that.
You would not hate them anymore and return to loving them even though they may have hurt you at some point.
And that's really the essence of how modern day psychology thinks about forgiveness is get rid of the bad, but not just not just get rid of the bad, replace it with probably the good that that used to be there or preceded, the bad.
I'll reference a little bit as we go forgiveness of others and forgiveness of yourself.
I'll also probably reference the fact that, sometimes we think of, forgiveness, in any form as kind of a virtue.
We think of it as like a a character trait.
And other times, we think of it as more of a kinda like a passing feeling, you know, a state of being that that kinda comes and goes.
And then another common, way of thinking about forgiveness is that we oftentimes make a decision to do it, but that decision is kind of, you know, a head decision.
And it's really you know, full forgiveness probably isn't really truly there until we have our heart involved.
So you have kind of a emotional or a spiritual side.
I like to think of, forgiveness from the heart is is kind of the the full, embellishment of the, of the experience.
So we've got our unforgiveness.
We've got our, you know, kinda contrasting forgiveness and kind of the what we think of as maybe the way out of of injustice and and kinda having maybe holding a grudge or having a hard time moving on.
And then we reach the real, question, and that is, most everyone, I think, is gonna agree forgiveness is not easy.
You know, there might be a few instances in which it seems like it is.
I'm always a little distrusting of those.
I just don't know why, but it it just doesn't feel quite genuine to me.
I've seen, you know, many many times now.
You see you watch the news or something, and you see someone who a day after there's been a horrifying kind of act of violence or brutality.
People are standing up saying we forgive.
I guess I don't I don't doubt that that's possible.
I just kind of I struggle to to feel like that's, as genuine and and, as complete as it could be.
Forgiveness usually takes time.
It usually takes a lot of want to.
It's kind of an ugly process.
Sometimes you feel worse before you feel better.
And so I turned to a classic theory here that many of you might be familiar with or maybe at some point in your training will become familiar with.
It's called social learning theory.
It was developed by Albert Bandura.
And just in brief, I mean, there's lots more to say about this, but social learning theory says that there's three big pieces.
You have to you have to see examples.
In in other words, you can't learn socially unless you have, someone in your social world to learn from.
That's why they call it social learning theory.
It's a it's a social form of learning.
So if I don't see other people that I can learn from, I'm in a lot of trouble.
So you need models, whether they be in your family, your school, your, you know, organizations, or whatever.
Number two, you need to believe you can do it, and I think that's a that's a big hurdle for many.
You know, just the sense of this is gonna be really hard.
The injustice was really great, or maybe it's just ongoing.
And so the the beliefs that you can do it has to be there, and then you have to have positive outcome expectancies.
You have to believe that if you do it, good things are going to follow.
And that's also sometimes a challenge that to hold on to those expectations that good things are going to follow, is sometimes hard.
Well, Well, it turns out we have lots of models.
You can, you know, you can probably, Google up on the web a number of different, examples, but certainly Nelson Mandela comes to mind, doesn't Tutu.
There's other examples of people from various different cities, the Amish, you know, closer to your, neck of the woods in the in the, you know, kind of vast geography of our country kinda out in the Northeast.
You know, there's the story of the, I think there's a a d a DVD or a movie actually on Amish Grace.
Really incredible, example of of cultural or community forgiveness.
So there's, you know, lots and lots and lots and lots of examples.
So we have lots of models to learn from.
We probably have to think about our own, you know, comfort level.
Do I think I'm capable of forgiving either, someone else or myself?
And, you know, oftentimes, that's rated on kind of a zero to a 100 scale.
And, you know, the the more confident you are, the more you're likely to do it.
So we wanna try to build that confidence.
Well, oftentimes, people can get kinda short circuited there, and they they can say, well, I, gee, I I kinda feel like I could, but I just don't know how.
I'd like to, but, you know, I see these examples, and I I'd really I'd really like to follow these examples.
You know, our Catholic faith provides the, you know, the the best example of them all is Jesus Christ.
I mean, that's it.
That's that's the top of the heap.
But I you know, I'm just, I'm just a regular guy.
It's hard to imagine how I'm gonna possibly get through this.
And, thankfully, that's where, the science and practice of psychology comes in.
You know, there's there's really good evidence based well supported models that help people forgive, and the model that I'm showing in front of you starts with, the remembering part, and it works through empathy and feelings of altruism, commitment and holding on, and overcoming.
And, you know, with more time, we could go through each of those pieces, but, suffice to say that there are very well established methods for helping people forgive others.
Some 50 plus now randomized controlled trials show that, these methods work, and they they work just the way you'd expect them to.
The more people engage in them, the harder they work at it, the longer they spend on these things, the better they do, the more forgiving they become.
There are models that help people to forgive themselves.
And, you can see here that in this case, the model here starts with the, apologize, part and leads to, you know, trying to make amends, feeling forgiven, being forgiven, leading into acceptance, a desire for self improvement so that you, you know, hopefully don't make these same mistakes again in the future and hurt people.
And then, you know, a lasting commitment to being a better person, forgiving yourself, moving forward, restoring your sense of values, restoring your self esteem, and so forth.
So someone who's motivated but says, I don't know I don't know how to do this.
There are there are good options.
Now the the forgiveness of oneself option is far less tested, and I'm gonna come back to that a little bit later.
But it has been it there's a limited amount of data suggesting that it is effective.
It's good at helping people forgive themselves.
So, you know, moving to the community level, you might say, well, communities have to sometimes forgive themselves because they've done things that they're not proud of.
Sometimes communities are offended by other communities or societies, cultures, nations, whatever, entire groups.
And so we think about how could these models that were originally developed I mean, psychology is often kind of a a science and practice focused on individuals and and small groups.
How could these things be extrapolated out to the larger community, to the larger social, networks that we find ourselves in?
Well, we've done a little bit of that work, and what we find is that, building forgiving communities means that you have some of the same things, present in the community level that you have in the in the individual case.
So even though I didn't really, talk about it, people oftentimes confuse, forgiveness and justice thinking that there are two opposite ends of the same spectrum, and that's not really true.
Justice is an independent thing.
You can all probably think of, times in which you have gotten no justice but been able to forgive and move on, and you can probably also think about times where you got complete perfect justice but just could never quite forgive and that that suggests that there are really two independent processes but one can can help the other and oftentimes environments where justice is is done, people feel safe and valued, these are conducive environments for forgiving, communities where you have models and leaders present kinda leading leading the charge, so to speak, keeping it in the forefront of people's minds, opportunities and support for forgiveness.
You might think of, some of the national efforts, the truth and reconciliation commissions, have been kind of good examples of, not always not always perfect implementation, but but, you know, good purpose, good intent to provide opportunities.
When we think about process, again, we, you know, we probably refer back to some of those models that we've tested in individuals and think about the extent to which we can move community communities through a similar process.
And then, you know, policy level changes, things that might, help to make forgiveness more of a kind of a natural and and easier first option instead of kind of a last resort.
And then the last thing that I'll I'll come back to and just reference is the notion of exposure and promotion, forgiveness.
Like anything, if you wanna kinda sell a group or a community on an idea, you're gonna have to work at it.
And so, we'll we'll come back and revisit that in a minute.
I do wanna say that, you know, there's lots of community psychology that's been done, lots that has been learned, and I provide a quote here about community systems change, which is is probably the level of change that we're thinking about when we think about, you know, large scale forgiveness issues.
And so I'll just read the quote here.
It's an intentional process designed to alter the status quo.
What I was kinda referencing earlier about kinda moving away from a revenge mentality or a retributive justice model by shifting and realigning the form and function of a targeted system.
So, lots of levers of change involved in that.
Right?
There's change in norms, system resources, systems regulations, policies and procedures that I mentioned earlier, and then operations.
You know, people in power, people that are decision makers have to support this and be, you know, be leaders in this regard.
So those are some things to think about in terms of, like, you know, what is forgiveness?
Why would people want to do it?
How would they be motivated to do it?
What are the kind of models of of processing, forgiveness, and how might we, expand that into the community?
But that's really all on the forgiveness side.
I wanted in the last few minutes to share a few things about the flourishing side.
Flourishing is for some folks defined as good mental and physical health and happiness.
All of those things combined together.
For others, they include things like, satisfactory, vocational pursuits, sufficient income and education and sufficient monetary resources.
And, so flourishing in kind of a even a broader sense, that also kind of enters into the that equation of, the community again.
So, I just wanted to share a few things to keep you thinking about this.
What sorts of opportunities to flourish are there through forgiveness?
And we've spent a good deal of time over the last couple of decades trying to examine this question, and you can see titles here that kinda lead you to the conclusions about, forgiveness and longevity and forgiveness and stress and and health and forgiveness in the workplace and health and productivity.
And so I'm just gonna highlight a few things that we found, and then, share with you just a little bit about what we wanna do, which I'm kind of excited about.
And so in terms of flourishing, you know, I kinda said that it it can be a large umbrella.
And, we have about a 100 DC office workers here that were surveyed, and we found out that forgiveness is related to these office workers' mental health, physical health, to their absenteeism, lesser absenteeism, and a greater productivity.
And so, we tried to look at something similar in some Midwest manufacturing employees, and we found a very similar thing that, forgiveness is related to mental and physical health and that reduced work stress and greater productivity.
And, ultimately, we found, that if we put this all together in kind of a complicated statistical model that, you know, we don't have a lot of time to get into here, but we found out that people that were more forgiving in their nature, this is trait forgiveness, not just a fleeting state but they had fewer negative occupational outcomes and that was in large part because the more forgiving people had fewer workplace stressors.
The conflicts that they got into, the arguments, the upsets at work, they seem to just be able to put them away and move on and get past them in a in a more, quick and timely fashion, and that led to, you know, better outcomes.
In other work, we've, we've attempted to understand how forgiveness might kind of interact, you might say, with stress and health and work problems.
And we found that, people who are low in forgiveness, even medium in forgiveness, they have a pretty noticeable correlation between stress and these important outcomes.
But people who have high levels of forgiveness, it turns out that the forgiveness just kind of erases the connection between stress and health and work problems that that is typically very, very strong and robust.
I mean, in almost every sample you ever look at, you find these very consistent relationships between stress and health and work.
And, you know, when we looked exclusively at just people who are are high forgivers, that connection is just not there.
It it's just absent.
It's there's no statistically, significant relationship between stress and health and work problems for people that are high forgivers, which is, that's amazing.
Right?
That's a that's an incredible protective benefit of forgiveness.
And so just, again, as a sample of some other things that we've looked at, this was a sample of, a variety of people involved in the financial services sector.
So these are financial services advisers, vice presidents, administrative assistants.
About a 100 of them completed a one day forgiveness training and some follow-up coaching over the course of the next couple of months.
And as we expected, they they showed all kinds of good, changes in stress and health and wellness.
And the thing that, just about knocked me off my chair when I saw it is that they also showed a 20% increase in sales productivity as a result of learning how to be more forgiving.
And all I can come back to in that context is to say, yeah.
You know, forgiveness is kind of an unproductive thing, isn't it?
You spend a lot of time thinking about the past, and sometimes you spend a lot of time thinking about pretty destructive things about how to get back at people.
And especially in the workplace, that's gonna interfere with productivity.
It soaks up a lot of your energy, and it soaks up a lot of your time to collaborate with others.
And, you know, it it shows in the ultimate bottom line that, forgiveness the paper we published here, I don't know if you can see the title, but we titled it a little tongue in cheek.
We said, is forgiveness one of the secrets to success?
Right?
You'd probably never you'd never think of that or, you know, talk about that.
Well, regrettably, I had my own, experience with forgiveness in the workplace.
And, it takes me back a few years now, and I'm happy to say I'm well past that.
But as, as the vice chair of the, scientific advisory council for the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
I was asked to write a blog about forgiveness, health, and happiness that described a little bit of the new resource that we developed that's called Discover Forgiveness.
I'm really excited about it.
We spent a lot of time and, putting a lot of effort in getting, you know, a a really nice collection of resources available.
So if you wanna learn about forgiveness and ways to, you know, help people become more forgiving, there's stuff for you on that website, Discover, Forgiveness.
And if you just want to know more about the health consequences, there's stuff on that website for you.
And so I wrote this blog, but, you know, the thing that I wrote about was what we were just talking about and that is being hurt in the workplace is really a difficult thing, to get past.
And, you know, one of my first reactions when I had that experience was that I was just gonna quit.
I just felt like quitting and wanted to, you know, do whatever I could to, you know, make the other people involved hurt, and so I wanted to quit on a day's notice.
Right?
I wasn't gonna give two weeks notice.
I wasn't gonna, you know, do something, you know, respectful and and professional.
I just wanted out, and I wanted people to suffer the consequences.
And, that was a really, really tough thing to work through, and it turns out it happened at a time that I wasn't quite as, you know, acquainted with, the forgiveness literature as I am now.
So, you know, the the blog is there if you wanna go and read more about it.
I'm gonna bring us back in the last couple minutes here to a couple of things that I've, alluded to, earlier.
And that is, one aspect of community forgiveness building is the notion of promotion.
And, a few years back, we did a for a community forgiveness campaign, which we call the community forgiveness blitz.
And we did it at Luther College, and, it's been done a similar kind of model has been done now a few times, around the globe, and it really consists of, essentially just inundating people.
You you know, watching Netflix these days, sometimes you feel like you're being inundated with commercials for whatever you searched on the web for last.
Right?
All the data sharing that's going on.
And so I I can't get through a a Netflix episode without seeing, you know, more ads for, you you know, a new lawnmower.
It's like, I I was interested in that for five minutes, and now I I can't get away from it.
That's the level of, inundation that we tried to provide in our community.
We put forgiveness everywhere.
We put it on the radio and the student newspaper.
The chapels that week were focused on forgiveness.
We had some lectures.
We had poetry competitions.
We had some musical performance all focused around forgiveness.
And so we really just tried to saturate the community to the point where we were just dripping in forgiveness.
And then we measured a variety of different things, relationships with teachers and relationships with staff and relationships with roommates and conflict and feelings of love and welcomingness.
And sure enough, just the exposure is enough to kinda trigger that and keep it kind of fresh in people's minds that we we for for a moment, we built a more forgiving community, and, it showed.
People reported that they were more forgiving, they were more loving, they were more caring of the people that they were around.
And so, as I said, the self forgiveness literature has been a little behind here, and the efficacy of, those methods are a little less unclear.
So we're going to Trinidad And Tobago.
It's the southernmost island in The Caribbean.
It's just you can see I've highlighted it there.
It's just barely North of South America, and we're going to be working in that community to develop a community self forgiveness intervention aimed at reducing the exceedingly high rates of suicide risk in The Caribbean, the struggles that they have with addictions, and the, the the constant struggles with self forgiveness resulting from that.
And then, of course, the mental health consequences of that are, gonna be, key to to our understanding here as well.
We just found out that that, the Templeton World Charity Foundation funded this study for us.
So we are literally just now on the cusp of getting some things rolling and figuring out how to do this work.
It's gonna be a big challenge, but, we have, we have some good funding and good resources and, and really outstanding colleagues.
So I'm I'm look really looking forward to it, and I'm hopeful that we can really do, some good work here to foster community level forgiveness and also bolster what we know about, effective self forgiveness campaigns.
So I'll leave you with a couple things here.
One is that a few years ago now, I can't believe it's that long ago, but we tried to collect the research on forgiveness in health, and, we put that into this book forgiveness in health and, tried to develop a kind of a model or a way of thinking about how forgiveness and and health and flourishing all go together.
And, my kind of integrative nature, again, is thinking about forgiveness and kind of spirituality being a centerpiece of our physical, mental, and social well-being.
And then finally, I'll leave you with, I started with what I imagined or what I'm hopeful that it might look like in, DC.
And so if you get down, I'm I'm sure all of you, you know, from wherever part whatever parts of the world you might be coming from, if you ever get down there, maybe you'll see that.
Maybe if at some point somebody comes to visit me, this is what you'll see.
These are just some images of my, community here in, Northeast Iowa, as well as my contact information and, you know, email, phone number stuff.
So, so, yeah, that kinda brings us to the circle.
Thank you so much.
I really, really appreciate your input and your thoughts.
Really, really, really exciting research, you're gonna move forward into.
I would love to hear an update there.
I'm gonna read, just a chat.
If you all have questions, or input, or wanna probe further, just put it in the chat room or in the Q and A.
So, one of the comments, was for your study that you're just now starting in Trinidad.
Please examine the root cause of the suicides as so many suicides are now actually homicides disguised as suicides.
And then just to thank you for the presentation.
Any comment or thoughts you wanna add to that?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
That's, that's super.
The notion of suicide in The Caribbean is really, you know, it's a it's a deep rooted problem.
I don't think we will entirely, you know, be able to address it just through self forgiveness.
But, yeah, that's a great point, and and we will definitely, take that under advisement because, that's important to be able to, you know, separate those things.
So Yeah.
And there was a contact person for somebody for psychology in Trinidad if you're interested.
Yes.
Absolutely.
I am.
You better believe I am interested.
Yes.
Thank you.
Maybe, if they they can connect or email you later, or email me, and I'll forward.
I would love that.
Yes.
Thank you.
But, yeah, probably, if you wanna, email that contact information to me, I'll forward it.
So the one question that came up was how does one know if they have fully forgiven?
Yeah.
That's a great one.
How do you know if you've fully forgiven is it's actually a fairly common question.
And I'm going to borrow from my, you know, my mentors and role models here in responding to that.
Some would say, when you no longer want, want, hurt or pain for that person, you no longer have ill will, and you, you know, you can kinda wish the person well if we're talking about forgiveness of others.
That's maybe one, you know, marker that you've probably reached complete forgiveness in some way.
But I like the explanation, that I've heard from other folks better, and and it's it goes something like this.
It it says, the answer to how do you know if you have fully forgiven is similar to the answer to how do you know if you're in love.
And, turns out the the answer isn't really that clear.
You know, you that that's probably an impossible question to answer, but you just know it.
You you know, the genuine experience, the genuine feelings that you have, and the genuine thoughts that you have toward a person.
And, it's one of those things that we just kind of recognize when we see it.
And I wish I had a better answer for that.
The the more kind of objective scientific approach is to say, well, it's the absence of ill will and the presence of wishing someone well.
That can be measured.
But I don't believe that when we're talking about things of the spirit, which forgiveness is is first and foremost, I don't believe that we have all the answers and that science is gonna be able to necessarily provide that for us.
Best we can do is get kind of a rudimentary sense of things.
And, so, you know, you continue to listen to the, the groanings and the rumblings of the holy spirit, and you make your, sense of how genuinely complete your forgiveness process is based in that that that kind of equation is one that I can't put numbers to.
But So somebody made a comment.
So wondering what your thoughts on this.
Gary mentioned when you don't feel like a victim anymore.
Would you say that's one indicator of having fully forgiven?
Yeah.
I mean, one of the things we talk about a lot in forgiveness is the victim's story that doesn't help.
When you're, when you're, wrapped up and telling people about how poorly you've been treated, you're really, you know, kinda looking inward.
You're some people would say you're too much inside your own head.
And so, certainly, when you can start to change the the way that you talk about it, and and that change moves you from saying, when somebody asks how are you doing?
Instead of saying, well, let me tell you what happened to me.
And you go on then for, you know, hours about how you've been so terribly treated, and you can start to move to a place where you might say, well, you know, I've had some bad things happen in life, but I've I've somehow managed to get past them.
And, you start to take on what we call the the story of a hero instead of the story of a victim.
Yeah.
That's probably a sign you're turning a corner.
Very good.
Then another question, Lucia asked, would you please review the model of forgiving others again that you presented earlier?
And then my question is, do you have a re the website you mentioned is a resource.
Correct?
If somebody wants to follow-up, read more, maybe take it to their parish youth ministry, where would what's good resources they could use, like, for a hands on?
These are the steps helping people walk through this.
I just put that in the chat.
It's it's discoverforgiveness.org, that I was referencing earlier.
There's lots of resources.
We have a bunch of resources on our forgiveness foundation page.
That would be, forgivenessfoundationinternational.org.
And, you know, just all kinds of if you went to luther.edu and put in the first part of my email, t o u s l o zero one, you'll find some more things.
If you look at my colleague's web page, at worthington.com, I think.
At worthington.something.
You know, Google Google at Worthington and forgiveness, and you'll get it.
If you look at my other colleague, Fred Luskin's page, the Stanford forgiveness project, you will find resources there.
There's no shortage of places to find, resources on forgiveness.
The ones that I'm mentioning here are ones that I trust, that I I feel are good resources, to help people, with their struggles.
You will also find lots and lots of kinda pop culture around forgiveness.
It's a topic that lots of people like to kind of pontificate on, but it's sometimes hard to tell what's, you know, what's good work that has been well supported, that is effective, and what is just people's kind of opinions about, you know, how to think about forgiveness.
So someone was asking about the process of forgiving others.
So let me back up, because that's I'm I'm delighted that you asked about that, and I'm gonna figure out, there we go.
I'm gonna back up to that.
It starts with remembering.
So this I don't know if you can see my mouse move, but, it starts with remembering and then leads into empathy.
So the the key thing that we think about, when we talk about forgiveness is, you know, we we want to, we want to know what it is that we are trying to forgive.
And so it's it's it's really important that we start there.
Remembering is, it's just key.
If you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, there's there's just not much success to be had.
I I put it this way.
I put it you know, an analogy would be to say, I wanna be a better person.
You know, that's great, but, what specifically do you want to do?
And the same thing is true in in the case of, of forgiveness that you might wanna be a more forgiving person, but you gotta start with something.
And so remember, you know, whatever hurtful thing it is that that you wanna kinda try to work on and start with that and move forward with that.
That leads to empathizing, and empathy is you might say, you know, as a kid, I loved the teeter totter.
The fulcrum is the middle point that everything kind of shifts around, and the fulcrum for forgiveness might be empathy.
If you can't find a way to to find some way to see the other person's side of this, it it might be a real short road for forgiveness.
Some people can't.
They just can't empathize.
In my case that I write about in in my blog, you know, I had I had to kinda think a little bit about my boss at the time, what they were thinking about when they offended me.
And after I thought a little bit about that, it just kinda it eased a little bit of the pain.
I was able to say, oh, yeah.
Maybe there is a way I can forgive this person.
They're they're not evil to the core the way I thought they were.
If you can't empathize, at least try to sympathize.
Can you feel sorry for the person?
Is there, you know, is there some way that you can kinda recontextualize this a little bit?
And, and then you move on to the idea of altruism, and that is to say that we've all needed to be forgiven at some point.
And if you're unwilling to forgive, then, if you know your scripture at all, you know that that's a bad place to be.
Because if you're unwilling to forgive, then you are granted nothing in return.
And so the idea that you have been given an unearned that's altruism.
It's unearned.
You're you're helping, and you're giving, and no one deserves it.
And that's the same gift that you've been given, and if you're unwilling to give it back, that's really a tough spot to be.
And usually, that's a pretty powerful motivator, for people to to realize, okay.
So I'm convinced then I'm not gonna forgive this person.
And, you know, my response is then, okay.
So you're ready to never be forgiven yourself then.
And if that's the those are the options that you're up against, you maybe feel like there's some way you could find a way to forgive this person.
The notion of commitment follows, and commitment is all about, the fact that sometimes changes are easy to make or they're easier than you might think, but they're harder to maintain.
And that's a really difficult part of any process of change is that you don't you you not only have to make the change, you have to maintain it.
You have to commit to it.
And then holding on represents the notion that, you will be challenged.
And when you are, you need to overcome those challenges, recognizing that it's not a sign of weakness or failure, that you might have feelings of revenge bubbling back up in you the first time that you encounter the person in person again and you really wanna lash out at them.
That doesn't mean that you're a terrible, unforgiving person.
It means that you're normal and that, in a weak moment, some of these things really kind of overcame you.
But, finding a way to calm yourself to, you know, reorient your commitment, reorient yourself to your commitment to forgive, think about the empathy, you know, try to see their perspective in the equation, think about being an altruistic person.
All of those things have to come back to bear on those times in which you're gonna be challenged and that you need to overcome those, those hurdles.
So I forget.
I was trying to follow the chat a little bit here.
I don't know who asked that question, but I hope that's, sufficient.
There are many, many exercises built into each one of these steps.
This is Everett Worthington's model.
It's called the reach model, and, evworthington.com or or something, has has those.
He has a workbook available there, that you could go and and use, if you wanted to go in even greater depth into those steps.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Very helpful, really so much to unpack, right.
So, so much to go further and deeper.
So, so going back to the, one, one final question before we close, I don't see any other questions in the chat.
So, if you're thinking community and forgiveness, right, I'm curious when some of the community is willing to forgive, some not, or how do you what's your research or your experience with rights community, wanting to forgive, not wanting to forgive, right, that, working with those different big range, right, probably of attitudes and willingness to move forward?
Yeah.
That's the hard part of it.
When we were doing our, our community forgiveness work here, on the campus, you know, like I said, we we had we had just blitzed the campus community with forgiveness.
And in the midst of that, you know, we had a bunch of articles going into the student newspaper, back when student newspapers were printed on on an actual rag.
You know?
It was kinda fun.
I was picking it up and reading each day like, oh, that's a good one.
And then I picked it up one day, and I read an article that was, you know, pretty, I wouldn't say insulting, but it was just it was kind of negative toward forgiveness, and they were, you know, kind of saying this is, I kinda wish you guys would stop doing this.
At best, you're making everyone who's not real forgiving or real excited about forgiving feel bad.
So there is that aspect of, at the community level, creating consensus and building consensus.
And, while I'd like to believe I'm taking on more of that role as I get a little older and a little further into my career, you know, it's still one of those things that we all have to kinda grow into.
And and sometimes people who are younger are really good at it right away, but community building, consensus raising, you know, developing kind of a following, creating a cohesiveness to the way that a group thinks.
These are characteristics of leadership.
Right?
Good leaders do these things.
They bring people together.
They unite them around common causes.
They lead them in positive directions.
We need leaders who are ultimately in some of the things that I've just talked about.
They're models.
They're role models of forgiveness.
We need leaders that embrace forgiveness as a core requirement of the communities that they lead.
And that's, that's the best answer I can give in in terms of, there are probably no secret remedies for building consensus in groups.
We know there are things that help and things that hurt to build cohesiveness in groups from social psychology, but, you know, when when good leaders can can create a kind of overarching goal that that kind of brings everyone together focused around a single mission, incredible things can happen.
Right?
When we when we leave our differences aside and say we need to we need to let these lesser things be something that takes up less of our time, and we need to focus on the big stuff and get that right.
That's where you can really see incredible change take place.
You know, that's my hope that's my hope and prayer for Mhmm.
All communities that are struggling with conflict and violence and injustice.
And Yeah.
So so there's one last question that popped in the chat is Yeah.
You mentioned that forgiveness is a trait.
Is there a forgiveness assessment scale that may help to determine where my one might fall on this scale?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
There are actually several of them.
The trait forgiveness scale comes to mind very quickly.
That's been around for probably fifteen years.
It's been used widely.
There might not be, in terms of norms, if you wanna compare yourself to where you stand, the norms might be a little hard for you to find.
There is a tool called the Enright Forgiveness Inventory.
That's a a long standing tool as well.
The EFI for short, Enright.
Bob Enright is a few hours for me at the University of Wisconsin, and developed that scale also probably some twenty years ago.
So it's been used for a long time.
I'm thinking of the, what is known it's a really long name, but it it's the transgression related, transgression related inventory, of, motivations, something to that, effect.
It's short is the trim.
That's another, good scale.
There are several others that, you know, are are the the names of them aren't relevant here.
But, certainly, if someone wanted, you know, just, either for just kind of fun or for personal insight or self help, if you wanted any of those kinds of scales, I can certainly send them and send, and send some easy reference points.
I use those often in classes, and I I have the reference points.
You know, this is what the average is in a group of college students.
This is what the average is in adults.
You know?
So yeah.
Absolutely.
Anyone interested in that, please, you know, either let doctor Klausie know or myself, and and I'm I'd be happy to share that.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
What a helpful glimpse.
Right?
First glimpse.
And I think, giving an appetite for more and just even listening to you.
Right?
I'm thinking so many areas of, application.
Right?
It's just Yeah.
Incredible.
And I need to teach people that it's possible, and introduce the concepts.
And, so thank you very much.
This is, wonderful.
Really, really appreciate your input, and thank you every much for coming.
Everybody who's been able to come, we'll, send the recording out.
I know we have, so many people in all time zones of this world in our program.
So for those who are on the Asian side, I guess, they're probably asleep, or Australia and Africa, probably also.
So, anyway but, we'll send out the recording.
And thank you again so much, doctor Toussaint.
It was really wonderful.
Really, really appreciate.
And, good night to everybody.
Thank you for coming, and so good to have everybody.
Thank you.
And your next IVS Global Talk will be starting again in the fall.
We do two in the fall, two in the spring.
So stay posted for announcements for the fall talks.
But thank you so much.
I really appreciate your input.
Thank you.
It was my honor, my privilege.
Thank you so much.
Enjoyed it greatly.