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Forgiveness is like a muscle:

The more you flex it, the stronger it gets. Get it strong enough and negative people and events just won’t affect you as much.

First Step: Remember

Start with the list of people or events to forgive. Each time you meditate focus on just one person or event. Keep in mind that the person could be you. You could be forgiving yourself for something you did in the past that still gnaws at you.

Second Step: Create a Scene

Bring up in your imagination the person or event. You will now repeat these three steps.

• Step 1 is set the scene. Bring to mind the scene or image where you will do the forgiveness exercise. For example, when I was forgiving myself for a bad business decision that cost me a lot, I imagined seeing a younger version of myself facing me in my office.
• Step 2 is feel the anger and pain. For no more than two minutes (it’s okay to estimate), allow yourself to feel the pain and anger. It’s even okay to yell or pound a pillow. Let the emotions out, but don’t spend too long on this.
• Step 3 is forgive into love. Practice asking the questions What did I learn from this? How did this situation make my life better? Also remember the idea of “hurt people, hurt people.” Ask: What could have happened in the past to this person to cause them to hurt me so? As you start asking these questions, you learn to see the situations from another’s perspective.

Last Step: Repeat

Forgiveness may not come from one session, but no matter how grave the wrongdoing the forgiveness can come. It just takes practice. When forgiveness comes, it often is so thorough and complete it can be surprising. As Khaled Hosseini wrote in the The Kite Runner: “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

This meditation should have taken four to seven minutes max.