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What Forgiveness Really Is

4 min readAug 29, 2022

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You might be surprised who’s really set free when you decide to forgive.

Forgiveness is absolutely one of the most powerful actions we can take to fundamentally improve our lives and the lives of those around us. I consider it an essential life skill.

Yet many people don’t understand what forgiveness truly is. That’s okay, it took me a looong time to learn it. In fact, it takes most people who learn it a long time because it seems counterintuitive to our emotional nature.

I’ll get right to the point. Here we go:

Forgiveness does NOT mean you are saying that whatever someone did to you that was wrong is okay. It just means you are deciding not to seek payback and letting it go.

Seriously, that’s the big “secret.” If you can learn this, internalize it, and put it into practice an amazing thing will happen: you will be set free from a lot of anger and bitterness and live a better life.

You’re so money.

Think of forgiveness as the financial concept. It’s a term in finance that means you absolutely, legally owe me this money but I am giving up my legal right to it. I’m not going to bother about it anymore.

Bottle of poison.

You’ve probably heard the saying that goes unforgiveness is like drinking a bottle of poison and waiting for the other person to get sick.

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Shane Stacks
Shane Stacks

Written by Shane Stacks

My real education is the school of life. Come be a pilgrim with me and let’s learn together.