Forgiveness
Crossing the Finish Line When It Is Hard to Forgive
Don't be discouraged if you have tried and have not yet forgiven. You can win.
Updated July 22, 2026 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- Science shows that when we forgive, this can reduce nagging resentment and help people have more inner peace.
- Sometimes, as people begin to forgive someone who acted unjustly, they run into difficulty completing it.
- These methods may aid your forgiveness process, helping you cross the finish line of forgiveness.
Diane was patient with her boss as he made unrealistic demands that put her under pressure. She tried to show him that his timelines for completing work were unrealistic, but his demands persisted. She eventually switched jobs to a new company. In the process, she began to forgive her past boss. One of her motivations was her awareness that scientific studies show that as people forgive, they can significantly reduce their resentment. As she practiced forgiveness, she was surprised to continually “run into roadblocks.” In her desire to keep trying forgiveness, she attempted the five approaches I suggested earlier. Yet, she asked for more approaches to forgive.
If you share this same difficulty in forgiving, below are seven more ways to help you confront the injustices you have faced, forgive the person deeply and well, and move on from the inner discontent that may have been nagging you for a long time.
1. Small steps are better than giant steps as you practice patience. Do not expect too much progress too fast. It takes the moral virtue of patience to cross the finish line of forgiveness. In our hurry-up world, we expect instant results, yet forgiving takes time. Pause and see the other’s inner woundedness, not to excuse, but instead to start seeing the full humanity in the other. Diane went back in her mind to the boss's continual unhappiness. Was he miserable in his job, and was he passing that on to others? Did his parents have unrealistic expectations of him, and so he grew up with the wrong way of dealing with others? Take your time seeing the one who hurt you, with a fuller view of who the person is. Are you aware of any suffering this person endured in their younger years?
2. Cultivate a strong will. What is your usual pattern in life? Do you sometimes start projects, but do not complete them? Is this a regular occurrence for you? If so, recall at least three situations in which you persevered, despite difficulty, and finished the task. Now apply that to your forgiveness. You have completed tasks in the past, and so apply that tenacity to the current forgiveness project.
3. Practice bearing the pain in challenging areas that are not about forgiving. An important part of forgiveness is learning to “bear the pain” for the one who hurt you so that you do not displace that pain onto innocent and unsuspecting others. You can practice bearing pain outside the context of forgiveness. For example, if you are driving your car and in a hurry, you might get irritated by slow traffic. Think of this as a good chance to practice staying calm and rolling with what's happening so you don't get as easily annoyed. You can learn this patience when in emotional pain, then transfer the learning to the forgiveness process toward the one who is hard to forgive.
4. Draw inspiration from forgiveness heroes. We have many forgiveness heroes who might inspire you. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a book, Strength to Love, encouraging readers to forgive. He wrote this at a time when his family was under threat, and yet he stood firm in his resolve to love. Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom forgave the SS officer who was abusive to her when she was imprisoned. He approached her one day after she gave a forgiveness talk, and he asked for forgiveness, which she granted. These heroes model forgiveness for us and can be inspiring as we complete the task.
5. Shift your focus from healing yourself to doing good for the person who was cruel to you. It is good to have a motive to help yourself in forgiving. As an analogy, if you hurt your knee, it is good to focus on yourself and seek medical help to heal. It is the same with forgiveness; however, there are more motivations for forgiveness than an exclusive self-focus. If you begin to cultivate mercy toward the other, with a motivation that this person lead a fair life, this can slowly start to change your heart toward greater forgiveness for this person.
6. Work on finding meaning in suffering. Viktor Frankl, in his classic work, Man’s Search for Meaning, discusses how his standing in the truth of the grave injustices of his imprisonment strengthened his ability to see the truth. He grew in his suffering by finding meaning in the fact that he was growing in his understanding of the truth of justice while his captors were degenerating in it. Are you becoming more sensitive to the suffering of others as you suffer? See if this is the case. If it is, acknowledge your suffering is not for nothing. You are growing in your humanity as you suffer and forgive.
7. Practice on an easier case in which you are not as resentful. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle emphasized practice when exercising any of the moral virtues. If you can start to forgive a person who was not very hurtful to you, then you become more familiar with the forgiveness process, possibly grow in confidence with this process, and even learn to embrace this virtue as part of your life. You then can take this newfound improvement in forgiving and apply it to the one who is hard to forgive.
In the long run, if you take the small steps first, cultivate the strong will, bear pain in various life circumstances, shift your compassion toward the one who hurt you, as Corrie Ten Boom did, find meaning in your suffering, and try practicing forgiveness on others first, you may find triumph in your forgiving as you cross the forgiveness finish line. Even then, you may have to revisit forgiving in the hard cases because the anger, although reduced, may remain to a small degree.
