Forgiveness Is Good For Your Health

Photo by Amelia Alpaugh.

A little fight with your partner or a long-term grudge against a friend or family member can impact you more deeply than you realize. It could even be harmful to your health. But the act of forgiveness can improve your overall health. It can improve sleep, lower cholesterol, and reduce pain, blood pressure, anxiety, and stress.

Even better, a new study shows that if people were highly forgiving of both themselves and others, that characteristic alone virtually eliminated the connection between stress and mental illness, Time reports. The study found that you can actually eliminate mental illness caused by stress just by forgiving someone.

"It's almost entirely erased -- it's statistically zero," study author Loren Toussaint, an associate professor of psychology at Luther College in Iowa, tells Time. "If you don't have forgiving tendencies, you feel the raw effects of stress in an unmitigated way. You don't have a buffer against that stress."

So, let it go, move on, and you'll be less stressed. What's not to like about that?

By: Tanya Edwards