LET GO. FORGIVE. LIVE

FORGIVENESS by David Whyte

is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, the act of forgiveness not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw center, to reimagine our relation to it.

The lack of forgiveness and the need for forgiveness is one of the biggest challenges I think many of us face. I do a lot of coaching around this. There is a misunderstanding when it comes to forgiveness because the concepts are difficult to accept.

Forgiveness is not telling someone something. We do not need to sit down with the person. We do not need to talk to the person. The only thing forgiveness requires is that we stop feeling angry or resentful toward that person.

Dr. Fred Luskin of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project defines forgiveness as “the feeling of peace that emerges as you take your hurt less personally, take responsibility for how you feel and become a hero instead of a victim in the story that you tell. Forgiveness is the experience of peacefulness in the present moment.”

We must take responsibility for how we feel. We are not responsible for what others do to us, but we are responsible for our reaction and for how we let it affect us. 

I want you to think about what anger and resentment feel like. When you don’t forgive someone, that’s the EMOTION you feel. Here’s where the difficulty comes in. Many people think that when they feel angry or resentful toward someone that person experiences the emotions of anger and resentment. It is not true. That other person does not experience our anger or our resentment. That other person only experiences their interpretation of our behavior. 

All that is required of us to forgive someone is to change how we feel, to stop feeling angry and resentful. Most of us think that somehow our emotion is punishing the other person. In fact, WE are the only ones that we are punishing. Because we are the only ones who feel our emotions.

It may be true that we may be taking action by not talking to them or yelling at them or being rude to them or giving them the silent treatment. The other person is not experiencing our feelings, they are only experiencing their interpretation of our actions. That is how little control we have over someone else’s emotions. 

When we do not forgive someone we may assume we are hurting them and serving ourselves. But, in fact, it is the other way around. 

If someone asks me “Should I or do I want to forgive someone?” the answer is “only if you want to change the way you feel” because the definition of forgiveness is changing the way you feel. 

If you decide that, “Yes, I would like to change the way I feel. I don’t want to feel anger and resentment.” My next question to you as your coach would be: Why do you feel anger? Why do you feel resentment? Now, there is only one answer to this question and it is not the one you think. 

You are going to want to tell me what the person did to you. You are going to want to tell me the whole story of why you feel angry and resentful. And you are going to want me to agree that you are “right” to feel that way. 

However, the reason you feel anything is because of how you THINK. Your thoughts create your emotions.

Why do you feel angry? Why do you feel resentment? Why do you feel hurt? Because of your thoughts about what they did. That is the only reason. 

The person we forgive does not need to change. They do not need to apologize. They do not need to explain themselves. They do not need to do anything in order for us to feel better. 

Forgiveness is similar to the concept of unconditional love. When you love someone, you don’t insert the feeling of love into their emotional life. YOU just feel love. When you forgive someone, you don’t make them feel good, you make YOU feel good. When you don’t forgive someone, you’re not making them feel bad, you’re making YOU feel bad. 

Many of us will say that they have forgiven someone but they still feel angry and resentful. They are acting and pretending to be kind. That is not forgiveness. Because we have not changed our emotions, just our behavior. If we haven’t changed our feelings, it does not matter how we act. 

We can actually forgive someone and then never speak with them again. Because our behavior has nothing to do with it.

During the course of our lives, we are going to be hurt and we are going to inflict some hurt too. We aren’t going to get out of this life completely unscathed. People are imperfect and will do things that affect others in a negative way. It is hard to be on the receiving end of these hurts. It is also hard to know you’ve hurt another. We want to know that we will be forgiven for what we’ve done wrong. If we don’t learn how to forgive others and ourselves we will have a very hard time being happy or peaceful.

We all have those stories of hurt that we can tell. The hurt can seem as fresh as if it just happened even if it was many years ago. We hold onto these stories and the hurt and resentment that go along with them. They can become part of our identity and they even affect our other relationships.

If you say, “I’ve forgiven them, but they really annoy me.” You’re still giving them too much power. 

Many of us don’t want to forgive someone, we don’t want to stop feeling angry and resentful because of what we feel if we do. You can drop the anger and resentment and never see them again. 

Alternatively, we can forgive someone, and then we can keep forgiving them every time we see them! This is the case for me with my mom. I work on my own thinking every time I see her or talk to her. This is NOT because of my mom. This is because of the way I am thinking. That’s how I get to practice. That’s how I get to own my power. 

If we forgive someone, it does not mean we condone their behavior. Other people get to behave however they want. Their behavior is none of our business. Condoning their behavior simply means that we accept that other people behave the way they want to behave and we have no control over them. Sometimes they do things that we interpret as hurtful and painful. That’s okay. But recognizing that no one has the power to make us feel and that we are the ones interpreting their behavior that way and causing ourselves our own pain, is powerful.

Many years ago I decided to forgive my mother for everything that she had done wrong in my life. I felt kind of this sense of superiority, this sense of, “You did me wrong, but I’m a good person and I forgave you.” So I got to feel good about myself. But I missed the point of forgiveness. Because if you’re in that place with someone, the very next time they do something that isn’t great, you’re even MORE angry. You’re even more resentful because you’re like, “Hey, I forgave you for everything you did wrong. I forgave you for not being a good mom, for not being there, for being an alcoholic, for cheating on my dad, for all of that. Look how great I am. I forgave you and now you’re going to do this?” 

Having a life where you were never angry or resentful, is a pretty peaceful life. I’ll tell you what that can lead to. That can lead to beginning to be able to forgive yourself for everything that you are hating yourself for. 

The ticket to the universe is when you can never feel anger or resentment toward anyone again. Then you can begin to forgive yourself for being yourself and own it. When you can forgive yourself for all the things you’ve done “wrong”, you can stop feeling guilty. 

If you wonder, “You shouldn’t forgive yourself because what about all those other people?” You forgive yourself for yourself, not for those other people. The people that think that you’ve done them wrong, are interpreting your actions as what’s causing them pain. It doesn’t mean you don’t apologize and it doesn’t mean you don’t keep apologizing. It doesn’t mean you don’t tell them that you’ll never do it again. You just drop the resentment. You drop the regret. You drop the guilt because it does not serve any purpose.

When I coach people around this area, we use the WORKING IN worksheet to really look at and begin to change the way they think.

In the WORKING IN worksheet, we have our SITUATION, which is whatever that person did, and that can’t touch our emotional life without us having a thought about it. Notice that in between that SITUATION line and that EMOTION line is that THOUGHT line. The biggest protection between me and what other people do is my THOUGHTS. That person has no power over you. You, sitting in this moment, that thing that they did in the past has no power over you now. That thing that they did yesterday has no power over you now. That thing that they did to you five minutes ago has no power over you now. Your EMOTIONS are protected by your THOUGHTS. 

We then go on to understand WHY you are thinking the way you do. We do this by looking at your thoughts from different points of view. 

Remember all it means is you’re not willing to feel angry or resentful. It doesn’t mean that you don’t put up boundaries. It doesn’t mean that you don’t ask someone not to be in your life. All it means is you give up being angry and resentful. That’s the gift you give yourself. You are the one that can change it by changing what you think. Two major defining moments for me was when I forgave my mom and when I decided there was nothing to forgive. 

…at the end of life, the wish to be forgiven is ultimately the chief desire of almost every human being. In refusing to wait; in extending forgiveness to others now, we begin the long journey of becoming the person who will be large enough, able enough and generous enough to receive, at our very end, that necessary absolution ourselves.

What I want to ask you is, do you have someone you want to forgive but have not been able to? Maybe this person is you yourself.

Reach out for a Free FIERCE Consultation. You have nothing to lose and the world to win.

lisa@stayFIERCE.com  646.822.3000  www.stayFIERCE.com

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