WHAT THIS EPISODES ABOUT…
Hello ladies, I’m Shauna Hoffman, thank you for letting me pop into your life today and thank you for all of the great feedback on the last podcast, ‘Getting through A Hard Day’s Night’.
I know so many of you were struggling at this time, and I’m so glad that I could lighten your day, even for a moment, as promised.
Today, we’re going to tackle one of the hardest things we need to do in order to claim back our own peace. It’s truly the ultimate of healing tools, forgiveness, yes.
We have all heard the myriad of quotes on forgiving. You know the ones on forgiving others and the best ones on forgiving ourselves. So today I’m actually going to delve into some of these thoughts and philosophies and hope you find something that resonates with you.
Listen in…
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT DISCUSSED…
• Guy Free Podcast: https://guyfree.com
• Guy Free Facebook Group: https://guyfreeworkingonme.com
• Shauna’s website: https://www.workingonme.com
WHEN DOES IT AIR…
April 18, 2020
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Hello ladies, I’m Shauna Hoffman, thank you for letting me pop into your life today and thank you for all of the great feedback on the last podcast, ‘Getting through A Hard Day’s Night’.
I know so many of you were struggling at this time, and I’m so glad that I could lighten your day, even for a moment, as promised.
Today, we’re going to tackle one of the hardest things we need to do in order to claim back our own peace. It’s truly the ultimate of healing tools, forgiveness, yes.
We have all heard the myriad of quotes on forgiving. You know the ones on forgiving others and the best ones on forgiving ourselves. So today I’m actually going to delve into some of these thoughts and philosophies and hope you find something that resonates with you.
Let’s start with, what is forgiveness?
I like to define it as a conscious deliberate decision to let gold feelings of hurt, resentment or vengeance towards someone who is harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness or not.
Okay, I love that last part. I’m going to say it again. Whether they actually deserve your forgiveness or not the definition goes, on to say that forgiveness doesn’t mean for getting… And it absolutely does not mean condoning or excusing the painful offence. So, let’s start with the first part of that definition.
A conscious deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance towards someone who has harmed you. What this means is that forgiveness is a change in perception from holding anger or resentment towards that person who hurt you, to letting go.
And how we get to this change in perception is the biggest part of the journey.
Sometimes it comes because you’re just tired of holding on to the pain. Sometimes holding the pain or anger is hurting you way more than it’s hurting them half the time.
The person who hurt us isn’t even in our life anymore.
Yes, it’s been too hard to forget the wounds they gave us.
I have this analogy I like to use.
Imagine that the wound that they gave you is a thorn in your hand, God they hurt you so much that you hold so tight to that thorn you squeeze it in your hand.
Sometimes the pain of that thorn is what we hold on to because we can’t let it go or throw it away yet, we feel that if we do we would be giving them a free pass. But the truth is, the only person who is hurting, from holding that thorn is you, you are wounding your own hand, as you grasp so tightly on to the hurt. Now, let’s remember the second part of the definition of forgiveness, and apply it to this analogy.
We can let go of that thorn, we can open our hand take that thorn out and throw it away. Regardless of whether that person actually deserves your forgiveness or not, and just because you’re throwing it away, it doesn’t mean that you’re forgetting, condoning or excusing what they did to you. What you are doing is forgiving through a change in perception that’s allowing you to relieve your hand of carrying that thorn anymore. This is for you, this act of forgiveness, it’s not for them, they never even have to know…you’ve forgiven them.
Forgiveness does not have to be a two-way communication. Forgiveness is an act that you give to yourself to free yourself from the pain, sadness, the replaying of the memories and exhaustion of holding that thorn in your life any longer.
So, let’s be honest here, how easy is this really to do? The truth is there are varying levels of forgiveness because they’re varying levels of hurt or wounds we’ve endured.
So, it depends on the level of hurt, we’ve received, or the level of hurt we have inflicted on others. Okay, that last sentence we’re going to leave for a little later in the podcast. Let’s start with how we forgive someone who has deeply hurt us when we’re in the deep in the aftermath of a wound from someone. It is virtually impossible to find a way to forgive them.
Chances are, you’re still so angry, you’ve not even gotten to the place of feeling the hurt or the pain yet.
There’s a model that says this; anger covers hurt, hurt covers sadness, sadness covers love.
Damn, do you mean that underneath the anger I have for someone, that there’s way down deep love?
Well, you know more than likely the only way that you can feel the level of hurt, or sadness that you feel is because of the level of love you once felt. Okay, I know that’s heavy, I don’t even expect you to agree with it. And again, I always preface this, if you were physically or mentally abused by someone, this model may not be the one that is any way appropriate for you.
I have a friend who shared with me, it’s something that she learned while practicing forgiveness. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean we need to go back to what the relationship was before the hurt. It doesn’t wipe the slate clean. It becomes a new understanding, a new awareness, and maybe now you protect yourself from that person in a totally new way.
Forgiveness and letting go is your way of making new constructs around what kind of relationship you want with this human. Once you’ve forgiven and set your own heart-free, you can then set new and healthy boundaries with them that make you feel safe. It may mean having this person in your life, or it may mean walking away from that person forever, but you will be the one to decide what it is.
Remember that I said at the beginning of this podcast, that this is one of the hardest lessons and self-awareness.
Well, it is also, I believe, one of the final frontiers, in finding peace after the breakup of a relationship.
Now let’s talk about another thing that affects forgiveness.
Our ego, the first thing I like to help my clients with is differentiating if their ego is hurt, or their heart. Let’s think about this.
Were you already on the way out of the relationship? But the Ex is the one that pulled the plug.
Were you miserable? But the Ex was the one who walked out before you did.
This is one of the ways we tend to punish ourselves, we don’t want to see that they may have done us a favor instead by seeing how wrong we were by them. We can blame them for the downfall of the relationship and often it’s one incident, they cheated on us or lied to us, or stole from us. That finally causes the break up. But if you look at the reality of what the relationship was before that moment, you may see that you were emotionally gone already way before that happened. So where does forgiveness fit into this scenario?
Maybe forgiving yourself for not getting out sooner, for not taking the lead to your own happiness. Remember part of becoming self-aware is looking at yourself and taking responsibility for your mistakes in a relationship. And, damn, that is really hard. Sometimes it sure is easier when we can just blame the other person or just want them to beg for our forgiveness or tell us how they hurt us. But the minute you can look at yourself and your actions, whether it’s with a main family member, friend, and see your part of the conflict than the world your heart and your soul will open up for healing, and then you can finally let go.
No, let’s clarify and talk about those of you who were blind-sided. There are many women who were totally committed to the relationship. Women who tried, and gave, and loved your partner, but they still cheated on you, or stole from you, or lied to you, and you trusted them, or loved them so much that you were blindsided when their truth arose.
Often when this happens, you get angry at yourself for not seeing this person for who they really were earlier on. You’re angry at them for the harm they did for breaking your heart, you may be angry with them because they left without even trying to fix the relationship as you try to move towards forgiveness. It’s easier if you can accept all sides of the truth.
I just want you to ask yourself, if you had seen signs of the downfall of your relationship, would you have left?
Is there any chance that you were in denial about them because you didn’t want to face the truth, and have to make that decision? Fact their own relationships and marriages that actually go on seeming happy and normal.
And then the rug gets pulled out from under them because the other person all of a sudden changed.
If this is you, more than likely they were changing behind your back and not showing you. So, when that new person showed up in your living room and said they were leaving, the shock that you experienced was overwhelming. Being self-aware means not being on remote control, and that means not letting your relationships be on remote control either.
I offer you the opportunity to look at your relationship and see if there were clues you missed along the way, more than anything, I don’t want you to go through the same kind of hurt in a relationship again. Okay, back to forgiveness. Every one of you listening has different levels of hurt betrayal and experiences.
And they could be from a mate, a friend, parent, family member or even a stranger. So, I’m going to touch on one thing that’s important on this journey. The first step on that model I shared with you before, is to make sure that you are not so caught up in the anger that you are not allowing yourself to feel the hurt, and if you are not feeling the hurt, you cannot feel the sadness. I need you to get to the hurt, then to the sadness, because once you feel the sadness, you can reflect on your own right to be loved. When you finally get to the point that you know, you’re overwhelming right to be loved by someone with integrity and heart, then you have taken your power back from the person who has hurt you, and you have affirmed how unbelievably lovable you are.
I love this quote; “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart”. That’s Cory 10 Boom. Mahatma Gandhi said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong”. So now, let me give you just a few of the simple tools I can on this journey to being a strong, healthy woman, able to forgive.
Number one, you need to stay in the moment. So much of our pain, and our sadness comes from reliving the past. If you’re going to relive the past and the hurt, I offer you to do it for a reason, do it so that you can take time to self-reflect and see the value of forgiving the past and letting it go. One of the best concepts, from Eckhart Tolle, was the idea that sadness comes from living in the past or living in the future. If you’re going to replay the past give yourself a really good reason to do so. And if forgiveness is it, then use it.
Number two, what would be the best part of letting go of this pain and forgiving this person? I call it the pay-off. What is the payoff for you doing this, will it allow you to finally be in the present, will it allow you to forgive yourself along the way, will it bring down your depression? If you still have to be around this person, will it gain back your feeling of control?
Number three: Realize right now that you have a choice, you can hold onto this wound or you can start to do the work to release it. You can start the journey to this change in perception, you can start the journey to forgiveness, you can start the journey to peace. Remember that forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.
I love this Mark Twain quote.
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
I’m going to let you interpret that one for yourself ladies. I hope for you the most beautiful fragrant of violet, I wish for you, no more thorns in your beautiful, delicate, but strong hands, heart and soul. I wish for you kindness towards yourself and peace in your heart, be good to yourself until I pop into your lives once again.