00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 241, "Forgiving Others." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:19

Alright. Hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. Just really quick, if you would like to leave me a review, that would be so welcome. It's such a great way for other people to find the content that I share. If this has been helpful for you and if it's helped you to show up more the way that you want to and clean up some stuff in your life, it's a great way to do some good in the world is to share a podcast and you can read review or you can just share it. You can copy the click link on there and you can share these podcasts with people who you feel may benefit from them and it's a great and easy way to share. So that's going to do it. We're going to jump in.

01:02

Today we are talking about forgiving others. I actually just gave this presentation at a church meeting that I was asked to speak at and put a lot of time and effort into it and felt pretty good about it. And so I wanted to share this here. I know that I talked about forgiveness and compassion probably about two months ago, maybe, but this one has some additional information and just kind of a different perspective on it that I wanted to share. So I just wanted to say that as I was preparing this, it was amazing to me that I really didn't think going into it that I had anybody to forgive. And I was surprised as I got in, as I got started, that some things came to my mind and I'm pretty sure that God put them there that said, "hey, like you need to clean up your thoughts around these these people right here, around what's going on." And I was a little bit surprised at first. And I was like, "wait, like I don't have issues." And then I realized that it was my problem. The way that I was thinking about it and what was going on, I was harboring some difficult feelings that I wasn't aware of before. And so I was really grateful for that. And I just hope and pray even that as you listen to this content today that the Spirit will be able to talk to you and show you ways that you can clean up, relationships that you can clean up, ways that you can move more into being more Christlike.

02:33

Forgiveness is a subject around which there is a lot of pain. And so it's sometimes is a hard topic to speak about. But I do know that God sees our pain. And I know that He wants us to be able to move through the pain to the peace that is available to us. Forgiveness is the process of moving through the pain and then being able to let go of the pain so that we can begin to focus on other things. When we are stuck in not being able to forgive, it often keeps us stuck in other areas of our lives because the time, the energy, and the mental capacity that could be spent creating the next phase of our lives are being spent ruminating and re-addressing what has caused us the pain in the first place. And this keeps us from being able to move forward and continue progressing.

03:26

So, how do we let go of the pain? How do we stop thinking about the situation and the pain it has caused? First, I believe it's so vital that we turn to God and we seek His divine assistance to help us understand, to help us see, to help us become aware. Christ has suffered all things. He perfectly understands our pain even better than we do, and He is able to succor us in all things, meaning He can provide relief for us in all things, even the pain of being hurt. And after turning to God for strength, I believe that we can also turn to the creative power of our thoughts. Proverbs 23:7 says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." God has given us power in our thoughts to become. And when we can learn to think it in our heart, we can become it. And this is one reason why I feel that the thought model is so powerful. And this is why there are so many life coaches from the Life Coach School who are LDS, because we...this rings true to us: the thought model, this idea that our thoughts create. And this is how God creates with His thoughts. And learning to manage our thoughts, this is a space of us becoming more like God, learning how to be like Him.

04:55

So in the last several weeks as I've anticipated, participated this opportunity to make this presentation, I had a lot of conversations about forgiveness with a lot of different friends. And I have heard stories of forgiveness around physically abusive parents, around emotionally abusive parents, around sexually abusive siblings, around spouses who have committed adultery, children who reject their parents, parents who reject their children, parents who have intentionally left a child off their will, parents who have been taken advantage of, or people who have been taken advantage of financially. I've heard stories of forgiveness around divorce and the social fallout. And in almost every instance, I have heard the following two phrases: I just finally decided I was done hurting. Isn't that interesting? I just decided I was done. I decided to move on. What if it's that "easy"? That doesn't sound like an easy thing, but I think we hit a point where we just say, "I'm done." Or this is the other thought that I've heard a lot of: I began to look at things from their perspective. Interesting, right? So the ability to let go of the pain seems to be connected to our deciding to let it go. But why do we often resist letting it go?

06:20

So in from all these discussions that I had with friends, and with even with some clients, here are some reasons that I gleaned from these discussions. There's several of them. So we feel that if we let go, if we forgive, that we are condoning the behavior that was so hurtful, that we are saying it was okay, that we're letting them off the hook. Fascinating idea, right? That there even is a hook. If we look at Christ's example of the woman taken in adultery, he didn't condone the behavior, but neither did he condemn it as well as he didn't feel contempt toward her. And this is a great place to start with our own forgiveness journey, choosing not to condemn and also not to feel contempt. And this can be hard and it can be challenging and it's okay. That's part of what we're here to do, right? To learn how to do these hard things. And I believe moving on, I believe that we also struggle to forgive because we fear being hurt again. We may also feel that not forgiving distances us and protects us from further pain. And also we may not have a full understanding that forgiveness and trust are two very different things. Forgiveness is about us, about our experience, about how we choose to feel and respond. Trust has to do with the other person, about whether their behavior is trustworthy. So we absolutely can forgive and also choose not to trust in the same breath. So if you go back, I didn't look up the podcast number, but early on, probably in the double digits, I have a podcast called "Forgiveness and Trust." That would be a great place to visit if you want to check that out.

08:14

So the point is that forgiveness isn't about putting ourselves back into a vulnerable place, a place where we can and will be hurt again. And when we believe that it is, that's why we can struggle to forgive. Sometimes we may not feel that or sometimes we may feel that not forgiving puts us in a place of power where we are in more control of what will happen to this person or to us, right? But not forgiving actually takes away our control. It binds us. It binds us not only to the other person, also to the past. We are bound to them because they are constantly in our minds and in our hearts. We are weighed down by the constant replaying in our minds of how they have hurt us. We can't let go of them, right? Because we're constantly thinking of them. And we're bound to our past by not allowing ourselves to let go of it and rather continue to live in this painful experience.

09:14

There's a great quote I'm going to share with you from Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He said, "When I talk of forgiveness, I mean the belief that you can come out the other side of better person, a better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred." Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood where you are making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive, then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator. You can move on. You can even help the perpetrator to become a better person too. In the Doctrine and Covenants section 64 verse 10, God says, "I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men."

10:05

So here's an interesting question that my brain went to: What purpose does my forgiving another person have to do with God's plan? Why would we be commanded to forgive all men? How does that help us? And how does it help anybody? Because whether I forgive them or not has nothing to do with whether God forgives them or not. Their behavior that we have experienced as hurtful is between them and God. Why then does God require us to forgive? Because forgiveness is creating an opportunity for us to grow, to become more like Christ, to step into greater responsibility. So when we've been subjected to hurtful behavior, what is our responsibility? Is it to hold this over their head forever? I don't think so. You know, think back to the the woman taken in adultery. We don't condemn, we don't hold in contempt, right? So what is our responsibility? I believe that it is to stop focusing on their behavior and to start focusing on ours. The letting go has nothing to do with their standing before God. We can trust God to take care of that. Not forgiving has to do with feeling like we need to be in charge of their punishment. That if we don't forgive, that somehow they will really feel sorrow and be punished for their behaviors. But not forgiving keeps us focused on their behavior instead of focusing on our own.

11:46

This is one reason why it can be so difficult to progress because we can't control their behavior. And when that is our focus, we have no power and we may feel as though we have been victimized. We can, however, control our behavior. And when this is our focus, we become empowered. We are no longer in a place of victimization. Forgiving does not mean that we negate our own experience or pain, either. Rather, it means that we choose to take responsibility for moving out of the pain. We release the judgment of the other person's behavior to God and we begin to focus on our own behavior. We ask questions such as, "how am I choosing to show up? How am I following the commandments? How can I be more like Christ in this situation?"

12:39

Christ taught us that the first and greatest commandment is to love God. And the second, and seemingly third, is to love our neighbors as ourselves. The first and greatest commandment is to love, to learn how to love. So how are we obeying the commandment to love when we forgive? We are loving God enough to trust the judgment and mercy to Him. To let Him do that, to let go of our feeling like we need to carry judgment toward this person. We seek to align our hearts with His loving and forgiving heart, to create a heart like God's. To learn to love as God does, we need to understand how God loves. And here's the thing: God loves unconditionally. He loves without expectation. He loves us even when we don't obey the commandments, even when our behavior hurts others. God is able to separate out the behavior from the person because He completely understands the motives behind their behavior. While we don't have the ability to see into the hearts and minds of those around us, we can practice seeing others as God sees them. Learning how to feel compassion for others is at the core of being able to forgive them. When I can see beyond the behavior and see the pain behind other people's behavior, I can begin the process of feeling compassion, of feeling love as God does.

14:12

When I can learn to accept the humanity of others, embracing the fact that they, like me, are constantly making mistakes and often unaware of the impact of my choices, that they, like me, are doing the best they know how with the awareness and capacity that they have, then my heart can begin to feel compassion for them. When I can truly believe that they are doing the best they can with the tools that they have, my heart can soften. I can start to embrace their path to God, their learning curve, their agency to walk that path the best way they know how. I will not understand their path. I most likely will not understand their decisions or their experiences. But the commandment, remember, isn't to understand others. It is to love them even in our lack of understanding. Which to me means that I get to let them work through their experience while I work through mine. And my experience is feeling, acknowledging and moving through the pain and learning how to love and how to forgive. When I continue to hold fast to their experience, I can't hold fast to mine. And my experience, remember, is the only one I can control. It's the only one that I'm responsible for. I am responsible for how I love others. I'm responsible for how I forgive others. I'm responsible for how I give others the space to be human and make mistakes. So how do I move into this greater love? I make an intentional choice to let go of the judgment of others and lean into love. I begin to focus how I am showing up in the present rather than looking at how they showed up in the past. I offer a huge helping of grace to those around me who are struggling just as I am to learn how to love better.

16:17

Learning to love others doesn't condone any behavior that hurts us. Rather, it offers grace for being human, for working through the process, for being where they are on their path and not comparing it to anyone else's path, ours included. I often hear from clients and people who say, "but I would never do that to anyone. I would never act that way." Okay, I have no doubt that that's true, but we wouldn't do it because... Because of the lessons we have learned on our path, because the things we understand and the experiences that we have had, and everybody's path is different. Everyone learns different lessons on their own time and at their own pace. The lessons we get to learn in life are not linear. Everybody doesn't learn the same lessons in the same order. Everyone learns things at different times. And offering grace for other people to express their agency on their life journey is a huge piece of learning to love. And when we can step into this type of grace, this piece of love, we can learn to let go of the judgment that is holding us back from forgiving.

17:29

And no doubt, not forgiving is holding us back from progressing. It is holding us back from peace. It is holding us back from fully basking in the love of God and Christ. Do God and Christ see our hurt? Absolutely they do. And do they understand our hurt? Without a doubt, they understand. But they cannot take away our hurt until we offer it to them with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. There are lessons available to us in the painful experiences we have. The greatest of these lessons being how to love more like Christ does. When we choose to look inside of us to where our failings are, rather than outside of us to the failings of others, we can become more Christlike.

18:23

Forgiveness is not being a victim. In fact, forgiveness is the exact opposite. Forgiveness is the process of intentionally choosing to let go of the pain so that we can truly become more like Christ and continue on our path of learning to love as He does. Forgiveness actually empowers us to move forward. Forgiveness means accepting that something did happen and then intentionally choosing to let go, to liberate ourselves from the pain and the past, and to focus on our future. Forgiveness means to stop mentally allowing the other person to continue to dictate how we spend our time, our energy, and our mental capacity, and choose instead to focus those things on Christ, on our discipleship, on stepping into the possibility of who God has created us to become. Forgiveness isn't being in denial of our pain. It is actually accepting our pain, accepting that what caused it did happen, and then choosing to step out of it and into our future. Forgiveness is acknowledging that it did happen, but then asking ourselves, "now what am I going to do?" It is choosing to be in charge of our own life experience rather than leaving it up to our natural human tendencies, our primitive brain.

19:49

Our primitive brain wants to create drama. It wants to hold us in this place where we feel this strange sense of being a victim. There's a little bit of, it feels a little bit powerless or powerful for a short time, but it actually leaves us very powerless. We have to engage our prefrontal cortex and choose to behave. Like we talked about at the very beginning, people who just said, "I just decided I was done hurting." "I decided I was finished." When we choose that, then we are choosing our own life experience. Forgiveness creates a profound change in us and we come out the other side of our experience a changed person. A person more able to love and feel and show compassion. A person who is less judgmental and more accepting of other people's diversity.

20:45

Some of my own experiences working through forgiveness came when I got divorced after a 24-year marriage. I had so many opportunities to learn how to forgive my ex-spouse. I had opportunities to forgive others who were judgmental or unkind about my choice. I had opportunities to forgive others who were dismissive and exclusive. And I continued to have opportunities to forgive those who are unkind with regards to my choices. And yet through these opportunities to forgive, I have learned to love better, to love bigger, to love more unconditionally, more cleanly, letting go of expectations and finding greater peace and confidence. I have been able to progress along my own path of discipleship. I have grown into a person who is more capable of love and acceptance. I have a long way to go, but I have come so far and I am so proud of myself. I am so grateful for the commandment to forgive because it has helped me to become a person who is more at peace, who feels more gratitude and more compassion. I am so grateful for a Father in Heaven who accepts my meager offerings, who forgives me of my faults as I struggle along my path, who allows me to step into his warm embrace.

22:11

And I just pray, my friends, that you will allow God's love to permeate your heart as you work to forgive, as you work to let go of the pain, that you will come to be able to love others more fully and to accept the peace that is offered by God when we do. Forgiveness is a beautiful gift. It's a gift. It's not something...it feels like it's hard to do at first. But when we get to the other side, it is a beautiful gift of peace, of greater love, of greater compassion. This is what forgiveness has to offer us and I love it so much and I think that this is a space that I have figured out in my middle age that makes me love growing up into middle age. I love it so much.

23:11

Okay, if you would like to talk with me about one-on-one coaching, you can go to tanyahale.com. You can sign up for a free consultation. We take about 30 minutes to talk and I answer all your questions about coaching and you can make a decision whether you think it's a good fit for you or not. It's pretty great. I am currently in a place where I have a full clientele of 20 clients and as I graduate clients out, I take on new clients and those spaces are filling pretty consistently. So it's a pretty awesome space for me to be as a coach because I absolutely love, love getting to be a part of your journey.

23:49

And whether you ever contact me or not, thank you for being here. Thank you for the honor of being part of your journey of growth and progress. And just wish you all the best my friends. This life thing can be hard sometimes. It can be hard when we feel pain that is overwhelming. But learning to forgive, learning to step into recognizing our responsibility within that is one of the most beautiful things that we can do. And it gives us the best opportunities for growth. I wish you all the best in your journey. Okay, I will see you next week my friends. Have an awesome, awesome week. Take care. Bye.