Episode 15: Three Things Forgiveness Isn't
What is your perception of forgiveness? When you think about the idea of forgiving someone who has wronged you, do you feel about as excited as a toddler who is being told it's time to take a nap? If you are carrying around frustration and resentment over things that have happened in the past, you probably have some understandable reasons why you don't want to let go. And you don't have to. But you can. For YOUR sake. Listen in to this episode to find out 3 things forgiveness ISN'T--and how it can set you free.
Links:
Free Forgiveness Class
I'm teaching a free forgiveness class Friday, January 10th on zoom.
It's called "Rewrite Your Story."
Think New Thoughts Academy:
Join the Think New Thoughts Academy to get help applying the tools you're learning on the podcast.
100 Thoughts for More Joy
Wanna think some new thoughts? Here are 100 of my favorites that you can try out. Be warned, though. Choosing to really, truly believe even one of these thoughts could drastically impact the way you view yourself and others, and might completely change your life. :)
Full Transcript:
You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 15, Three Things Forgiveness Isn't.
I'm Emily Ricks and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.
Hey, how's it going? We're going to talk about forgiveness today, but first let's talk about perceptions. So the CTFAR model that I use all the time is circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result, right? Circumstances are neutral, thoughts are optional, and thoughts create feelings.
Or another way of saying that is perceptions create feelings. How we view someone or something determines the emotions we feel about that thing. So if you have a neutral circumstance that is just a person in your house, you could think of them as a guest, and then you would probably feel generous or excited to have them there.
Or you could think of them as an intruder and feel violated and angry that they're there. Your perception of them, which is your thoughts, creates how you feel. You could also have a neutral circumstance of 15 people standing near each other inside of a high school.
How do you perceive them? You could call them a group of friends, or you could call them a clique. And you would probably have feelings of resentment or criticism if you call them a clique, like when you're thinking that they're exclusive and stuck up and snooty versus a more positive stance if you called them a group of friends. You might perceive them in one way, and another person might have a different perception based on their thoughts.
Another neutral circumstance could be a person who speaks out about what they think. You could think of them as confident, or maybe you think of them as domineering. If you think of them as confident, you might feel admiration for them and maybe want to be their friend.
If you think of them as domineering, then you might feel annoyed or maybe threatened and probably wouldn't want to be their friend. So is someone frugal or are they a tightwad? It depends on your perception. Is someone rude or are they direct? It depends on your perception.
I think it's funny to think of kids versus adults on stuff like this. A lot of young kids have a negative perception about taking a nap. They think of it as an interruption to their playtime.
It's boring. It's not fun. They don't want to.
But a lot of times adults are like, can I please take a nap? Can I just close my eyes and not do anything for a little bit and get some rest? It's the funniest thing. The kids don't want to clean up their rooms. They don't want to eat vegetables.
They don't want to go to bed because they perceive it as something unpleasant. It's just a perception. Okay.
So let's talk about forgiveness now. What is your perception of forgiveness? Do you like that word? Do you like the concept of it? What do you feel when you hear that word forgiveness? So let's explore your perception of forgiveness for a minute. What is something that someone said or did in the past that you're annoyed about or frustrated about? You're angry about, you complain about it.
Think of something. And then if I say, okay, I want you to forgive that person for what they did. What comes up for you? Do you want to do not want to do kind of want to, but not really.
If I say, I want you to forgive that person for what they did. Does it sound hard and gross to you? Like cleaning the floor behind a toilet? Or does it sound easy and enticing? Like drinking a glass of cold water on a hot day? What is your perception of forgiveness? When you hear about it, are you like, yes, I want that. I want to embrace it, practice it, live it, benefit from it.
Or are you like, ew, don't make me take a nap. I don't want to do that. If you are resisting the idea of forgiving someone like a little kid who doesn't want to take a nap, you probably have some reasons that feel really valid to you for why you don't want to do it.
And you can hang onto those reasons as long as you want to. But today, I want to share with you three things that might help you warm up to the idea of forgiveness a little bit more. So here are three things that forgiveness isn't.
Number one, forgiveness isn't about the person who hurt you. You don't have to reconcile with the offender in order to forgive. You can in some cases, but you forgiving isn't actually about them at all.
It's about you letting go of the anger and the hurt. You're actually not giving them anything if you forgive them, but you are giving yourself freedom from continued suffering. You're giving yourself more energy, more trust in God, more room to receive love and joy now and in the future.
You can forgive someone and they might never know. That's how we know it's not about them. You can forgive someone who passed away years ago.
You can forgive someone you've never actually talked to. So forgiveness isn't about the person who hurt you. It's about you and not forgiving someone doesn't hurt the person who hurt you in the past.
It hurts you. Sometimes we withhold forgiveness because we don't want to give something good to someone who did something bad, but not forgiving someone hurts you. Nelson Mandela said, not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
Sometimes people who resist forgiving, people who don't want to forgive think it's not fair to forgive someone who did something so awful. But what I want you to know is it's not about them. It's about you.
And it's actually unfair to you to drink the poison and keep drinking it day after day after day. Okay. Number two, forgiveness isn't forgetting something that happened or pretending that it didn't happen.
A lot of times people will say, forgive and forget. I actually don't think forgetting is part of forgiving. Forgiveness isn't forgetting something painful that happened.
It's changing your story of what you make it mean. So you don't continue to experience pain in the present when you think about it. So if you were abused by someone in the past, forgiveness is choosing to believe that that abuse doesn't mean you're worthless.
It doesn't mean you're unlovable. It doesn't mean that your life is ruined. Forgiveness might mean choosing to make it mean that your caregiver was suffering and was confused.
Didn't have the ability to let love into their own heart and therefore made decisions that harmed you. Forgiveness isn't pretending it didn't happen. Forgiveness isn't forgetting that it happened, but forgiveness is choosing to rise above the story that you are forever a victim.
It's choosing to live and create the story where you become the hero, where you experience healing and love, and where you are an overcomer, a conqueror through Christ. Forgiveness is turning your victim story into a hero's journey. And number three of what forgiveness isn't, forgiveness isn't hard.
Now that's not a fact. Whether something is hard or easy is always just a perception, right? It goes in the thought line of the model. So I might think cross-stitching is hard.
Someone else might think it's easy. Someone might think singing a solo in front of a bunch of people is hard. I think it's easy.
So it's just a perception, but I want to invite you to consider your perception about forgiveness. Do you view it as hard? Do you think forgiving is a hard thing to do? Why do you think that? Here's what I believe. Suffering is hard.
Being betrayed or lied to or abused or hurt in any other way is hard. Being a human and experiencing loss and disappointment and pain is hard. But forgiveness is easy.
Forgiveness actually isn't hard and painful and complicated. It's the relief from all of that. And forgiveness doesn't negate you having to go through pain as part of being a human and part of living in a fallen world and part of having relationships with imperfect people and being impacted by unkind, selfish, dishonest, and thoughtless things that other people choose to do.
But when you are ready to, forgiveness is the balm in Gilead that offers you relief from continuing to suffer. Forgiveness isn't hard. Jesus says, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Carrying heavy burdens of anger, isolation, and shame is hard. But forgiveness isn't hard. Forgiveness is easy.
So you can have whatever perception you want to have of forgiveness. You can wrinkle your nose at it like a little kid who doesn't want to take a nap. You can think of it as something you should do that's hard and unpleasant and unfair.
Or you can think of it as water in the desert, ibuprofen when you have a headache, a key when you're trapped in a cage, or a nap when you feel weary and heavy laden and you need rest. Forgiving will give you energy and clarity and focus and joy to replace the pain and the anger and the hate. You don't have to do it.
You don't have to forgive, but you can. You get to if you choose to. I am super passionate about this topic.
Forgiveness is a skill, just like riding a bike or making a meal or driving a car or playing the piano. Anyone can learn how to do it. And the more you do it, the better you will get at it.
If you want to develop the skill of forgiving, I want to help you. In January, I'm going to be doing a free forgiveness class. It's called Rewrite Your Story.
It will be a 45-minute workshop. And in it, I'll guide you through a framework that you can use over and over again to help you let go of hurts from the past, help you let go of grudges or resentments that are weighing you down. So you can invite more energy, more purpose, more love, more joy into your life.
I've combined together teachings from Fred Luskin, Byron Katie, Russell M. Nelson, Brooke Castillo, Lisa Terkhurst, David Burns, Jesus, and my training from the Christian Coach Institute and the Life Coach School, as well as my own ideas and distilled it into a 45-minute workshop to help you learn the skills that will set you free from anger, resentment, shame, or hopelessness that you might have about your past. It will be a live webinar over Zoom on Friday, January 10th, and you can sign up right now. If you want to feel the relief that is possible through forgiveness, go get registered.
Think of it as a gift you're going to give yourself. Again, it's called Rewrite Your Story. It will be Friday, January 10th after the holidays, a 45-minute live class to help you learn to forgive.
To register for it now and get it on your calendar, you can use the link in the show notes of this episode or go to my website, emilyrickscoaching.com forward slash forgiveness. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll talk to you next week.