Finding Happiness When We Hurt Others

In this episode of the podcast, we explore the concept of happiness in the face of causing harm to others. We ask ourselves, how do we find happiness after we have hurt others? Is it even possible?

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

I don't know about you,

But I enjoy movies.

And probably like you,

I have some of my favorite actors and actresses.

Well,

One of my favorite actors is Will Smith.

He's been in a lot of popular movies over the years.

But one of his movies,

Which you may not have heard of,

Came out in 2008.

And it is called Seven Pounds.

If you haven't seen it,

I would highly recommend it.

But I apologize up front,

Because I am going to give a little bit of the plot away right now.

What happened was,

He was driving with his fiancé,

And as they're driving,

They're looking at the beautiful engagement ring that he gave her.

And they're so in love,

So deeply in love.

But,

Like many of us,

He gets on his phone,

Starts using it while he's driving,

And in the process,

He hits a van,

Their car goes out of control,

The van flips,

Everyone in the van dies,

And his fiancé dies too.

And this happens all in an instant,

Though Will Smith does live.

And the movie is centered on him giving back to the world that which he took from so many other people.

He gives his eyes to one man,

He gives his kidney to his brother,

He keeps giving things away of his body,

He gives his home to a single mother who's really struggling,

And in the end,

He gives his heart to a woman who will not live unless he dies,

Which he's willing to do.

Clearly the premise here is,

He hurt a lot of people,

Cause their death,

And in any way he can,

He's trying to make up for it,

So he gives back to these people through his own body and his money and everything that he had,

Including his life.

Now I am in no way condoning or condemning or in any way judging his behavior.

It's a movie,

It's a good movie,

Worth watching.

But what I want to talk about in today's podcast,

Which is as important as what Will Smith is going through,

Is that sometimes in life,

We do things intentionally or unintentionally where we really hurt other people or animals or someone,

And there's a lot of guilt and there's a lot of shame there.

And after 30 years of trying to help people improve their lives and find happiness,

If they have this in their history,

Where they really feel guilty over hurting someone in their past,

This probably more than anything else is the thing that's going to keep them from being happy.

Because we are so hard on ourselves when we hurt others.

There's so much shame and guilt there that it's very hard to let go of this guilt and shame and move on and find happiness.

It truly is one of the biggest barriers to our happiness.

And of course there are degrees to which we hurt others.

Some of us may be listening to this podcast and the worst thing we ever did was say something mean to our children when we were angry at them.

Others of us may have done much more heinous things,

Things that are truly unconscionable in our minds,

And we've never shared it with anyone.

We've kept that secret or if it's out there,

We have such shame and guilt over it.

So in today's podcast,

Let's figure out how to find happiness when we mess up.

Because sometimes we do.

I believe we can still find deep,

Lasting,

Ongoing happiness throughout our lives,

Even when we really,

Really mess up.

Now I know this isn't categorically true,

But I think in most instances when we hurt other people,

There are circumstances that were taking place that if they weren't taking place,

We probably wouldn't have done what we did.

For example,

When we are under the influence of a substance,

Say alcohol or beer or something like that,

Perhaps even drugs,

We lose what's called impulse control,

Things that we would never do,

We sometimes can do.

Not always.

They don't make us do them,

But they make us so it's more easy to do things that we wish we hadn't done.

I mean,

Mind you,

It can give us courage.

You've probably all heard the term liquid courage,

But unfortunately it can give us liquid hate and anger too.

With things we would never do sober because we have the substance running through our veins.

We do them.

And again,

This doesn't take away from what we did.

We have to own what we did,

But we have to realize that,

Okay,

I probably didn't mean what I did.

I did it because I was under that substance.

Normally I would control myself and wouldn't do that.

Again,

It doesn't take away from what we did,

But I'm hoping that it will soften it a bit and say,

Okay,

I get it.

I need to be careful when I'm using substances.

And if I did do something under the influence,

I need to be a little bit more gentle with myself about what I did.

The other thing that happens is that when we're under a lot of stress,

Again,

It's like having alcohol running through our bodies.

When we're stressed,

We're just not as calm.

And instead of responding to situations in an appropriate manner,

We tend to react in an often inappropriate manner.

And had we not been under that stress,

We wouldn't have acted that way.

Again,

It doesn't take away from what we did,

And we have to pay the price for what we did,

Even when we're under substances.

It doesn't alleviate the crime with which we did things.

But what I'm hoping it can do is say,

Okay,

I get it.

I need to be careful.

I need to be careful when I'm stressed.

I need to be careful under substances when they're running through my veins.

And when they are and I mess up,

I need to say,

Okay,

I just need to be more careful going forward.

And I need to be a little bit more gentle with myself because what it's going to boil down to when we mess up is forgiveness,

Forgiveness of what we've done.

It doesn't mean excusing it.

It doesn't mean condoning it.

It doesn't mean that we can do it again.

It means that we forgive ourselves so that we can move forward,

Learn from it and have a beautiful life.

Everyone,

If we're human,

Probably sooner or later,

Is going to make a mistake,

Sometimes really big ones.

And at the core,

What I'm trying to promote here is the removal of the thinking that there are evil people out there,

People that really just want to create evil and hurt others.

Mind you,

They do.

And they hurt a lot of people.

And in history,

Things have been done that are,

Oh my goodness,

Would take our breath away.

We talked about them.

I thought about them long enough.

I'm not in any way negating the acts are horrible sometimes what we do to people,

Particularly like children when they get molested.

I mean,

That's just horrible.

But it is an act.

The person that did it needs to pay the price,

Of course.

They may spend their life in prison.

They may be put to death.

I don't know.

Depends on where we live.

But what's important is to realize that it is an act that is wrong.

The person got there through circumstances.

And we don't know the circumstances.

I remember when I was in graduate school,

I read a study about terrorists.

And what they found was that terrorists often have incredibly low self-esteem.

They hate themselves.

They hate everything about their lives.

And they've had horrifically difficult lives.

Again,

It doesn't excuse what they did,

But it helps understand it better.

I mean,

A person who's raised with two loving parents that were always gentle and kind with them probably isn't,

As an adult,

Going to go to a mall and just shoot everyone down.

That's probably not going to happen.

When we hurt others,

It comes out of self-loathing.

It comes out of our pain.

Often it comes out of the concept of an eye for an eye.

We just want to hurt others because we've been hurt.

And we haven't learned the proper skills to heal from those hurts.

So instead of growing from them,

We pass that hurt on.

Of course not everyone who's been hurt in their past hurts others.

But that's often the course that pain comes from.

You hurt me,

So I'm going to hurt you or others.

So let's say we've done that.

Let's say in the course of our lives,

We've hurt other people in ways that we're not very proud of.

Maybe we feel some shame.

Maybe we feel a lot of self-loathing because of it.

And we say,

Dr.

Buff,

I can never be happy.

I'm just too bad,

Evil of a person.

So let's address that.

If we're listening to this podcast,

We probably want to be happy.

We wouldn't be here.

But in the course of life,

We may have messed up and hurt others.

And in that process,

It can really keep us from finding happiness.

So what do we do?

What do we do when we mess up and hurt others?

Well,

I'm definitely not advocating that we do what Will Smith did in the movie,

Where we sacrifice our own lives so that others may live.

I don't know if that's the best path for most of us,

If any of us ever.

But what I am suggesting is what he did.

He hurt others in great ways.

So what he did was try to make amends for it.

And he made amends by giving back to the planet,

People here on the planet,

The people in his life.

He couldn't help the people that he had killed.

But what he could help was other people who were struggling in life.

And that sense of penance,

That sense of giving back when we hurt others,

Has a lot of wisdom to it.

Let me use a fairly common occurrence where a lot of shame kicks in in people's lives.

If we're parents,

And many of us will be,

Are,

Or have been,

In life,

When we're raising those young bambinos,

It can be very stressful at times.

We're not getting enough sleep.

We're exhausted.

It's just hard.

There's so much to do to get by and to make sure everyone is fed and clothed and just doing it right.

And sometimes we're stressed.

Maybe we've had a few beers.

Whatever the circumstances may be.

And we mess up.

We hurt those people that we love the most.

Okay.

And now let's say they're grown and we're still feeling guilty over what we did.

What can we do?

Before I give the answer,

The answer I'm going to give is applicable to any situation.

I'm just using parenting as an example.

You may have been a perfect parent or you may never have been a parent and this just doesn't apply.

But there probably are other ways,

Which in life you may have messed up on.

So just apply the same principles that I'm going to give to your situation instead of saying parenting.

Fill it in with something else that you're struggling with.

So the first thing we need to do is start with understanding.

Again,

Parenting is exhausting.

And sometimes we're really tired and our kids will be doing something that they just keep doing over and over and over and over again.

And we lose it.

We just can't keep ourselves calm anymore.

And we lash out.

We may say mean things.

We may do something mean.

So understand that this situation,

Though it doesn't excuse our behavior,

It helps explain it better.

If we had had a lot more help,

If things had gone more smoothly,

We probably would have been better parents.

But under tremendous amounts of stress,

It is hard to always be perfect.

It just is.

So with that understanding that we're not going to be perfect in life,

And there are circumstances that lead us to make poor choices sometimes,

Not that we're bad,

But we did some things that were bad,

But we're not bad.

It's a good distinction.

It's a very good distinction to understand.

The person is good.

The behavior was bad.

So with that understanding,

We need to say,

Okay,

Do I need to make amends by merely talking to my kids about what I did or whomever I hurt?

Do I need to talk to them about it and ask for their forgiveness and say I'm sorry?

Sometimes the answer is going to be yes.

And sometimes the answer is going to be no.

Asking for forgiveness,

Saying we're sorry can be so helpful.

It can be so healing in situations for us and others.

But sometimes a person has passed.

So what I've encouraged people in those situations to do is go visit their grave or even just imagine them in front of you and ask them for forgiveness.

Or if you know the person really doesn't want to talk to you anymore,

It wouldn't be good to bring it up,

Then you really need to respect that boundary and just not bring it up to them.

If it's going to cause them hurt and they don't want to hear it,

Then don't cross that boundary.

Be respectful of their feelings too.

But there's so much more we can do,

Which is the good news.

The good news is we can make amends.

We don't have to make amends to the person that we hurt.

The world is full of people that are hurting.

We can help them.

So for example,

Let's say we did hurt our children.

Maybe now we're going to be the most awesome grandparents to our grandchildren.

Or maybe we'll help out other people who have kids and need help.

Once you start thinking about this and realize that,

Wow,

There are a lot of people struggling on our planet.

And say,

I want to make a difference.

We can.

We can make an amazing difference.

And we can spend as much time or as little time as we want.

But a lot of what we're looking for is we're saying,

Okay,

Am I making amends for what I did?

Is this pain back for the pain I caused?

And what we're looking for is healing of others and healing of our own hearts.

And the journey we're working towards here is forgiveness.

Forgiveness of what we did to others.

Not forgetting,

But forgiveness so that we can move forward in our lives and make the world a better place with the love that we have inside our hearts.

When there's happiness and peace permeating our hearts,

We are just going to make the world a better place.

When we're struggling with shame and guilt,

It's much harder to do that.

So making amends in our lives and in the lives of those around us is such a good thing.

It's healing.

It brings about goodness to our planet and our world.

And it helps us move forward and let go of the shame and guilt that we hang on to.

Again,

We don't forget what happens,

But we forgive what happens and move forward.

Now the other person may not forgive us.

I get that.

We may have really hurt them.

They may hate us to the day we die.

But we're working towards making amends and finding love in our heart,

Realizing that there were circumstances that explain somewhat what we did.

Usually if you really look at it,

There are really good explanations for what we did.

It doesn't justify what we did,

But it helps us understand what we did.

I think a lot of my work is helping people do that.

Helping people understand why they did what they did,

Moving towards forgiveness and making amends when they can.

Now mind you,

The other person may not forgive you.

That's just what we have to live with.

That doesn't mean we have to be unhappy.

It's their responsibility to heal from what happened.

It's our responsibility to make amends when we can,

Move forward,

And make the world a better place.

I think that making the world a better place when we've hurt others is such a good approach to healing our hearts and others.

Now there's a lot of dimensions in this podcast that I may not have covered because there's a lot too for giving ourselves when we've hurt others.

So send me those questions if you have them and I will try to address them in future podcasts.

But this is what we covered in today's podcast.

We are going to mess up in life,

Probably,

Most of us.

And given that,

We need to first understand why we did what we did.

Understanding is very helpful in the healing process.

We may not like the reasons.

They may be really bad reasons,

But it's good to understand why we did what we did.

And then the next thing we need to ask ourselves is,

Do we need to say we're sorry to the person that we hurt?

Healing can often come about much more quickly by apologizing for the actions that we did.

I know sometimes we can't do that and we shouldn't do that,

But if we can,

Let's do that.

Let's ask for the forgiveness or at least apologize for what we've done.

That can be so healing.

And then next we need to say,

Is there something I can do to make their lives better or the world a better place to make up for,

To do penance for what I've done?

That can be so healing in the process of loving ourselves after we've hurt others.

And lastly,

We do need to forgive ourselves.

Forgiveness is such a big part of healing when we've hurt others and it isn't our responsibility to have them forgive us,

But it is our responsibility to forgive ourselves.

And that's why I think doing good things back for the world,

Doing penance,

Can be a really good form of,

Okay,

I've metaphorically done my jail time.

I paid the price for what I did.

Now I'm free and I can live a life of freedom,

A life of peace and happiness because I know I have made the world a better place.

And yes,

I've messed up along the way,

But I really have paid the price for what I've done.

And now I'm going to continue to make the world a better place and my life a beautiful place because that's what I can do and that's what I can control.

So I'm going to do that.

I'm going to live that way and truly find happiness and peace in every breath of my life.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Besides creating this podcast,

There are a variety of other things that I do.

If you'd like to keep abreast of these activities and perhaps someday we may be able to meet in person,

Just go to www.

Happinesspodcast.

Org.

That's happinesspodcast.

Org.

You can subscribe to my newsletter and if you do,

You'll be emailed a free PDF copy of my meditation book called Reflections on Meditation.

And until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Dr. Puff, thank you for this incredibly important episode. Forgiving others: No problem. Forgiving myself: Much Harder.
But I know what to do.