Forgiving Yourself

In this episode we are discussing Self Forgiveness. How to stop beating yourself up continuously about the same things time after time, and learn to let it go and move forward. We also delve into separating yourself from the ego as a way to identify and rename the things we feel we can't let go of.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Welcome to the podcast.

This is down fire.

Hello.

Nice.

Yeah,

So welcome to the podcast.

I'm going to have to forgive myself for that.

Nice.

2017,

Glenn Ambrose,

King of the Transitions.

Yes,

That entrance was a little bit rough.

It's okay.

We got laughter in the title.

Yes,

This is true.

And now let's have some lessons.

And we're talking about self-forgiveness today.

So that's why I have to forgive myself for that opening.

There you go.

Done.

Wait,

Hold on.

Okay,

Now I'm done.

All right,

Now here's what I want you to do now.

For the next 30 minutes,

I want you to take us into that 30 seconds between when you made the mistake and when you forgave yourself.

Let us know your process.

Okay.

One minute,

A second.

I work very quickly.

And it was minimal amount of guilt attached to that actual event.

So therefore.

To someone who is listening right now,

Who has a massive amount of guilt about something and is looking for answers,

We will get there.

Buckle up,

Man.

Give us a half hour to solve all your life's issues.

We'll get there.

So,

Self-forgiveness.

A lot of times we talk about forgiving others,

Which is wonderful.

It's necessary.

We have to do it.

But we don't often talk about forgiving ourselves.

And that is just as important.

And we need to do it.

It's kind of like the both sides of the coin is kind of like everything else in this world.

Everything is yin and yang.

There's two sides to it.

Now in the spiritual realm,

It's not like that.

But here on earth,

Everything kind of has two sides.

So it's the.

You guys love it when I talk about like the spiritual realm.

I'm fine,

Dave.

I'm just saying like here on earth.

Oh,

Here we go.

Is that spiritual crap again?

This is why Dave used to host a podcast called The Sky is Falling.

Sorry.

I don't mean to derail.

So here on earth.

So here on earth,

Everything is the yin and yang.

So it's all connected.

So like if we judge ourselves,

We will judge others.

If we judge others,

We will judge ourselves.

It's just so we need to work on judgment in general.

And if you work on judging,

Not judging others,

Then by proxy,

You'll stop judging yourself so much.

And if you stop judging yourself so much,

You'll stop judging others so much.

It's the same thing with forgiveness.

So as you work on,

You either forgive or you don't.

So if you forgive others and you're leaving yourself out,

There's some work that needs to be done there.

One of the big problems that we have is not loving ourselves and not feeling good about ourselves.

So we need to work on that self-love.

And if we're constantly hooked up on thinking,

I'm not good enough.

I should have done this differently.

It will drag us down and it will block our progress as far as growing into the person that we want to grow into if we don't forgive ourselves.

No,

I'm sighing.

Yeah.

Do you have a big issue with forgiving yourself?

No,

I don't think I have a big issue.

I think it's something that I have to be conscious of.

Every once in a while,

I'll realize that I've been putting some pressure on myself.

And if I'm putting pressure on myself,

Then unconsciously I'm judging myself a little bit and pushing and maybe feeling not good enough and stuff like that.

So if I recognize that,

I'll stop and forgive myself.

I have a book club on Thursday nights and we were talking about this.

And one of the things that I do is at the end of Michael Bernard Bequist's movie,

Spiritual Liberation,

It goes into all these little special parts that were kind of left out of the movie and stuff.

And at the end,

This person,

Tim McAfee,

And he's got a hyphenated last name,

I can't think,

Lewis.

Tim McAfee Lewis,

I believe.

He wrote this song,

I Forgive Me.

And at the end of the video,

They cut to him and he starts talking about when he wrote that song.

And it's really powerful.

So I mean,

If I'm ever at a place where I realize that I need some self-forgiveness,

I'll literally go to that movie and cut to that song.

And the camera's on him and it's very emotional about how he wrote this song.

And he starts talking about how he forgives himself for all his days and weeks and months and years of not feeling good enough and not being smart enough and not being kind enough and loving enough.

And he forgives himself because it's time for him.

It's his time.

It's his time to move forward.

And it's a beautiful song.

And with him going through his personal experience in writing that song,

It's really powerful.

So I'll put that video on and just really allow the words to wash over me and just climb into it.

And by the end of the song,

I really feel better.

It's very cathartic.

So what do you think,

Dave?

I think it sounds like one of the hardest things you can do as a person.

Yeah.

Me personally,

I think it's something that I can't do.

Oh,

Yeah.

I feel like it's impossible.

Well,

And I'm sure a lot of people think that way.

And also,

I'm definitely in the camp of like,

I don't,

You're wrong.

I don't deserve to be forgiven myself.

Like I deserve the misery that I've caused myself.

So,

And you know,

And that's,

This is where Ben knows I'm talking about.

I do.

I think he's right.

Wait,

About me or about you?

About you.

I deserve to be forgiven and upstained from everything.

Well,

This is where this is.

Abstain.

This is where the word forgiveness,

Just forgiveness in general.

Yes.

Forgiveness and self-forgiveness both is about forgiveness.

And what we think of forgiveness in general is wrong.

You know,

It's not about agreeing with the things that happened in the past.

It's not about saying that they're okay.

It's not about that stuff,

You know,

Whether we're talking about somebody else or whether we're talking about ourselves.

What it is is looking at it realistically and going,

Okay,

Well,

If like,

Especially with the self-forgiveness,

If you just look at it realistically and you go,

Okay,

Well,

I can either forgive myself or not.

If I don't forgive myself,

Then I'm carrying around these bad feelings about myself.

And if I carry around bad feelings about myself,

That will bring me down.

I won't be,

I'll feel less than,

I won't be able to accomplish as much in my life.

And it will drag me down carrying that energy around.

And then just walking around with that negative energy inside of you isn't good either.

So,

But what happens if you do forgive yourself?

Well,

You're free of all that.

And like,

What's the deserving?

You know,

Like,

Oh,

I deserve to be miserable.

Like,

Why?

We're the only species that punishes ourselves over and over and over for the same mistake.

You know,

We give ourselves a life sentence because of some mistakes we've made in the past.

There's,

Like,

I was explaining this to my son when he was younger.

And I was like,

If you've got this,

This cheetah chasing a gazelle and it's breaking left and breaking right and breaking left and the gazelle gets away,

That cheetah doesn't go behind a bush and goes like,

I'm such an idiot.

I can't believe that I didn't break left.

He always breaks left after the right and I should have broken left and I'm such a bad cheetah and I'm never going to eat again.

And it doesn't do that.

It shakes it off.

It could learn from it.

It could be like,

You know what?

When they break right,

They break left after.

I got to remember that and become a better hunter.

They could do something like that.

They can learn from the experience,

But they don't feel bad about themselves.

You know,

No other species does that.

We give,

We literally give ourselves life sentence over something that happened in the past.

You know,

It happened.

We look at it.

We can learn from it.

But hanging on to the idea that we're not good because of something we did in the past has no value to it.

You know,

Which just just doesn't is absolutely like if you.

I'd love to see if you guys can,

Because if you guys can come up with something,

Then it would be good because that means other people out there might be able to come up with something too.

So is there any reason that you can come up with that not forgiving yourself benefits you?

Oh.

Because we can come up with reasons why forgiving yourself benefits you.

So we see the benefits of forgiveness,

But is there anything?

Is there any way that not forgiving yourself would benefit your life or anybody else's life?

Or anybody else's life?

It would be like a,

I think it feels like a fail safe to not repeat those actions.

Right.

And that's,

That's what people think it is.

It's not,

But that's what people think it is.

That's why we can still learn from the past,

But learning does not mean carrying around the negative feelings about ourselves.

That just means we logically looked at it and said,

I shouldn't do this again.

But we think if we drag around the pain of it,

It will be a deterrent.

And all it is is a deterrent to not do other things with your life because you're not good enough.

You know,

The,

The reason we make poor choices is because we don't know better.

It's not because we don't feel crappy enough about ourselves.

You know,

Like if I feel crappy enough about myself,

Then I'll make better choices.

No,

That's,

That doesn't make sense.

If I know better,

I'll make better choices.

Yes,

It does make sense.

So there is a reason that we should learn from our past,

But there isn't a reason that we should carry it around with us and drag the,

The,

The negative energy from it.

Because I can see Ben thinking because someone whom you have wronged has not forgiven you yet.

So you feel more guilt for giving yourself.

Yes.

That's a good point.

I mean,

It's not really a mic drop because it doesn't make any sense.

But,

But it's a good point.

It's a good point.

You know,

It is.

I mean,

That's something that will keep us locked into a feeling of,

Oh,

I can't forgive me because the other person,

But all forgiveness is about ourselves.

You know,

Like if I,

If I forgive somebody else for something they do,

That's for my benefit.

It's not for their benefit.

I'm not God.

I mean,

Like,

Who am I to be judging people in the first place?

Like,

Like,

Oh,

I forgive thee.

Like I have some sort of power over their life.

Like,

You know,

I don't have any power over their life.

Half the people that I've forgiven don't even know that they did anything wrong to me.

You know,

They have no idea because it might not have even have been wrong in their perspective.

You know,

So if I forgive somebody,

It's for me.

It's,

It's for me inside to be not carrying around a resentment towards somebody else and to free myself up.

So,

You know,

Just because if somebody hasn't forgiven you,

That doesn't mean that you can't forgive yourself.

I mean,

That's them in their life carrying around their negative energy about you,

Which is their perspective.

I mean,

They can do that.

But,

You know,

You carrying around that negative energy doesn't benefit them.

You can never feel bad enough about yourself to help anybody else.

Dave shakes his head.

No,

Or yes.

Dave,

How many things on a daily basis do you think that you refuse to forgive yourself for?

Five or more.

Five or more.

Five or more.

Five or more.

Five or more different things every day or the same five things.

I've told you before there's a rotation.

There's a rotation.

Yeah.

Some days I focus on certain things and then the next day I'll,

I'll be OK with the other things and then the other things that I want that weren't in the rotation get nicely put in.

Yeah.

Then I agonize over that for three days.

Yeah,

That's,

That's like,

Like agonize.

Well,

That,

That is,

You know,

That that's beautiful food for the ego because it's endless.

You know,

It's it's like a dog chasing its tail.

It's like that's what I feel like every day.

So I'm going to catch it.

My dog has.

It's not pretty.

See,

That's cool when you can find a dog that can actually do it.

You know why?

Because that's possible.

You know why?

Because his dog had faith.

Boo.

The dog's name is Faith.

He said,

Ooh,

I said boo.

Nailed it.

It's so funny that you say it's the ego though,

Because it doesn't feel that way.

That's because you're identified with the ego.

Shut up.

So which,

Which really is the foundation of our work.

It's like,

You know,

We all have roles like the,

Like the role is like I'm my role here on earth.

My which is my ego is just my mind made self.

It's who I think I am.

So it doesn't exactly mean a terrible thing.

No,

No,

Not at all.

It's just,

And it's actually,

We know,

We all know ego as like ego.

Yeah.

This guy's got a huge ego and I'll let,

No ego is just,

And I,

We're getting a better understanding of that word nowadays.

It can take that direction if somebody's ego goes in that direction,

But all an ego is,

Is a mind made self.

It's just,

I,

I on this earth,

I've,

I play the roles of I'm a male,

I have brown hair,

My name's Glenn,

I'm a father.

I,

You know,

All those mind made constructs of who I think I am.

I mean,

At the core,

That's not who I am.

I'm a spiritual being having a human experience.

So my,

The truth of who I am is an eternal being that I never lose.

You know,

Like once I die,

My energy will transmute into another existence.

And,

You know,

I just,

But I'm an eternal being while I'm here on earth.

I have my role or my ego as who,

You know,

Who I am in this lifetime.

So that's all it is,

But if we identify with that being us,

If we think,

If I think that that's who I am,

And,

You know,

I don't identify myself as a spiritual being,

I identify myself as Glenn,

The,

The male with brown hair that's a father.

If,

If that's who I really think I am,

That's where the problem is.

Because then anything that touches the ego,

I think is touching me.

You know,

So anything that hurts my feelings,

I think is hurting me.

But if I understand that I'm eternal and nothing can actually hurt me,

Then I can sit and feel comfortable and safe and,

And I'm okay.

My,

The truth of me is okay.

Now,

My ego got hurt when that person said something.

And it's a lot easier to deal with because I know it's not me.

It's just who I think I am.

You know,

What was the Eckhart Tolle thing of what he realized?

I think it was Eckhart Tolle.

I could be completely wrong,

But when he realized the difference between the ego and yeah,

That was when he had his awakening,

When he was,

He was sitting there in emotional turmoil.

And he went,

I can't live with myself anymore.

And then he went,

Well,

Wait a minute.

What's the,

The I and the myself that I can't live with.

That's two different things.

And he was like,

What,

What's that about?

There's two of me.

Well,

Which one's real?

You know,

And then he,

I mean him,

It was just,

It was very profound,

But he,

He just looks so freaked out when you said,

Which one's real,

Which one's real,

Which one's the truth,

Which one's the mind made self that I can't live with and which one's the me that can't live with it.

You know,

The true self is the one that can't live with it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

The mind made self is the one that causes all the problems that you can't live with because that's the one that is experiencing all the emotional turmoil and everything.

So,

But you are the consciousness that is looking at that messed up reality,

That hurt vision and going,

I don't want to live with that anymore.

You know,

So you are basically just consciousness that's aware of things happening.

And the other,

And that mind made self.

So,

You know,

Totally,

Totally actually does a nice job with dealing with pain and things like that.

He uses the term of a pain body.

The reason that that is so helpful is because it helps you disidentify with the energy that you're dealing with.

So,

If you feel bad about yourself and you go,

I don't like myself,

Then that's difficult because you don't like you.

So,

You think that there's something wrong with you.

You know,

I'm,

I'm experiencing like I'm angry or I'm sad.

Well,

Then that's a problem.

If you're angry and you're sad,

Then you have a problem.

But totally says to identify it as an energy that's attached to you.

So he goes,

Well,

I have anger attached to me.

I have sadness attached to me.

You know,

And the reason that that's helpful is because we don't think it's us.

We don't identify it as us.

We just go,

Well,

There's something that I'm experiencing that's attached to me,

But it's not me.

That way we can process it a little bit easier.

If we think it's us,

We've got no place to run to.

It's a lot more difficult to process it.

So,

When you're,

When you're forgiving yourself,

What you're doing is you're letting go of that,

That sadness energy that's attached to you.

It's not you.

It's just some energy that's attached to you that you're carrying around for no beneficial reason.

Boom.

Dave,

Thoughts.

Thoughts?

No.

There was a head explosion in the corner.

But,

So that's,

You know,

The mind-made self is,

Is what gets hurt.

And the mind-made self is the thing that's carrying all this stuff around.

So if we can lighten the load and disidentify with that a little bit.

Okay.

Here's a question.

What if you feel like you can't identify the other one?

Like you can't identify with your true self?

Maybe you're so convinced that this mind-made self is the only thing that's hard for you to know where to go from there.

Yeah.

And that's,

Honestly,

That's where most people are.

You know what I mean?

Like,

This is how I've been thinking for years and years and years.

How do I find that other part of me that exists?

The part that I should be doing.

And honestly,

The biggest part is having conversations like this.

It's just exposing yourself to another perspective and trying to open yourself up to it.

Because the reality is,

Is we know the truth.

I mean,

Like,

If we're truly spiritual beings,

Then at our core,

Then we know what's true and what's not true.

So when you're having conversations like this,

To open up your heart,

Open up your mind,

And try to pay attention to what makes sense and what doesn't,

I can go,

Okay,

All right,

I think I get it.

All right.

And then just following the conversations through,

What happens after you have these conversations with an open mind is all of a sudden things start clicking.

Like,

More in your body or your chest than in your brain.

And you go,

Oh,

Wow,

Okay,

That really makes sense.

Like,

Okay,

I get that.

I get that to be true.

I can see how that is true.

When that stuff starts happening to you,

What's happening is the truth that's being spoken is connecting to the truth that you already know within you.

And if you start,

Once you experience that a few times and you stop paying attention to that,

That will never steer you wrong.

All of a sudden it starts expanding and expanding and expanding.

But,

You know,

It's not going to happen overnight.

It is because it is about really living in a completely different reality than we have our entire lives.

So,

You know,

It's going to take a little bit of time.

But really,

Honestly,

The best things that I found,

This is why I like life coaching and I like working with a life coach myself.

Because for,

Like,

I woke up pretty quickly.

Within a few months I was a different person and I understood things differently than I did before,

Which was cool.

However,

I needed to figure out how to live in that new reality.

And I was doing it alone.

And my growth was slow and sometimes it was frustrating and I stumbled and I didn't do things right and all that stuff.

And my growth took a while.

Once I started working with a life coach and took in those little sparks of insight that I had within me and started discussing them and expanding on them.

And started seeing how they fit into different situations.

That's when they became a larger part of me.

You know.

I think that I could be wrong here.

But,

Dave,

There was something that used to we used to talk about a lot,

Which was sometimes when we would have arguments.

You would say,

If you were wrong,

Which was not always the case at all.

But if you were wrong,

You would say,

I knew I was wrong.

Like,

In the argument.

But I couldn't,

Like,

I could identify that I was wrong,

But I couldn't get out of that.

I kept arguing.

The part of you that knew that you were wrong is looking at the ego.

I've always felt like that kind of right.

So I've always had a conversation.

We had a conversation yesterday where you were talking about,

Well,

I know what I really want,

But I'm not wonder.

But I'm wondering if I'm going to do it.

Yeah.

So those are the two parts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the part of you that's conscious enough to go,

I know I'm wrong.

But then you've got the other part of you that's controlling the conversation.

That's the ego.

So that so once you get that connection,

You know,

You get an example that fits into your personal experience and it clicks with you and you go,

Oh,

Okay.

Yeah,

I see how that fits.

I can see that there's some reality there.

Then you just stop playing around with it in your own life.

Conversations,

Looking at it,

And then all of a sudden it just expands.

When you put attention to something,

It's energy.

You put energy towards something,

It expands.

So,

You know,

And the other part is,

Too,

Like for all the nonbelievers,

If you keep exploring it,

You're going to find one of two things.

It's either going to expand and become your truth or you're going to find something wrong with it and find out that it was complete BS to begin with.

Win-win.

So,

You know,

Either way you win.

You get to the truth if you keep exploring it.

So,

You know,

So don't explore it just because I say it's the truth.

Explore it to find out what your own truth is.

And either way,

You're going to eventually find out what the truth is.

You know,

You just got to be careful.

You just got to make sure you're getting outside input.

Like if you just put it back in your head,

Oftentimes you'll talk yourself right out of the truth because your ego is a larger part of you at this particular moment.

You know,

It's like Einstein said.

Absolutely.

Einstein said you can't solve a problem with the consciousness that created it.

You know,

So if your mind is used to thinking in a certain direction and it caused a problem,

Then using that same mind to try to fix the problem isn't going to work.

You know,

So you need to get outside input to start seeing things differently.

So talking about this with others is very important.

Yes.

Yeah,

And that's what we're finding out because it's very hard to self-evaluate in that way when you're just thinking.

Right.

It's almost impossible.

Yeah,

Yeah,

It almost is.

I mean,

I feel like you have to be really good at this type of stuff.

You got to be really high up on the enlightened level to be able to think of this.

And even then I feel like you still need to talk with others.

I think a lot of it depends on how much you can be still.

You know,

Some people can be quiet.

They can quiet themselves and be still.

And if you're capable of doing that,

The truth will just bubble up.

You won't need as much outside input,

But outside input still does help.

But if you're incapable of sitting still,

Then it's very hard to come up with the truth.

To override your ego that's in control and get to your real truth.

It's hard because being still is that's where truth.

If somebody can be still and you ask them a question and to use that stillness,

They'll usually come up with the answer.

You know,

Like if you just sit there and just get quiet and still and go internal,

All of a sudden you're like,

Oh,

I can't BS myself like that.

But if you can't be still,

Then you're caught up in the ego too much.

And it's like,

You know,

That's why meditation is such a beautiful beginner's step to self-work.

Because it teaches you to be quiet and anybody can do it.

You can pet your dog for five minutes and that can be a meditation if it relaxes you.

You know,

You can walk in the woods,

You can walk around the block,

You can Google five-minute guided meditation and have somebody walk you through it.

You know,

There's different ways but if you teach yourself to be able to slow down and quiet,

You know,

That can.

.

.

And then when you do go through processes like when you attempt to do a process like self-forgiveness,

If you sit there and you go,

You know,

I forgive myself and that's it.

And then you go,

That's not going to work.

But if you get still and quiet and really go inside and be like,

I'm forgiving myself because this doesn't benefit me and you understand why and all that stuff,

You know,

And then when you're quiet and still,

All of a sudden you can feel that shift inside of you.

You can kind of feel that energy just let go and really forgive yourself.

Yeah.

So is there a main thing,

One thing in particular that you would suggest for someone to start down the path of self-forgiveness like some sort of ritual,

Like writing themselves a letter or like just maybe try like meditating and really thinking about your issues?

I think really the first thing you need to do is get.

.

.

We're very intellectual beings so we're not going to believe some hypothetical self-forgiveness theory unless we get our brains wrapped around it.

You know,

So I would say taking some time to listening to the things I was said in this podcast and really trying to make some sense,

Like take something that you think you need forgiveness about and really see how it's not.

.

.

You carrying that around is not benefiting you,

It's not benefiting anybody else and how letting it go would benefit you and would benefit other people.

And once you get clarity on that and you can see why there's no benefit to carrying it,

But there are benefits to letting it go,

That kind of can quiet the mind down,

Quiet the ego down from trying to say,

No,

You shouldn't do this.

So once you have some clear rationale about something,

Then you can go into the process of forgiving yourself and the forgiving yourself process can be done in any manner of ways.

If you're good at getting quiet and just doing it internally,

Great.

Writing stuff out is wonderful,

Absolutely wonderful.

Talking it out with somebody else is helpful.

Find what works for you,

Experiment a little bit.

Rituals are good because they bring theoretical work into our reality here on earth.

By just doing anything,

By writing a letter and then burning it in a safe place.

There was some little responsibility I had to say that.

Don't burn up stuff like over a gas can.

So writing something out and then burning it and just watching that.

.

.

I've done stuff like that.

I've written things out and then burned it and just the action of seeing it go away is cool.

Actually when we do the sacred fire walk,

That's part of our process.

We'll write down fears and stuff like that because walking on fire is like walking through our fears and letting them go and stuff.

So we'll write down our fears on wood and then put it in the fire.

And then we're sitting there and it's like you sense a freedom watching that stuff just burn away and just no longer exist.

I would write fear of burning my feet.

Then it would be gone.

And then I'd be fine.

Yeah,

Then you'd be fine.

Bam,

Just happened.

So talking about it is a big part.

And if people wanted to talk about it with you.

Yeah,

I kind of know a little something about this subject.

I hope so.

Or one of the last 35 minutes.

So yeah,

If you want to talk about it,

I might be a good person to talk about it too.

But how do I get a hold of you?

They would get a hold of me.

Probably can't,

Right?

No,

Not really.

Just drive around Rhode Island and ask people.

Yeah,

Just yell my name.

I heard he lives near horses.

Hey.

Horses,

Hey.

All right.

Well,

There's no way to contact you.

That's the end of the show.

Yeah,

Go.

Wait,

I'm going to squeeze it in.

Go to life-enhancement-services.

Com.

That's it.

That's the best way to get in touch with me.

There's a phone number there,

An email.

There's a plethora of ways to get in touch with me.

Some wonderful reviews.

Yeah.

Hey,

Check out the other episodes of the show,

Right?

There's 78 of them.

78?

Wow.

Yeah.

And check out the next episode,

Which will be our three-year anniversary.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

Oh,

Man.

Ben,

The statistician.

Boom.

All right,

Everybody.

Thanks for listening.

Go forgive yourselves.

And again,

Touch with me if you need some help.

Take care.

Reviews

Good points, nice to hear all 3 of you 🙂 thanks boys 💜x

This is something I struggle with, so I really appreciate the insights and advice. Thank you!!

Are you chewing mints while you're talking so that your mouth doesn't get dry? Another beautiful thought provoking podcast.

You make me laugh and in a good way! I am going to forgive myself now.🤗

Very informative on learning to love your self thank you so much will visit again😍😍😍💜💜💜

Great topic and great listen!! Thank you!🙏🏽

Thank you, good stuff!