Big Blend Radio

Shelley Whizin - The Power of Forgiveness

This episode of Big Blend Radio's SOUL DIVING SUNDAY Show with transformational life coach Shelley Whizin focuses on the Power of Forgiveness and how it can Heal Hearts and Transform Lives. Check out Shelley's article that explores the incredible benefits of forgiveness and how it can positively impact our well-being and the world around us: https://blendradioandtv.com/listing/the-power-of-forgiveness/

SHELLEY WHIZIN is the founder and CEO of the Soul Diving Institute™ and author of "What Do You Bring to the Table? A Savory, Sensory and Inspirational Guide to Living a Yummy Delicious Life." Keep up with her here: https://www.shelleywhizin.com/

Tune into Big Blend Radio's "Soul Diving Sunday with Shelley" show every first Sunday here: http://tinyurl.com/2bjbectk

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Duration:: 48m
Broadcast on:: 07 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to Big Blend Radio Soul Diving Sunday Show featuring transformational life coach Shelley Wisen and your hosts Lisa and Nancy. Hey everybody, welcome. Today, Shelley Wisen is going to take us down the path of how to embrace the power of forgiveness. That's right. I said forgiveness. It's probably one of the hardest things, but one of the most important things we can do in our lives to move forward instead of being stuck in the backwards reverse mode. Am I right, Shelley? Absolutely. That's right. Oh my gosh, and Shelley's got a great article up on blendradio and tv.com. Just type in forgiveness. You'll find it. My gosh. So I know when we talked about this topic, I was like, you know, this is one of those hard things that we all hear about it. You know, you forgive and then there's a thing of forgive and forget. And then I'm like, I don't know if I want to forget because there's lessons I want to remember to not repeat. But we're all human, right? Isn't that what you always say? Yes, absolutely. We're all human and we're all going to make mistakes and we're all going to hurt each other. And we're all going to do these things because it's part of the human journey. We can't stop ourselves from doing it. The only, well, let me take that statement back. We can stop ourselves from hurting other people without a doubt that we have control over. Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes worth more thoughtless than we'd like to be. I know I love being thoughtful. And when I'm not as thoughtful, I have a high standard of my own thoughtfulness. So when I'm not as thoughtful as I'd like to be, I feel badly, you know, and when I'm not paying attention to somebody, I have a friend, she's 86, I think. And I haven't seen her in several months. And I keep saying, I want to come visit you, I want to see you, but I haven't done it. So I feel badly about that. I mean, life is precious, as you know, being a death midwife, we see life and go, life come and go very quickly all the time. And, but there's an element to forgiveness, to forgive ourself, forgive each other for our foibles, the flaws, the stakes, you know, and not make everything so seriously that we strip the very joy out of living. Giveness is a very important ingredient, you know, in cooking, I can use it as a food, as an analogy for life. But forgiveness is one of those key ingredients to keeping ourselves sane, to keeping ourselves happy. Because we don't, we're putting poison in our own system. Right. And it's like, when we hold a grudge, we, Don Miguel, I love how Don Miguel Ruiz puts it, he's the author of the four agreements, and he puts it. When you hold a grudge, it's like giving, it's like taking poison yourself, and then expecting the other person to die. Wow. How did that fireworks behind you? She's got special effects going. Wow, you know, any of those exploded. You just exploded. Everyone for those not watching this on YouTube or Facebook, Shelley had fireworks just go off behind you are on zoom. So there it is. I have no idea. Fireworks and movies was when, you know, who happened? Right. The day. Yeah. What you got going on, girl. It's compacted us. So you're drinking poison. Oh, he ate the apple. Is it the poison apple? But yeah, because when, because I'm not forgiving it, I know that I've had like a couple of grudges in my life, right? And come on, we all have them at points, right? And I don't think it ever helped. And it's hard to turn it around because we've almost programmed ourselves to always whine and bitch in mode and complain about it. So we kind of almost program ourselves to stay in that grudgy, cranky, anger mode. And so you're reliving it. So it's almost traumatic if you relive it all the time. Right. Well, it's interesting that you bring it up that way because when we hold a grudge, it's really, it comes from a story that we've made up about the person or the thing. And we've made up the story. And we stand behind the story because the eco wants to be right so badly that defend it will find evidence. It will point justify why we're miserable. But who is getting hurt when we're holding the grudge? We are. That person doesn't really know that we're festering this grudge or maybe they do know and they feel badly about it. But you know, as long as we're holding them in an an A box, which I call the A whole box, you know, then they can't get out no matter what. So when we hold that grudge, we're the ones suffering. We're the ones judging that person. We're the ones suffering. We're the ones feeling bad. And we're the ones egging on the stuff. Years can go by. I mean, I hate to say this, but there's a pattern in my family and my generational family. And one of the ways, one of the favorite ways of attacking or not forgiving is shutting down, withdrawing, we're treating and going silent. And in my father's side of the family, there were two sisters that didn't speak to each other for 50 years. Oh, why? Because one or two of them were holding a grudge, we're holding the story in place and feeling hurt about it. It doesn't get bigger when you do that. Of course, it just festers. It festers. It feeds on itself. It's like a parasite in a way. It takes away our well being and eats away at our well being. We don't even may not even remember why we're not talking to each other. We don't remember the reason. Remember the effects. We remember the hurt. And so we feed the hurt with more thoughts about that. We'll see they're still like that. They haven't gone over that. They're still there still being this. They're still being that. And maybe they are. But if we can allow for each other to be human, and we all make mistakes, but does it mean that we need to be crucified on the cross and put nails in our palms to do because we made a mistake or because we hurt someone? They fester when you mess up. Yeah, I agree. That's a huge part of it. And I think that's where grudges come in, is when people don't take ownership of their actions. Or maybe they don't even understand, even if they've been told, everybody's in a different place of growth. And so you see that with couples, right? And families. Couples get together. Maybe to get married. And then like, you know, drama, right? And then anger. And maybe someone did some philandering. Who knows? But then here comes the grudge and the anger. And, you know, but I always say like, you've got to remember you were attracted to each other at some point for a reason. You know, there was some joy at some time. I mean, I'm not talking about the criminal acts here. Okay, however, there are forgiveness programs and crime issues, right? I mean, I've interviewed a lady whose daughter murdered somebody. And it's very difficult to, you know, it was just one of those things that just happened. It wasn't premeditated. Oh, I'm going to go out and murder someone today. She's she's still in a correctional place. And the mom wrote a book and she had to really turn to spirituality and kayaking to get through it. And wrote back and forth to her daughter and kept going, but had to forgive to be able to still because she couldn't not love her daughter. Her daughter did it out of a rage. Her husband was doing something he shouldn't. And so she just turned around and snapped and killed the other woman. Yeah, and that can happen. Yeah. And then, you know, she tried to cover it up and then, you know, things catapult and you know, you're just going to get it eventually. Yeah, I'm going to get caught. And her mom had to really that's and you hear stories of victims forgetting, I mean, forgiving the criminals a lot. Yeah. And they all learn from something. It's kind of a deep emotional thing. So I think it's it's according to everyone's timing of when it can work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, being it two sided, you know what I mean, you can make it work for yourself, but. Well, that's the thing about forgiveness. It's really not about the other person. It's about yourself. It's about how you feel and how you navigate this world of ours and how how you allow yourself to get back to the love. And for me, I know when I'm on the outs with somebody and, you know, I I do my very best to remember get back to the love as quickly as possible. The hurt may be there and I'm not saying it's not going to be there. But when we can let ourselves get back to the love and forgive each other for being human. Yeah, because the hurt goes to anger. The hurt, you have hurt and then on top of hurt is anger. And so we usually deal with the anger because it's more easily accessible than the hurt. We don't want to admit that we're hurt. So we'll deal with the anger. But it doesn't help to alleviate the hurt. And and it's not about the other person. It's just about, okay, they know, not what they do. I've heard that one before. Where have we heard that? You know, forgive them. They know not what they do. Got somebody hanging on a cross with some nails in his, you know, Paul. Well, it's the same thing as the breakup line that we use. I'm sorry, I can't be what you want me to be. That's it. That's reality, right? You want this and this and I'm just say, that's not me. Sorry, you know, and that's and you can when you the emotion, it's emotion that gets us a little twirled around. But yeah, what would you say is the first, I mean, it's forgiveness. And then if someone keeps doing it to you, or whatever the grudge is, then you need to make plans to maybe move around or just accept that's who that person is, because isn't that part of it is acceptance? Yes. So you accept that's who the person is. And then you can choose not to be around that person. You don't need to subject yourself to abuse if somebody's using you. I mean, that's why there are breakups in relationships, because that person who continues to be either oblivious to the abuse that they're handing out, right? Or they're they they do it and they're more narcissistic than that you'd like them to be, because they don't. There are different levels of narcissism as well. There are pure, really, really hardcore narcissists who don't who aren't even in tune with what somebody else is feeling. Yeah. And they have no clue nor do they care that much about somebody else's feeling. So they don't have the ability, you know, in their consciousness to care what somebody else thinks or what they feel. And that is forgivable, because that is the reality. And you don't have to be around that person. That's your choice. Your choice is to either continue to be around them or remove yourself and forgive them for who they are, whatever they do. But it doesn't mean that you have to subject yourself to any abuse whatsoever. You know, in the south, they have that saying, Oh, isn't he special? Isn't she special? Right. And then they just move right on through it, don't they? With a smile and then have tea and cake afterwards. But the thing is, you know, as humans, we have this yearning and desire to connect with another human. That's part of the human condition. We want to feel we belong. We want to feel connected to we. And part of the disappointment in when something tears apart is that feeling of disconnection that we don't like. We don't like disconnected. I when if I'm if I'm on the outs with my daughter for any reason or my sister for any reason, I feel yucky. I don't like that feeling of being south when somebody is either holding something about me that I've done. Right. If I've made a mistake and we're on the outs because of the mistake that I have made or the hurt that I have caused inadvertently or even from reaction. I mean, you know, I can have a conversation with my sister and she's pointing things out to me about me. And all I want to do is point things out about her that she that's very natural. Yeah, that's very human. And so we go into a reaction mode. And if that reaction is filled with some heat, and what I mean by heat is the anger attached to the judgment that we're holding about that thing that they're doing, then they can feel it. And then again, they feel attacked or I am attacking unconsciously, but wanting to hurt because I was hurt. Yeah. And so when I can see that in myself, that to me is growth. That is acknowledging and saying, wow, I just realized, and that happened to me not too long ago. Well, we all do that. That's a natural thing instead of because it's and it could be even someone, you know, being very nice and say, Hey, can we look revisit this or say something constructive criticism? Yeah, can go awry. Yes. And especially with siblings. Oh, and family, family, families, couples, anybody close. Yes. And work, it's okay, ish. You know, and we need that because we need feedback as a better word. Right. And when someone says, Oh, I want to give you some feedback. I'm like, Oh, yeah, no, here's it. Yeah, yeah. Give me the cake. So I shove it in my mouth while you do that talking. Give me that glass of wine. What? Oh, yeah, exactly. I did that. Oh, wow. Really? Keep the mouth going in a different direction. Right. So, so that's important, but but that is a just that is so reactionary and so human and normal, but it does get it takes something that could be just, Hey, you made a typo too. You can't type anything at all ever. Right. Yeah. We jump to conclusions because we want the evidence because the ego wants to be right so badly. Oh, yes. That it wants to say to ourself, I told you not to trust that person. I told you not to have a relationship with them. I told you this, I told you that they're only going to hurt you. Don't be open. Close your heart, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And and sometimes we listen to that and then we're we're closed up. So that's not such a good thing. But if we can stay pliable, and if we can stay open to being human with our, you know, our our things that make us fallible, things that make us human because we can't help being human. That's what we are. Right. Yeah. And if we can allow for that and give each other the space to be human, then forgiveness, I think happens a lot quicker. And to me, as when we shorten the gap time for all of these kinds of things and get back to the love as quickly as possible, we feel better. Yeah. And that changes like in your article, you say, then it becomes a rip, a positive rip at all effect versus the nasties. Right. We don't want the case of a nasties. No, because boy, I'll tell you, it can escalate so quick. Boom. Yeah. And it affects your health going. Oh, my God, what the heck is happening? Well, you know, when you're talking about, you know, being a death to learn and see if you end up midwife, you know, comes life comes in and out. And you know, really is about living life in the present moment. Are you going to, you know, I could do the Eckhart vote, totally voice if you want. Let's do it. Let's hear it. No, no, no, I don't, I don't want to do that. I think he's pretty brilliant, but living life in a present moment and enjoying as much as you can, you're going to still go through Kaka, right? And obstacles and all of that. But you get through them and you make mistakes while you're doing it and you grow, but it could be your last day. And are you going to do it and how are you going to end your day when you go to not go to bed? Do you want to feel like you at least enjoyed some part of it? Right. Right. I tell couples that are arguing that are really mad at each other. If this was your last breath, is this the way you want to go out? And all of a sudden, they kind of stop and go, wow, you know, you don't think about those things until you think about those things. Well, it's because you're also there with them. And if they were on their own, they'll go, you tell you, I'm going to take you out. Yeah, I'm going, we're going. And you're going, that's right. That's right. But that's how it can escalate, right? They can go to that point. And not even, not even mean it is just stuff coming out. Yeah. No one's really, it's just like, how cruel can I, who's going to win? It becomes a verbal abuse award, which is now emotional abuse. It's not good. Right. It's just that ego, like you said. And you're talking about emotional abuse and what happens, it turns into physical. So it's mental, emotional, it becomes physical, because when we're holding those yucky feelings, that cortisol, there's adrenaline, there's all the yucky feeling hormones that are ruminating around our, our bodies and our physical bodies start to take its toll. And when we forgive, something lifts, and we actually start to feel better. So when we feel better, our bodies are switching the hormone reaction from negative to positive, then we're having serotonin running around and, you know, oxytocin, all those good feeling hormones. I want the good, I want the good juju. Me too. It's like, yeah, you know, if you look at it, it's like, if you're running around with bad wine in your veins, that's not good. Yeah. I want the good stuff, you know. So how do you actually just kind of go to a place now? I mean, everybody has grudges or mini ones, big ones, whatever, or some, nobody has a perfect relationship. I mean, maybe, I mean, there's all kind, you know, whatever, I don't want to generalize, but humans aren't perfect. So I'm just going to say, what would be the first step to forgiveness? And I don't think you even have to tell, I mean, because forgiveness comes from something that has occurred. And it could be small, big, large, and the person on the other side could even be dead, and you're still carrying that damn thing around. It's like a weight on your shoulders. Holy cow, we don't want that. How do you stop and really acknowledge it to move forward? What would be a first step for for folks to do that? Do you have to write stuff down? Do you have to get really serious with yourself and have a talking to yourself or? Yeah, well, I definitely believe that you need to have a talking to yourself. There are different forgiveness exercises you can do. I've done studied with a man by the name of Christopher Howard, and he has us go into a meditation and put all the people on stage of the people that we want to forgive. And so there are different methodologies that you can use. You can put them on stage. You can have these cords that are connected between you and them and cut the cord. I mean, there's different ways of pulling back your power, because when you're not forgiving, you're still giving this remote control. Oh, we're back to that power to the other person. Over your sense of well-being. And they could be dead. It could be dead and it doesn't make any difference. So it's up to us to take back the power, up to us to take back that remote control and say, you know what, I'm not giving them the power. I'm going to go and revert to love. I want to be a loving kind human being. That's the kind of human being that I want to be. And so I'm going to focus on what will it take for me to get to that place and focus on those things that will make me feel better. Yummy. Yeah. Now, so when you think about this, and I love that you're saying you're taking back your power and your power is what you want. So we have our own superpowers. And so we get to choose what those are, and hopefully they're positive. But, you know, I remember there was this thing called that the burning ceremony. You want somebody out of your life that's maybe done some harm to you. And, you know, we've done that where we've burned sage. So it's a positive thing. And then you write them down and on a piece of paper and you burn them. And, you know, that's it. I release you. It was like a releasing. So burning them doesn't sound as nice as release them. But then I got to this point, and I think as to our conversations, I kind of thought, okay, here's the deal. If human beings are truly all connected, no matter what in the web of life, and you think about ripple effects, and even how humanity and nature works, like, look at the fungus, right? So I think what I really liked what you just said is we're taking our power back. So maybe you have to release something. But the reality about the burning ceremony, I was thinking about this, we can't go around in life and burn bridges. It doesn't work because it doesn't work for you down the road because together, no matter what, you're going to have to work together somehow, somewhere because we all affect each other or affect each other, excuse me, in some way. It could be something you never see or do. So if you look at bridges versus cutting the cord, right? And I agree with all the burning and the releasing and the cutting the cords and all of that. But we have to be able to remember that we can still be there and live in you can't just go burn someone's house down and say, okay, I'm done with you, I've forgiven you, but I'm burning your house down. You need to be able to still be neighbors. And just kind of, you see what I mean? It's like, well, it's one thing to burn the energy of the negative side. Yeah. And I wouldn't call it burning people or burning that. But what you're doing is you're burning, you're letting go of a negative aspect and you're transmuting the energy. When you burn a piece of paper and you've written somebody's name on it that has been hurting you, you're transmuting the energy to allow something new to happen. Another energy to come in, say smudges, it clears energy. And that's what we're doing. We're clearing the energy for something new to happen. Even if you never speak to that person again, doesn't make any difference. And maybe you have to see them the next day at work. So that was my point. You need to still be able to, you're taking your power back so that you can handle things better as my point, because you can't just go, okay, well, that I'm done with that. Forgiveness is not like, okay, I released this negative stuff and then we're done with you and never see you again, because that's actually kind of not what life does. Sometimes you're going to see that person again. Sometimes you're not. And it's okay not to see that person ever again. If that's a, it doesn't, there's no rule that you have to see that person. If someone hurt you terribly and they're so narcissistic, they don't get it. Why keep subjecting yourself to the same treatment? Well, if someone's working with them, that's what I'm saying. Like those kind of different, that's different. And you still have a choice to work in that environment, right, or move if it's your name or move. Exactly. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to put up with or tolerate bad behavior, even though you've forgiven them. It doesn't mean you have to subject yourself to be constantly abused. Right, because you don't have to sit there and play forgive, forgive, forgive to the same person, because it can happen. Right. Right. Yeah, yeah, you move on. That's right. Yeah, because you can put boundaries up. Yes. You can do, you know, and hopefully that will work. But I think the forgiveness thing is really difficult. So the forgiven forget. What do you think about the forget part? You know, everything that happens to us is in our sense memory. So it's in our body, no matter what, times if something terrible happens, we block it. And we may not have access to that memory because it was so horrific. Right. You block it so that we can live of kind of a sane life when we've been traumatized, you know, as children, we're sometimes traumatized. So we need or we get to, I always like to use the words get to not have to or need to, but we get to do processes to help us put those memories in the left brain rather than the right brain. When a memory of trauma is lodged in the right brain, if something happens today, it might trigger that same thing that happened 30 years ago. And the trauma will be alive as if it was happening again. And now, so it's up to us to do work on helping ourselves put the trauma in the left brain where it becomes a memory. And then we can talk about it without being re triggered over and over again. Yeah, because again, the remote control, you can say I'm pushing the off button. Don't keep putting that horrible channel on. I don't want to watch that. Right. Or we just don't give this to anybody. We can. I want to watch the golden girls. Right. Exactly. We keep it for ourselves. But that brings us to what happens when we do something that's awful. Oh, see, now we're mean to ourselves. We are more mean to ourselves than we are to anybody else. And and it's fascinating to me that we are so hard on ourself when we make a mistake. I know I am when I do something that somebody, oh, I just it's very. And that's where that saying of not sleeping at night, you have your conscience. Well, it's there. Yeah, because we have a high standard. I know I have a high standard of thoughtfulness and if I'm not as thoughtful or even if I forget somebody's birthday or almost their name, if I'm with some, I get their name. It's like, could you forget their name? That's horrible. I mean, we are more unkind to ourself than we are other people. And so, or we feel guilt or shame. Shame is the worst. Shame is deeper than guilt. Guilt is it kind of can go away a little bit, but shame stays with us. And then it permeates our being and it permeates our behavior. And I know I've been in places of shame where I felt I was a burden on people. I didn't even want to look at them. I had to look down, you know, look at them in their eyes because I felt shame about behavior or about what I was going through. And so, self forgiveness is essential for our personal growth. We can't live without forgiving ourself. We just can't. It's true. Exactly. You know, we'll throw ourself under the bus and sell ourself short. And you serve the joy that we actually have. We'll dismiss the joy as if we're, we don't deserve to have joy because of these things that we've done. And but by forgiving ourselves, we're accepting the fact that we're imperfect, where that's the way we're created. Exactly. We're aided to be perfect. That's what the human experience is all about. And we have to make mistakes to grow. We have to make mistakes. That's how you grow. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I forgive myself for being here. What did I do today that I could forgive myself for? I haven't done anything quite yet, but I'll let you know because I'm sure by the end of the I'm sure Nancy will help. By the end of the day, something will come up. Something funny. Oh, yeah. No. Oh, I made a bad typo on an email. You got the email too. See, I made a typo and I go up. Sounds like, dang it, man. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So it's like it. Hey, yeah. So should I beat myself up because I sent a bunch of people an email with a typo? Well, I remember when I first started with soul diving institute many years ago, and it there were typos in there. And it said, show diving or should diving, which is my one of my least favorite. I don't like the word shit. No, no. So I now went out like that. I was like horrified. It was one of the first announcements of my business or whatever. And I was horrified. And I and it was somebody, my marketing person did it. And I didn't catch it. So I wanted to blame him. I wanted him to be the guy. But I didn't catch it. So I had two people to forgive him and me. Well, you know, that's a really good point. I have a friend and she just got a big promotion at work. And the day they announced this to her, she goes to take over. It's a new kind of thing. And somebody on her watch made a really huge, huge, I mean, a big boo boo with clients. And we're talking a ton of money, right? Yeah. And so here she's been working all this time for this position, you know, and so she went to her boss and said, I take ownership. He's like, but you just got it. She goes, yeah, but the keys were handed to me that day, not literal keys. But I and he's like, well, it was another person, but she goes, but I'm their boss, basically. And so I take ownership. And if you want me to go find another job, please just let me know so I can start doing that so I can do what I need to do. But I will, you know, and he's just sat her down. He goes, are you kidding me? You know, we don't do that. We work things together, which is really a nice. She obviously works for a good company. Then they work through it. She sat and, you know, powered out some very long overnighters of work. And she's on target to get another, you know, promotion, but that's called taking ownership and, you know, the employees that work with her, you know, her colleagues, they all pull together for it. And so she, they are all like, well, she's, she's on it. And we don't want to screw her up either now, you know. So, and she was forgiving to them. Yeah. So I kind of think there's just a way of how to work things. Yeah. And I think it's contagious a little bit as you as you're sharing that story with me, because when you see somebody fess up when they mess up, right? And then you see how forgiveness plays a part in that. It does. And then allowing for the mistake to be human without expecting a perfect result, right? Then we can be easier on ourselves and each other. I mean, after all, what do we really want to feel in the end of our lives? We want to feel joy. We want to feel fulfilled. We want to feel that our lives matter, right? That we have a positive influence on the world in some way that, you know, that we made an impact on somebody else's life that maybe we made this world a little better place than when we came into it. I love that because also the other way of looking at two is the stress, the amount of stress and anger in the world. Do you want to be part of that or not? Exactly. That's a choice. Because it's not easy to see what's going on in the world. As human beings, it's very hard to come and this kind of hatred for no good reason, this kind of behavior of. Oh, it's, it's, yeah, everybody just has to all be aware of it for safety and be know what's part of the world and to help in places. And, you know, we are part of this universe. So we should know what's going on. But it is, it is up to us in our own actions to make those choices. So maybe step back, that whole thing about think before you speak. God, that's so hard. Yeah. When we practice, like, if you wait a morning and you say, what kind of human being do I want to be today? You know, then you bring an intention into your life that I want to be a conscious aware human being that's kind and loving and fun and joyful. All those things that make a recipe yummy delicious, rather than I want to be a bitter, angry, resentful, jealous, envious, mean, and cruel human being. I mean, I don't know. I kind of know what kind of human being I want to practice to be. And sometimes it does take practice. Sometimes we go in a knee jerk reaction mode, where we just react to something that ticks us off. And we blurt out. It's not very kind. A lot of people in stress do that. A lot of people under stress. And, you know, the world is under a lot of stress and people are for different reasons. And sometimes that's another point about forgiveness is we don't know what the other person is going through. Right. You know, it's hard on the road when you're driving. I go back to driving, right? Okay. Because at that moment, it's not that easy. When someone basically is going to ram you in the side of the car, do I just don't forgive? You know, I don't. I'm being honest. It's no. But then you go like, Hey, you never know what's going on. You don't know if someone's screaming down the highway. Are they why what's propelling that? We don't know. Is it is is it? Oh, their wife is having a baby. We don't know that. Is there an emergency or are they just doing it to be manly? Well, then they have something lacking, you know, you know, emotionally. So, I mean, if you kind of take it all, I mean, even criminals, criminals that do acts are out of desperation, addiction, which is a disease or hey, it is from a trauma. So, or if you're a complete cold-hearted psychopath, that's a chemical situation, right? Right. So, forgiveness can be done. Yes, it can. It's just hard. Well, it we say it's hard. And then it is hard. What if we say it's not so hard? You know, they're gonna have it. Like you said, we condition ourselves to say it's okay. Forgiveness is part of one of the things that we get to practice in our life. So, we don't walk around with stress. We don't walk around with that anxiety. We don't walk around desperate. When we practice healthy ways of being, right, out of awareness and consciousness and being conscious of that we are a human being. We do are we are fallible. We do have faults. We do have flaws. We're not built to be perfect robots. Even robots aren't perfect, you know. And then we allow ourselves to be malleable, to be flexible, to be aware, to look in the mirror and say, oh, where did I go off? Where was I out of alignment with my own balance and harmony at peace? Where have I given this to somebody? And they now have my sense of well being in their hands rather than be taking it back and taking responsibility for my own sense of well being when I'm driving, I don't give a crap. How else is driving or what they're doing? I don't get angry. No, because it's gonna run your trip. Like that's it. If somebody's angered you on the road, now they're like messing up your road trip, man. Road trip's gonna have good music, you got munchies, you got, you know, good conversation and having a good time and pulls in front of you and then you're gonna stay mad and then the rest of everybody's all whiny in the car then everybody gets all and now it's derailed. Right. You know, yeah, but I will have a couple. I am allowed to have my choice words because I just do my choice words. And then I keep moving on. Everybody has their way. You want to say isn't isn't he special? Right. Yes, you know, but then they move on. So I think that is a good practice. Right. And then what happens is you become the role model and then somebody else sees how you do it and they'll go, oh, wow, there's another way to handle this. And then there's that ripple effect that you were talking about. It goes down the line where we start to model how we want to be and somebody else can see how it's done. Right. Otherwise, we don't have role models. I have some clients that don't have a role model for what joy is. So how do they know how to feel joyful? I need to call Shelley. There you go. That's why they're working with me. Well, the thing too, I just want to stress this. There's always that, oh, you have to have, you know, let water roll off your back like a duck, water for ducks back or whatever, that people can take, like look at celebrities, people trash them all the time. They put on a pound and now you're fat, you're this, which is hurtful, right? So then they don't read it. They do their self protection, which they should. And they think, oh, no, you need like corporate, like a woman in a corporate business. Oh, she's cold hearted because she handles it. See, this is wrong. Maybe she's just forgiving you and getting on with her life so she can focus on what she needs to focus and not focus on people's, you know, stuff. So I kind of feel like sometimes there's this thing that people go, oh, they're cold hearted just because they're moving on instead of engaging in drama. Right. Oh, that that is a very interesting interpretation for dismissing something. Now that there's a difference, there's a fine line in dismissing someone or allowing that someone to have whatever they have and moving on. There's a there's a difference in that. Because if someone says, oh, just get over it, then that's different. Yeah, it's like dismissing the person's feelings about their that's not what I'm talking about. Exactly. Exactly. No, they hear it and they just go, okay. And yeah, you don't you don't have to you can acknowledge something, but you don't have to swallow it and now live that. You know what I mean? Right. You can acknowledge it. Compassion for yourself, compassion for somebody else. And just like you said, you don't know what that other person may be going through. If it's a stranger on the street, you know, and they're nasty or whatever, or they're homeless. I mean, they're homeless. They're usually very desperate and very unhappy. I don't know how many happy homeless people you've ever met, but they don't kind of go together. I think they're circumstance, you know, right. So even that there's a judgment. Why are they homeless? Why aren't they getting a job? Why aren't they taking care of themselves? I mean, human beings are high maintenance. It takes a lot to keep ourselves out of being homeless. We're paying in the butt. Yeah, there's a lot to do in keeping up with ourselves being a human being. So patience is good to have kindness is good to have compassion and caring is good to have ourselves and each other. You know, and so when we when we're harsh on ourself, then we can remind ourselves, we're only human. It's okay. And that that ripple effect of being harsh to to ourselves is when you start being harsh on others too, because you know how to do it to yourself. Definitely. We're really good at it. Yeah. In fact, in NLP, in in neural linguistic programming and in that kind of work, when you ask a client to teach you how to be angry, for instance, how what gets you angry and how how do you stir it up? How do you get to a place from not being angry to being angry to being out of control? How does that work? When they start to teach you, well, let's see, when something happens to me, I react to it. And then I go into a place of of not wanting it to be the way it is, but then I fight it. And then I get angry and I want to judge somebody else. So I judge somebody or judge the situation. Then I'm angry about it. And what happens to me is I either yell, well, how do you get angry? What do you do? How do you express it? Well, yell or write this, write that. What's they start explaining all that? All of a sudden, they see that it's up to them to get themselves in that state. And yeah, for explaining it. Guess what? They're getting themselves out of that state. It's fascinating to watch. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. So it is about practice. It's totally about practice. Yeah. And you'll have a better life and a happy one. Yeah. I mean, delicious. I love it. I love it. And everyone, Shelley's article goes a little bit more, but we go in depth, but it's structured, but we have our good conversations. Yes, it's structured. So check that out. It is also linked in the show notes, the episode notes and Shelley's website, Shelley wisdom.com is also linked from there. But thank you again, Shelley is always fun keeping us on the good path. Yes. Yes. Yes. Keeping myself. It reminds me constantly myself. So it's good. Yeah. Well, listen, have a cool July and all that good stuff. Take care. Yes, you too. You too. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Big Blend Radios and Soul Diving Sunday Show featuring transformational life coach, Shelley Wisen. Follow Shelley at ShelleyWisen.com. Follow us at bigblendradio.com.