Unlocking the Power of Forgiveness: Katharine Giovanni

This coffee cup represents anger and bitterness and bad self-talk. So when we first get angry, look at my body language. You know, I can still conduct a conversation. I can go to work. I can conduct my life. I'm managing my anger really well. But if I don't let go of some of the anger, humans irritate other humans. So I'm going to continue to put more anger into the cup and eventually it's going to get a little heavy. So now I'm using two hands to hold up the cup. I still can hold it off to the side, but it's starting to penetrate my conversations. It's starting to penetrate my dreams. I'm starting to talk about it more.

This is The Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Katherine Giovanni, a.k.a. The Forgiveness Coach. Welcome, Katherine.

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Absolutely. So we'll start out with the obvious question. What is a forgiveness coach?

Well, everybody in the world tells you to forgive your parents, your pastor, your teachers. Nobody teaches you how. And what if you don't want to? What if it's unforgivable? Or what if it's something you did yourself that you need, that you feel guilty for and you need to forgive yourself? Then what do you do? Nobody teaches you how. So I'm the one who teaches the how. I've come up with a very unique 7-step system.

Well, this sounds intriguing. So tell me how you became a forgiveness coach. Like, you didn't wake up one day and say, I'm going to be a forgiveness coach. There had to have been a story behind that.

Well, to be a forgiveness coach, it does imply that your life has had a plethora of the opposite.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So I've had a lot of— let's just say there's a lot of water under the bridge. It all kind of started in the 8th grade when my parents were both pickled, which means they were both alcoholics, and I was different. So I was really badly bullied in school, and as a result, in the 8th grade, I tried to commit suicide, and I turned into— and a friend talked me out of it, but I turned into one of those kids. You know, you know the kids I'm talking about. And I kind of just bounced through life. And until my mother fell down a flight of stairs, broke her hip, and ended up in the hospital. And even my mother couldn't get a gin and tonic in the hospital, so she dried out. And we ended up being closer than sisters. We forgave each other. We had 3 really beautiful years. And then she died of breast cancer, which I later got in 2011. And I realized right then that if I didn't change my life, I was going to die too. So the only New Year's resolution I've ever kept, to be honest, was I quit drinking that New Year's and I've been sober now— what year is it? 35 years, I believe. Congratulations. When you quit drinking, most people go through AA or recovery programs and you're supposed to make amends. Mm-hmm. Okay. You're supposed to reach out and call these people, right? We didn't have texting back in the '90s, never mind what era it was. I would have easily texted them because I was painfully shy. And so my only recourse was to see them in person or call them. I didn't want to get yelled at. And now I'm an extroverted introvert, but back then, painfully shy. So I just paid it lip service. You know, I forgive you. Hopefully he forgives me. You know, it was that kind of thing. None of us were taught how to forgive, so we always We all just kind of said the words and sometimes we meant it and sometimes we didn't. So I kind of kept doing that and eventually I found myself starting to feel better. And I'm one of the original founders of the independent concierge industry, and I started my own business in 1995. And part of teaching people how to be a concierge is customer service.

Yes.

And I've been doing this for like 20-something years. I retired in 2020, but in— I can teach you how to be a concierge. I can teach you what to do, how, what to say. All the words. But if you're angry, it's going to bleed through your body language whether you want it to or not. So I had to come up with a method to get people to release their anger at somebody coming up to them without being able to leave their, their workstation. And that's when I came up with forgiveness. But it was the 1990s, and you didn't develop— you didn't give soft topics in workshops, right? It wasn't done. Right. Well, I did. And that's kind of how the whole thing started. And it wasn't until 2020 that I actually figured out the secret sauce and I figured out the actual method that people have kind of been missing.

Okay. So you had this, this method that you developed and you were using and it was effective. What was missing up until 2020?

Well, a few things before I give you the special sauce. Okay. Just because I forgive you doesn't mean I want a relationship with you.

Fair enough.

I probably don't. Forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean repair. Here's the big one that trips up absolutely everyone. Just because I forgive you doesn't mean I'm all of a sudden giving you a pass and I'm admitting that you were right and I was wrong. It does not. And everybody thinks that. They think forgiveness is weak because I'm finally giving in. Mm-hmm. And I think it stems from our childhood when the teacher looked at us and say, now forgive each other and go play. And I think we connected some dots that should have never been connected because everybody thinks this. And what forgiveness means to me, the absolute formal definition is I want you out of my head. That's it. I want you out of my head. I want to stop thinking about you. I want to stop being triggered by you. I don't want to walk into a bake shop, smell cookies, and now all of a sudden I'm thinking about you. I want it to stop. That's what it means. And in my world, you do not have to reach out and call these people. Forgiveness is selfish. You do it for you. So that being said, you can forgive dead people too, because where they are or are not doesn't matter. If they're in your head alive and well and you're still getting tripped up by the memory, even if it was 40 years ago, it can be forgiven.

Okay, so maybe we dive into process a little more and then that will— because I have some questions, but maybe a better understanding will answer that. So what is the process of forgiveness that you teach?

I do have science and studies to back myself up. Okay.

Just in case.

Okay. On a 10 scale, with 10 being unforgivable dumpster fire and 1 being the easiest person to forgive in the world, every single person listening to this broadcast is thinking of their number 10 person, and that's fair. That's why forgiveness is so tough for all of us, because we immediately think of the one that hurt us the most.

Mm-hmm.

In the system I've developed, you leave them for last. They're a bear. So I want you to start with the easy ones. Okay. Now the thing about forgiveness is I get people coming to me all the time that says, I did do the work, I did forgive them, but they're not staying forgiven, are they? They're, they have a nasty habit of triggering you again when you least expect it. So then you think, well, I did forgive them. Why, why am I all of a sudden mad again? Well, because you didn't forgive the energy. Einstein correctly proved that energy is neither created nor destroyed. So when you get mad, everybody assumes that it just leaves your mouth and dissipates in the universe. Most people don't even think about it at all. But it doesn't. It hangs in your energy field. And everything— Einstein also correctly proved that everything on our planet has an energy field, including this little silver microphone. So my system takes that into account because you're clearing the energy, you're turning in the energy from dark, which is hanging around your energy field, to a light one. So I'm going to have you sit down and write a list of all the people you think you want to forgive. Okay. And you're going to start with those ugly ones because they're the right— they're right at the top. Yeah, I'm going to forgive Betty and Martha. You know, you're going to— they're going to come right out. I'm going to forgive my parents and my brother and my siblings. And then I want you to— no judgment. I want you to just write down whoever you're going to write down. Don't judge what you're writing. Just write without thought. When you're finished, I want you to rate these people from 1 to 10. Now, you could have 7 number 5s. I don't care. You could skip a number. I also don't care. What I really care about is you start with the easy ones and you work your way up the list, never doing more than 10 people a day. And the system is you put your hand in your heart because the words are really just for us. Humans, it's the energy behind the words that means the most. It's like the law of gravity. The law of gravity is gonna work whether you believe in it or not. It doesn't care. It's still gonna work. True. You could call it the law of keeping Catherine on the ground. It doesn't care. It's still gonna work. And forgiveness is like an onion and it's got many, many, many layers, which is mildly irritating. But I want you to start with the easy ones. Put your hand in your heart and I want you to pick an easy one, like the person who cut you off on I-95 South yesterday. Right. Forgive that person. Right. Or the football team that lost last Sunday. You can forgive them. I hope you can forgive them. Or the person who stole your lunch or stained your sweater or cut you off in aisle 4 of the grocery store. Stupid, easy, easy people that you can forgive. Your wife forgot the milk. You could forgive that. Come on, start with those people. And I want you to imagine them. They're standing in front of you. Imagine them from the time they were in the sandbox. So if you're thinking about somebody you went to grammar school with, imagine them as they looked in grammar school. And then because you're alone in the room and you can turn your phone off, there's an off button on that phone. I've heard, I've heard that. Yeah. And if you're really starting to twitch at the thought of turning your phone off, which has happened to some clients of mine, there's a mute button. And I don't want you to press vibrate because the minute it dances on your desk, you're going to look at it. So I want you alone in the room if possible, and I want your phone to be off. Just don't forget to turn it back on later. I've done that too. And I want you to say the following: I completely forgive Martha. I forgive the energy around Martha. I forgive myself, the energy around myself. I forgive the energy around the entire relationship. Amen. And so it is. So help me God. End it any way you like. And quite honestly, that's it. And then I want you to check in with your body. Is it still a level 3 person or did it go down to a 2? If it went— is it a level 1 person and you don't feel angry anymore? Great. Cross them off the list. If it was a level 3 person, now you're even more angry when you started. Wow. Why did that happen? Supposed to go the other way. Well, that's because your brain is the most beautiful, brilliant tool in the world, and it protects you. Yes. And there's a back closet in the back of your brain that you don't know exists. And it's just like, ooh, Katherine has now opened up that back closet. We're gonna flood her brain with all these wonderful memories she has now forgotten. Which is good and bad at the same time. So now you have a brand new list. That happened to a friend of mine. She cle— she forgave a level 3 person, jumped up to a 7. So you just take a breath and you keep her on the list and you do it again in 24 hours. It's a very, very simple process. But when you get to the unforgivable, now there's, there's the trick. The unforgivable, you're not going to get a number 10 person down to a 1 overnight. This is going to take a minute.

And so let me pause there and ask a question. So if you're saying unforgivable, is that like, I don't want to forgive them?

Whatever it means to you. Unforgivable could be some form of violence. It could be your parents. It could be your ex-business partner. It could be a client that just didn't pay you last week. Everybody has a different tolerance of pain. You know, it's like when I used to— I used to teach people how to start a business. And they were always so gung-ho when they started and they said, "I'm gonna start a business." I'd look at them and say, "Okay, what's your tolerance to pain?" They'd look at me and I'd say, "I'm not, you think I'm kidding. I'm actually not. What's your pain tolerance?" Because not everything is gonna go your way. Not every month is gonna be a banner month. And it kind of is what it is. But everybody's pain tolerance is different. Now you and your sibling, maybe you're angry at your cousin and you think they did something unforgivable, whatever that was. And your sibling is, well, I don't understand why you're so, so angry. I mean, that's easy. I could forgive that. Their pain tolerance is different. So whatever you think is unforgivable, that's fine. And it could be somebody was murdered or raped. I mean, we could be talking about something really dark like that, or we could talk about, you know, your best client never paid the bill.

Okay, so I guess my question in that is, do you have to have a desire to forgive them? I'm thinking to myself, like, or are you saying that the process doesn't really matter where your head is?

I think in some level you want to be free. Okay, let me give you a visual. And for anybody listening to this broadcast, don't worry about it, because I'm going to talk you my way through it. So I'm holding a purple coffee cup to the right of my body. This coffee cup represents anger and bitterness and bad self-talk. So when we first get angry, look at my body language. You know, I can still conduct a conversation. I can go to work. I can conduct my life. I'm managing my anger really well. But if I don't let go of some of the anger— humans irritate other humans. So I'm going to continue to put more anger into the cup, and eventually it's going to get a little heavy. So now I'm using two hands to hold up the cup. I still can hold it off to the side. But it's starting to penetrate my conversations. It's starting to penetrate my dreams. I'm starting to talk about it more. And if I continue to hold on to it and I don't let any of this anger go, now I'm holding it in front of my face. My life is pretty much stopped. I can't really— I can be with clients, but it's all I can think about. It's all I can talk about. It's— I'm completely aware of it and I'm missing opportunities. I'm missing that dream client. I'm missing that money-making opportunity. I'm missing that health thing or my dream significant other. Why? Because I'm so focused on the anger, I can't even breathe.

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So by starting with the easy ones in the list, now if I start with the 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s, now look at my body language. I'm still holding on to the anger, but I've started to alleviate it a little bit and it's starting to work. I'm starting to be able to pay attention. And eventually you will get to those number 10s because eventually you're gonna wanna be free of it. You're gonna, you just, you don't wanna be carrying something that happened in your childhood, in the 8th grade, for example. Every once in a while that would come up when I tried to commit suicide in the 8th grade, and I would think about my parents and I would think about the bullies. And I was in my 50s at the time, and how ridiculous is it to be for a 50-something-year-old woman to be thinking about something that happened in the 1970s? Come on, that's nuts! But this stuff, it's like a movie playing in the back of your head and you don't even know it's there and you don't know when it's even going to be triggered. So eventually you're going to want to make us take a stab at whatever unforgivable act you have. Now, unforgivable people, it's hard. They're a bear. So if you can't forgive the person, that's totally fine. You may never be able to forgive them. That's fine. Maybe you can forgive the energy around them. Maybe you can't. I have a friend who was so mad that her unforgivable, her number 10, she couldn't even forgive the energy around the person. That's how mad she was. So I want you to pick apart the memory. Remember, Einstein proved that everything on our planet has energy around it. So I want you to pick apart the memory. I want you to— let's use my own. Let's use the 8th grade as an example, because it's really clear. The bullies that bullied me way back in the— never mind. So I couldn't forgive the bully, couldn't even forgive the energy around the bully. So I had to pick apart the memory. And the school building was a trigger for me. My childhood home, if I would pass it, was also a trigger. So I forgave the building, the school building, and the energy around it. I forgave my desk that I sat at, the energy around the desk. I forgave the table, the chair, the playground, the people standing around who didn't help, and the energy around these people. So I'm dialing back the energy of that horrible, horrible day. And so now I might have been able to get that 10 down to a 9. I still haven't forgiven the bully, but I have forgiven myself, and I've forgiven the other things within that memory. So now maybe tomorrow, when 24 hours or a month from now or next week, I can try it again.

And so this is a process that is done on a routine basis. It's not a one—

I do it every night before I go to bed.

Right. And do you think that that process applies to other negative emotions besides anger?

Sure.

Like fear? Or I mean, like, have you tried to use it that way?

I have. Okay, I have a fear of heights, so I have forgiven myself for the fact that I'm scared of heights and the energy around it. I have forgiven myself for trying to commit suicide. I have forgiven myself for a lot. Forgiving yourself for, for whatever you're scared of is huge. In fact, this is the first book of 3, and the second book is about how to forgive yourself. But, you know, they do say there's, there's some sayings that people just bandy around without even thinking about it. And one of them is anger is toxic. Okay, how? Why? Why is it toxic? Well, there is a study done in Japan called the Japanese Water Study, and you can Google it. It's right online by Masumo, something like that. Anyways, he took two containers of water and one container of water. All he did was talk to it. Spoke loving words to it. Very famous study. The other container of water, he spoke hate to, absolute hate, hateful words. He then froze the water and he put it under a microscope. The water he spoke love to had these beautiful formations, gorgeous pictures. They're right online, you can Google it. The water he spoke hate to had these black and brown malformations, and they were ugly. So why am I telling you this? The human body is over 95% water. So when you're speaking When you're filled with hatred and you're filled with anger and your self-talk and bitterness and regret, what do you think you're doing to the water cells within your body?

Hmm, that's fascinating.

Okay. And they've tried to repeat that, that many people have tried to replicate that, that particular study, and they all get the same results every time.

So what you're proposing then is that this is a natural a process of energy, if you will, positive or negative, and that there's really not any morality around it. I guess my question would be like, you're angry at somebody for something that— it's not a violent act, it's not murder, it's not— and so there's no morality attached to the action. Like, what they did could be interpreted as good, bad, agnostic. Okay, is that what you're saying, that this process is, is amoral, like it doesn't have anything to do with right or wrong?

I'm not judging the person who you're mad at. They're still wrong. There's still a dumpster fire. They still will have to make amends, whatever that is. They're gonna have to do whatever they have to do. Forgiveness is selfish. I'm merely forgiving them because I want these people out of my head so I can pay attention to my life, so I can breathe again, so I don't have to be eating a pint of Ben Jerry's ice cream and always talking about it and always thinking about it. The morality of whatever that person did, well, that's up to the police or whatever, whatever it was they did, that's— it still resides with them. They're still going to have to deal with it. I merely want them out of my mind. I don't want them in my head anymore.

It sounds similar to a technique I was taught when I was being certified as, as a master coach and The technique was when you had a feeling, a negative feeling, that you would envision it as a balloon, right, in front of you, and that you were holding on to that balloon with a string, and that you would let it go. And, you know, you'd watch it rise up into the air until you couldn't see it anymore. And like, then if, if immediately that feeling came back, You repeated the process until you weren't feeling that feeling anymore. Very similar.

Yeah. Okay. There's a beautiful quote by Buddha, which is one of my favorite quotes in the world. And Buddha was known to say, hatred and anger is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.

Yes, I have heard that quote. Don't know that I knew that it was attributed to the Buddha, but I do. I'm familiar with the quote. So I'm just thinking like negative thoughts in general, regret, which is tied to this in a sense, forgiving yourself, regret, anger, fear, any negative emotion. Sounds like that this would apply, this process.

Yeah. If you regret something like, I regret eating that ice cream at 2:30 in the morning and I ate the whole pint and you wake up tomorrow and you feel bloated and you're regretting it and you think, you know, just kicking yourself saying, you know, I shouldn't have done that. Well, that can be forgiven. Anything can be forgiven. I completely forgive myself for eating the ice cream last night and the energy around that thought. You can forgive anything. You can forgive, you know, the train for, for being late. You can forgive cities, politicians, the war in the Middle East. What's it going to do for the war in the Middle East? Absolutely nothing. So let me throw something, one more thing at you, and this is usually men. Don't email me. This just, it is what it is. I had a gentleman come up to me and say correctly, I've made a lot of money and I've done it on my anger and what happened to me, and I've used that and created a platform and I've made a lot of money and I've done really well.

He was talking about you?

Yeah.

Or was he talking about himself?

He was talking about himself. Okay, so let's talk about that. You can take one of two trains to get to a particular city. You can take the local or you can take the express. Now, if you take the local, you're going to stop at absolutely every stop, but you'll get there. It's like getting on an elevator and some punk kid has pressed every single button between 0 and 72. I had— that's happened to all of us in a hotel. And by the time you get to the top floor, you're, you're, you're a shadow of your former self because you're upset and it took forever and you're grumpy. Right. But you still got there. So you can still get there if you take that local train, but it's going to be painful and it's going to be a journey. But if you take the express using love and forgiveness and joy, you'll get there twice as far and twice as fast. You can still get there the other way. Absolutely you can. But it's not going to be pretty. I've taken that other train. It was not pretty.

Yes. So you mentioned love. And that's an interesting and sometimes loaded word. How do you factor love into this equation and this forgiveness?

I think that forgiveness and love are often tied together. You know, can I forgive somebody and not love them? Yeah, it depends. If it's an unforgivable person, I can forgive you, but I still have distance. I still don't want a relationship with you. It still doesn't mean that I, that I think you're right. I still think you're wrong. But here's the bottom line. You're not going to forget. There's another saying that's bandied around: forgive and forget. Okay, I'm from New York. We don't forget anything. We're not going to forget. I don't know anybody who can forget. Maybe there's a unicorn person on the planet somewhere who's leaving Suzy Sunshine, but I'm not your girl. I can't do that. But what I can promise, it's going to remove the emotional charge. So you're not going to think good. You're not going to think bad. Take my ex-business partner. I've had a bunch of business partners, but one in particular, I was on Facebook and I saw the name, and usually that would send me into down memory lane and I'd have to go take a walk and I'd be triggered, and it would take me about an hour to calm myself down because I was mad. But this particular day, I stared at the name and nothing, and it shocked me. And I stared at the name again expecting the triggers. There were no triggers. I didn't care. Good. I didn't— I just didn't care. I can look back into my childhood, which was very dark and dysfunctional, and I could probably regurgitate those memories if you wanted me to, but I legitimately don't remember them anymore. I remember the adults that were trying to help that young kid who was doing the best she could to survive under those circumstances. I mean, she did her best. She was in the 8th grade. She was a kid. And I, I now remember the love that was back there. I can I could see the love that my parents were trying to give me, and that's what I remember now. I remember the love. It's replaced the hate.

I love that. But you mentioned a book. Tell me about the book.

The book is called The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power. It has got worksheets and all that kind of stuff, and the— I have a whole chapter on science for, for anybody who doesn't believe me. And you can buy it on Amazon. We have the ebook, the paperback, and the audiobook available. My younger son and I did the audiobook, and we're Speaking to each other. So banner day. It's not as easy as people think. And you can also go to my website at katharinegiovanni.com. And Catherine, thanks to my mother, is spelled really odd. Thanks, Mom. K-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E-G-I-O-V-A-N-N-I.com.

We'll of course have that information in the show notes. My daughter's name is Catherine, but it's with a C. Yeah. And, you know, now she just— first it was Katie and now it's Kat, which makes sense with C-A-T. I don't know if it does. Make as much sense with K-A-T, but you know.

Yeah, my spelling is the rarest form of Catherine out there, so I usually tell people, spell it with a K and pick your favorite spelling, I don't care. Unless you're going to my website, which is, you have kind of have to get it right. But at some point she may give up on spelling that name like every Catherine I've ever met. All of us have given up on it. Pick your favorite and run.

Were you named after a famous Catherine?

I was named after my grandmother, who was also Southern with the spelling. So whoever named my grandmother, It's, it's, it's their fault.

Yes, I love it. Katherine, thank you very much for your insights. I will have the links in the show notes. Listeners, if you'd like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast with another entrepreneur, and subscribe to the podcast. Until then, remember, you are not alone.

Thank you for listening to The Chris Project. You You are important. Your work is important. Do not give up.