How to Forgive a Human Being | Robin Sharma

Hi, it's Robin Sharma, author of the Leader, who Had no title, founder of the Titan Academy. Welcome to this mastery session. We are going to go deep in this mastery session because it's all about how to forgive a human being.

A lot of people ask me, robin, someone wronged me. How do I handle it? They say, if I'm too nice and people walk over me, what do I do? Other people come up to me as I crisscross the planet and say, you know, I want to be an A player, but I'm stuck in the past. How do I live in the present moment? Other people say, you know, the people who have hurt me have drained my energy so I cannot reach exponential productivity. What do I do? Well, the reality is, if you go through life, you're going to be hurt. The reality is every single one of us as human beings has our weaknesses. And we do the best that we can do based on where we are at our level of consciousness and in our level of humanity. And so if someone has hurt you, I mean, we've all been hurt. If someone has hurt you, please, first of all, just remember they were doing the best that they knew how to do based on where they are at in their journey through life. So forgiving them is something that not only do they deserve, but forgiving them is a gift you give yourself. I once heard someone say, when you're going through life.

Not having forgiven someone that has really hurt you, it's like you're carrying that person through life on your back. How can you be creative? How can you optimize your productivity? How can you be a leader without a title? How can you do iconic things in your marketplace if you are carrying another human being, metaphorically speaking, on your back? And so what I wanted to do in this mastery session, to be of service to you, is to offer you free ideas that will help you forgive other human beings. Number one, feel versus repress. So let's say someone has really hurt you. Let's say someone has betrayed you. Let's say someone has been dishonest to you, and you're really incredibly hurt by it. What do most people do? They escape. This is very powerful. So please be with me on this. Because most people, what they do is they escape from the feeling. They're feeling pain, they're feeling anger. Maybe you're feeling rage. And society says to us, don't feel the feeling. Well, here's what it does. If you don't feel the feeling, you will repress the feeling into your subconscious. Carl Jung called it the vast unconscious. And the more you repress the anger, the more you repress the hurt, the pain, the shame, the guilt, the more you will operate under a condition that psychologists call projection. And then you will go forward into your life, but you really won't go forward. You will be stuck in the past. All the pain of the betrayal, all the anger from that person who hurt you that you haven't forgiven is still within you. You've just repressed it. And then you start seeing a reality born of pain. You start seeing your life not through the present moment, but through what Joseph Campbell called your stained glass window. And again, it's called projection. And here's a very powerful idea. You're not seeing the world as it is. You're seeing the world as you are. You're seeing the world through a filter. And the filter is created by all the pain, all the shame, all the guilt, all the anger that you've repressed. We all do this. But the first insight I'm offering to you is when someone has hurt, you feel the feeling. How do you do that? Write about it in a How do you do that? You talk about it with a close friend. How do you do that? You walk in the woods alone and you talk it out. I remember meeting one person. She was a native elder, and she had been very hurt by someone. She went out into the woods and she would take pieces of branches of trees and screaming the energy out of her system, she would hit the branches in the protection of solitude and nature. So the first point is simply this. Feel the feeling. Don't repress it. You'll release projection. You'll be very clear internally, emotionally, you'll be very clear internally, intellectually. That will free you up to do amazing things. Number two, understand versus judge. The Native Americans say, never judge a person unless you have walked a mile in their moccasin. And that's what I was suggesting to you. Don't judge someone as bad. Bad is a label bred by judgment. If someone betrayed you, someone robbed you, someone hurt you in any way, whether it's a personal relationship, whether it's a business relationship, even if it's someone who cut you off in traffic, saying that's a bad person is judging that person. You don't know who that person is. Rather than judging them, why not try your best to understand them? Maybe that person who cut you off in traffic had a sick child in the backseat and they were rushing to the hospital. Maybe that person who cut you off in traffic just lost their mother or father. Maybe that Person in traffic just received a phone call from their physician telling them they have cancer. We don't know what is going on within the interior orbit of the people who have wronged us. And here's the real insight. Everyone alive today is behaving according to their own personal reality. I mean, if someone did something to you because they thought you were not being nice to them, or they thought you were being dishonest to them, or you thought you were not following through on your commitments to them, that person has created their own story, their own reality, their own narrative about the way the world is working, and you just happen to fall into their perception. I hope I'm making sense here, but it's a really key idea. Every single person alive today is seeing the world according to their own personal reality. And if so, if they attacked you, it's because they truly believe that you were doing something that deserved them to attack you. And it might have been totally false. Or maybe some of what you were doing wasn't really healthy behavior. But they reacted based on their best understanding of reality. They were stuck on their assumptions. They were stuck in their core beliefs. They were stuck in their own pain. And so why judge them? We really can't say they were bad people or dishonest people. Let's understand them. The third thing, when you forgive another human being, communicate versus condone. I mean, you never want to condone unhealthy behavior. What I'm suggesting to you is communicate with that person. Speak up. I once saw a car drive by with the bumper sticker, speak your truth. Even when your voice shakes. I mean, it takes a lot of bravery to speak your truth when. When you're upset. But actually, that's a sign of leadership. That's a sign of good communication. That's a sign of self respect. And so the third thing you want to do is, someone has hurt you, you want to speak up and say, you know, when you did this, this is how I felt. When you did this, you crossed a boundary. That's important to me. Don't judge them, don't attack them, but communicate. And the more you communicate, the more you'll build intimacy. Or maybe you won't build intimacy. Maybe they won't understand it. Maybe they'll feel upset and you'll just realize that might not have been a person that you want to fill your life with. I'm just encouraging you on this third point. When you want to forgive someone, speak your truth. Tell them how you feel. Tell them what you have observed, and that communication is going to release the energy of, maybe it's anger, maybe it's hurt. It's going to get it out of your system and it's also going to teach someone how to treat you. Because through our words and our communication, we teach people how to treat us. And then the final thing when it comes to forgiveness is release versus repress. You don't want to live in the past. I mean, the present moment is where creativity, energy, peak health, exponential productivity and miracles live. Mean a lot of people, what do they do? They live in the past. They say, you know, I could be great, but I went through a divorce 15 years ago. I could be the most creative person at my office, but I had an accident five years ago. There are so many people. If you scratch the surface behind their happy interiors, you will find pain, you will find rage, you will find shame, you will find guilt, you will find sadness. I mean, it is stunning to me how many people they walk around life, oh, everything is great. They're looking happy, they've got smiles on their faces. How are you today? Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. And you go a little deeper and you get to know them and they start to cry. Why? Because they repressed. They didn't release all of the sadness from all their hurts. And so now they're in the present moment, but they're not in the present. They're living in 1944. Figuratively speaking, they're living in their history versus living in the moment. Because if you live in the moment and you release what happened to you in the past, then you really are creating your future. And that's my great wish for you. Hi, it's Robin. I invite you to subscribe to this podcast and definitely go over to robincharma.com for more information, tools and resources, History, elite performance and living a world class life.