#136: What Happens When You Embrace Forgiveness with Heather!

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close up. I am so grateful you're here with me today. Oh boy. Okay, so this one is going to be a little bit of a different episode. It's definitely not directly tied to business. However, I do believe it influences business and I'm going to explain what I mean by that. However, it's still sort of. I'm really a rookie in this whole weird situation I'm going through. Okay, so I'm going to tell you how this started and I'm trying to connect the dots looking back, right? We can never connect the dots looking forward. We don't know what's possible, we don't know what's going to change next, we don't know how we're going to respond, what event may occur. But when you stop and look back over the past couple of months of your life, you can start noticing what was happening around you. I actually sat down this week and wrote out a timeline, which is something I also did, by the way, when I got fired. I wrote out a 30 day plan and then as time would progress, I would start noticing all these amazing things were opening up in my life and occurrences were happening, like landing on the Elvis Duran show that I had no idea was gonna happen that would completely change the trajectory of my life and my career. So I try to hold onto those type of moments in my life when I'm going through unknown, scary, upsetting times, which I've actually been going through one of those. And if you follow me on LinkedIn, I'm sure you saw the post that I did last week about what was happening with my mother coming into town with her new husband and okay, I'm gonna get, I'll get into the whole thing. So I guess about it was the year before the pandemic hit, my mother announced that she was divorcing my father, which I understand, I'm an adult child and you know, parents have to do what's right for them. However, you know, it feels bad when you're. I was worried about my dad. I'm very close to my father. My father adopted me when I was 10 years old and he's just been represented so much in regards to the person I go to. He was always my coach, he's in sales. We just were very similar and I understood what my mom was doing was right for her. And I think that's great. And we should always make decisions that are right for ourselves and our own wellbeing. However, you know, it was hard for me. Cause I knew my dad was struggling, you know, with the decision. Okay. So she ends up marrying someone that I don't know a couple of months later, which that really threw me for a loop. I thought it was a little bizarre. However, again, not my choice. Have to come to grips with that we can't control others. That's their decision, their life to lead. And I can process all of that as an adult. Right. But again, still a little weird.

Okay.

Then a pandemic hits. So I don't see my parents for, you know, it's been a while. Okay, fast forward to a week ago. I get a text from my mother saying, hey, we, as in her and her new husband are coming to Miami. We'd love to see you. Here's the days we're going to be there was in a couple of days. I haven't seen them my mom in almost three years. And she said, you know, does this work? My initial reaction, I will tell you, was, oh, my gosh, just say you're out of town. You can't handle this right now. You have too much going on. I'm knee deep in a book launch. My son broke his arm out at camp. I have so many things balls up in the air going on right now. You know, just bounce out. However, luckily, as a parent, which I wonder if you agree with this, if you're a parent, I forced myself to see myself through my son's eyes. And I thought, if I want him to do the right thing in life, I have to go to this dinner, I have to go to this meeting. I have to deal with hard things head on. Because if I'm able to do it, he'll be able to do it. So I stopped with the idea of just not being available, said I would absolutely go to meet with them, even though I felt super nervous slash uncomfortable, awkward. So I'm proud of myself that I went right. Because again, doing the right thing is always the answer. And I actually told my son, he's still at camp. I'm picking him up in a couple days. And I told him on the phone, you know, I'm gonna go to this dinner. And he said, well, isn't that gonna be weird? You don't know the guy. And I said, yeah, probably so. Probably is. However, I believe it's the right thing to do. What do you think? And he said, yeah, mom, you're probably right. So we Had a good, positive talk about it. And what I wasn't prepared for was the tremendous amount of emotions that started coming up within me that I couldn't have forecasted, planned for or anticipated. And this sort of goes back in my life. And I write a chapter about exactly what I'm talking about in the new book, Overcome youe Villains. There's a whole chapter about this. But when we have upset when we're younger in life. And again, this is not the kind of stuff I think about every day. Yes, I was a psych major, but I don't sit around, you know, pontificating about my past. I try to live in the present, right, and do the best job I can for now and have a vision for my future. However, this whole experience has taught me I should have been addressing some of the issues from my past because not addressing them and pushing them away is holding me back from the future I want. And again, I just wanna repeat that again. And if this isn't a message for you, maybe it's a message for someone close to you that you see, for some reason they're not living up to their potential or they're letting others treat them badly, or they're going for their goals. Maybe it's not lack of confidence, maybe it's not lack of competence. Maybe there's something in their past they haven't dealt with or healed that's really kind of pulling them back. I do believe in this. So weird, because I've never thought about this. And I got into a whole world that I'm not familiar with, which, again, is always uncomfortable. But I really believe there's something to this. Something big. Now, the reason I sat down and wrote out a timeline is I started noticing some weird, serendipitous things were happening. For example, I get this message from my mom. I make the decision to do the right thing. I'm feeling incredibly awkward. I call my father. You know, I was just sort of. I felt bad, like you're somewhat betraying someone else, right? And so I called my father and I said, dad, this happened. I got this text and he handled it beautifully. He said, if you're calling asking for my permission, you have it. If you're calling, asking if I support you, I'm behind you 100%. And if you're calling and asking how you should show up, show up as the best version of you with love in your heart, go in with an open mind and be you, be yourself, and things will be okay. And I thought that was beautiful advice, which I'LL never forget and hope I'll be able to use and share with my son in challenging moments that he'll have. So, anyhow, I'd had this call with my father, and I had reached out to one of my girlfriends who had just lost her dog. Her grandmother's in hospice. She's going through this horrible time. And one thing I know is when you're struggling or having a tough time, going to help someone else is always the answer. It makes you feel so much better, right? So I reached out to her. I said, can we meet for dinner? You know, I really want to see you, see how you're doing. So we met for dinner, and she looked beautiful and light and happy. And it was perplexing to me because I know the pain that she's going through right now. And I went in there looking not so happy, not light, you know, not so my best version of myself. And I'm sitting there, and I said, what's happening with you? And she starts to explain to me that she's been going down a journey over the last two weeks about forgiveness. And I said, well, what does that mean? You know, I don't really understand forgiveness for what? And she explained that, you know, she was forgiving her mother and her grandmother for whatever past grievances she had that maybe she wasn't consciously aware of, but that she wanted to release, become aware of, and then release and forgive so that she could ultimately forgive herself and become the best version of herself, even though she was facing all of this adversity in her life. And I thought, if she's able to do that right now with everything she's going through, I need to try to do the same thing, right? Just acknowledge that this is something I'm not familiar with. I don't read about forgiveness. I don't, you know, dive into this concept of forgiveness. It's not even on my radar. Maybe this is something I should do. And I went home that night, really grateful for the talk and committed to going down the rabbit hole of forgiveness. At some point, I stopped and said, this is weird. Wait a minute. Not only is it serendipitous that she and I had dinner, I thought I'd be helping her, but she helped me and around the concept of forgiveness. But I realized about a month ago, the CEO of the company I worked for in Corporate America passed away. And when he did, I really struggled with. You know, I haven't spoken to one person at that company that was very, very close to his son. Close to, like, literally, he was my second father. I was his right hand. It was just. We were very, very tight. And I felt in the end, he betrayed me, which he kind of did. And I was very angry. Oh, my gosh, Very angry in that, you know, he called me multiple times. I never returned the phone call, never spoken to him again. And while I think, you know, I hope he's well and I hope things are well for him, I still don't like how he handled the situation. And I just push it back in the past, which is not the answer. This is my message today. This is what I've learned. It's not the answer to do that, because it only was harming me. So when I realized that the CEO passed away, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, gosh, I should really call him. I should really call him and check in on him. But then there was the other side of me saying, don't call him. He betrayed you, and you're going to let him off the hook. But in the end, the angel on his shoulder went out over the devil on the shoulder in this instance. And I called him and got his voicemail and left him a very nice message, you know, praying that he and his family are okay and telling him that I'm sending a lot of love and that I wanted him to know that I had heard from his dad and, you know, his dad had been behind the scenes, being such a champion of mine and so gracious and wonderful. And I just want him to know that I, you know, had only good thoughts and prayers for him and his family. He called me back, and it was one of those moments you look at the phone and think, oh, my gosh, do I really pick up? And I did. And it was uncomfortable. But in the end, I felt better about who I am. I don't want to harbor animosity and blame towards anyone, because ultimately, you're doing it to yourself. And so I decided to forgive him.

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So I sit down and I write this down on a piece of paper. I'm like this happened a month ago. Interesting around forgiveness, yet I wasn't really conscious of it. Then my son broke his arm at camp. I flew out there in a complete panic, horrified about what was happening, that he was alone. I get there and he's doing so much better than I anticipated. And so I write that down. Things weren't nearly as bad as I thought. In fact they were so much better. Then the situation with my mother. I go to the dinner. I meet with my friend first. She helps me with this idea of forgiveness. I go down the forgiveness rabbit hole and for two days I'm watching every video I can find. Louise hay around forgiveness. I ordered her book. I started doing tapping around forgiveness. I went down the rabbit hole and I ended up with a long list of people I wanted to forgive. Not just my mother, not, you know, the situation, but a lot of people throughout my life. And the more I started reading about forgiveness, I started learning that when you don't forgive, you start repeating those patterns and attracting those situations into your life unbeknownst to you. Which sort of makes sense, right? If you're not healed from it and it's still an issue for you, maybe you're putting that vibe out there. I really believe this. Okay, so anyhow, I start working on the forgiveness. Work on the forgiveness. I go to the dinner. It was not perfect, right? Again, you'll understand why more when you read the new book overcome your villains. But it went as well as it could have. And in the end, I told my mother I forgive her and that I really liked her new husband and I'm really happy for them. And I really felt proud of how I handled it. However, it was very emotional. I never anticipated what this was going to dig up inside me. It was actually kind of scary. And so I called my dad. I was very upset and I said, dad, I feel out of control. I can't manage my emotions. It's a work day today. I'm getting nothing done. I feel like my brain is fried. Something's wrong. And he explained to me, you're a flawed human. I'm a flawed human. Everyone's a flawed human. He said you'd been pushing something away in your life and trying to bury it in your past, but now it's surfacing because your mom came to town and, you know, these conversations happen and you're having to deal with it. He said it probably means that you never healed this. And now you need to go through these emotions now as an adult to heal your past. And it makes perfect sense. And today I'm feeling better. I'm having a good day today, so I can talk about it. But I'll tell you, for the past few days, it was scary. I felt completely out of control. I had never addressed these feelings. I had never kind of dived back into this idea of forgiving everyone involved. And it was hard, way harder than I thought. And frankly, kind of scary. I felt really out of control, which, of course, no one wants to feel out of control. However, I held onto that idea that if I can heal this in me and I can truly forgive everyone in my life, then I can forgive myself, and then I can really step into who I Am. And then I can really be proud of who I am, and I can fully love myself by ignoring these things that had happened that were bothering me. I wasn't really being a whole version of myself because my past still is part of me, right? It doesn't define me, but it's part of me. And I had to acknowledge it, accept it, and heal it.

Crazy.

The whole thing's been crazy. So anyhow, I end up going down the rabbit hole more, really trying to process my emotions. I literally did not get very much done with work at all. But it ends up to be a gift because my son was away at camp. So I was able to sort of be a train wreck not having to have my child watch this whole thing unfold, which would have been really hard for him. So that ended up being serendipitous. You know, I have my son every day for over a year and a half, and now suddenly he's gone. Right when this occurs again, Very bizarre. So I've been going through these past few days, and I'm starting to feel better today. And again, I know that when you go through dark times, it's temporary, but it definitely felt like one of the most dark times I've had in a really long time. But I started noticing things. You know, I noticed at one point my mom got angry. And I realized anger is us trying to push away things that we don't want to deal with, we don't want to acknowledge. But the real process is around forgiveness and give love.

Right?

So the more we can be aware and acknowledge how others are responding, it can help us understand ourselves better. So I sat there and I had a lot of empathy when she got angry. Not necessarily with me, but I think with the situation. And I was able to say to her, I don't want to fight with you. I'm not going to fight with you. I am releasing you of this. I'm aware of what's happening, and I know this isn't easy. However, I'm showing up with love, and, you know, I hope that you can find that as well. So, again, you can't have expectations for others. They're gonna make their own decisions. But for me, I felt this was the right thing for me. And then I had a few conversations after this, and somebody else got, you know, very angry. I could hear just the anger in their voice. And I realized there are triggers out there for everyone, right? And noticing what your triggers are is really powerful because I had been very triggered by these same conversations, you know, the same situations. Had triggered me. And I had been getting angry over the past couple years around these things instead of dealing with the root cause of the emotion and then working to let it go and forgive and forgive myself. And I just thought, you know, I don't want to be angry. Who wants to be angry? I don't want to be triggered by other people. That's allowing other people to control you and control your responses. That's not who I want to be. And as I grow, and I grow up and I can't believe this, at 46, I'm learning all these new things. But as I grow up, I want to let go of anger, I want to forgive, I want to lead with love first. I want to let go of expectations because I want to lead a happier life and I want to have a more joyous life that is aligned with these positive things. And it starts with you first. So I map out the. The whole thing. And it's so funny, at the end of this, I guess it all happened over a couple of weeks time. I had a dentist appointment the last day, and. And I was freaking out because I haven't had my tooth drilled in 100 years. I have great teeth. But what had happened at my last dentist appointment was he had told me that from grinding my teeth, which is something I did when I was younger, I cracked one of my fillings from when I was a kid, and he had to fix it. I went into the dentist appointment and I was freaking out because I'm dealing with all this stress and all this forgiveness and a lot of pain right from my past, trying to release it. And I walk in so nervous, thinking the worst, telling him, give me everything and anything you can. I can't handle the pain right now. I'm in too much pain anyways. I've known him for years. He's been my dentist for 16 years. And he said, do you trust me? And I said, yeah, of course I trust you. He said, I'm not going to give you anything for it. And I said, oh, my gosh, this is legit torture. Why am I being tortured in life? I was thinking this in my mind, right? Why am I going through so much pain? And now my dentist wants to add to the pain. And he said, if you trust me, let me do it with nothing. And I said, okay. And I gripped the sides of that chair, and my feet were sweating, my hands were sweating, my heart was coming out of my body. And he drilled for maybe two minutes. I felt nothing. And he stopped. And he said, okay, now I'M going to cover it and close it up. It's just about done. And for two more minutes he closed it up and covered it up and fixed the break. And he said, you're all better. He said, how does it feel? And I said, it feels great. He said, did you have any pain at all? And I said no. I said that was so easy. And he said, that's how life's meant to be, easy. He said, I'm glad you trusted me. And as I walked out of there, I just had this epiphany that that's how I want my life to be. I don't want things to be hard. And maybe, maybe part of why things have been hard in my life or so challenging has been I haven't been forgiving. I haven't been letting go of expectations. I haven't been forgiving others or forgiving myself for that matter. And as I step into this, maybe things will get easier.

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So that's my message for you today. And if it's not for you. Maybe there's someone in your life that you think could dig in a little bit to their past and look at who they need to forgive so that they can forgive themselves and so that they can have an easier life. Okay, hold tight. We'll be right back. Meet a different guest each week. Okay, so I got a couple of inquiries through DMs on LinkedIn shocker that I wanted to respond to. One is one. I'm just so proud of this person. I actually happen to know this person. He hired me to do a keynote speech for his company, but he sent me this great update and I wanted to share it with you because it's really powerful, he said. On another note, Heather, I fired some villains this week. A couple of people that I had hired to come in and help advise my company had put together a good plan, but they were really not supportive of my team. They were finger pointing, they weren't respecting my position, they were trying to go around me. I just didn't like where it was headed and I didn't feel good about it. So I terminated their contract. And I had set up the deal to protect us. And in the end, I protected myself and my company. Thank you for the reminder to always be the best version of you and not tolerate people who don't respect you and aren't looking out for your best interest. You put a quote up on LinkedIn this week that reminded me, fire your villains. And it's not easy. I get it. You might have those moments of self doubt where you're saying, oh my gosh, well, you know, they're going around me or undermining me and maybe I'm not doing something right. But in the end, as you step back from situations, say, you know what, no, that's not, that's, that's not a positive way to do business. Go around people, be negative and finger pointing. Those aren't the kind of people I want to work with. So take a hard look at the people in your life and in your business and make sure you're not allowing for villains to exist. You need to fire the villains around you if you ever want to overcome the one within you. And that has definitely been the story of my life the past few years. I had to fire the villains that I was surrounding myself with at work in order to start doing this work on myself that I'm finally getting to now. And yes, it's a process, but it starts with making the next right decision. In any moment, you're creating confidence or you're chipping away at it. So ask yourself that question and stay true to you. Okay, so then I got a DM from a woman asking, how in the world do you build a brand on LinkedIn? Here's what's important for people to know. I launched my brand on LinkedIn in 2016. It's 2021 now, right? So five years have passed since I launched my personal brand. And when I first launched it, I made tons of mistakes. I did not do it perfectly. But the one thing that I did was I showed up consistently. So I've been showing up consistently on LinkedIn for five years now. There are people out there like Shea Rowbottom who have only been on LinkedIn for a year and a half and have 500,000 followers. So my point is you don't have to wait five years to have massive success. I'm just sharing my journey with you. My best advice is to be patient and be consistent. But there could be success for you in a year's time. It's up to you. And being your authentic self and bringing your true message to light and making it different, special and unique to you. Because the more you create that, the more you will draw your community to you. For me, it took five years to really start having self success on LinkedIn. For Shea Row Bottom, a year and a half. For you, it could be six months. We don't know until you start showing up. And the other key I will tell people is that you're never going to be ready. So just start now. Because if I could go back, I wish I had started in 2010, could you imagine how much larger my community would be now? Right. So if yesterday or five years ago is the right time, today is the only time. And the only way you're going to figure out what resonates and what works is by testing and trying and showing back up. So I don't always know what messaging is going to work. I test and try different things and I constantly review the data to see, oh, this is what's working. And this is the same thing HarperCollins did with my new book, my new cover. And it's so funny, I was reminding myself of this. And I love my camera roll on my phone for this reason. A few months ago, I put up eight different book covers that Harper Collins and I had all agreed upon were potentials. I had a favorite. It's not the one we went with, Shocker, but it was the one that tested best. And now that we're actually moving forward with it and it's gonna be coming out shortly and that I'm putting it out there. I love it and everyone loves it and the feedback's amazing. So just because you might like something in a moment and say, oh, this is what I think is gonna work, test it, put it up and see and you'll start getting feedback and you'll see what resonates and what doesn't. But data doesn't lie. And remember that constantly look at things through that really black and white comparison that some posts are going to work and do really well. Note what you were talking about, note what the image was like, you know, in any other pertinent information. And then some posts might not do well. And things change and evolve over time. The things that are doing well right now on LinkedIn, the content that's doing well is very different than what it was a year ago, which is very different than 2019. Right. Because our world is completely different. So you've got to test and try different things if you want to grow and evolve. And the key is, is to get started. Now. If you're having a problem getting started, go to overcome your villains.com you can join my launch team. You can get the $500 bonus VIP bundle. All you have to do is pre order my new book Overcome youe Villains, which you can do at the website overcome your villains.com, upload your order number and you get my $299 confidence video course. You get my 30 day accountability program, you get my first chapter in my new book before anyone else gets the to see it. You get my Overcome your Villains new workbook so that you can start working on these things even before the new book drops. So definitely trying to give more value than I'm asking for. I hope it helps you so much. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably some something will happen. No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.