Episode 316: Unlocking the Power of Forgiveness

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Welcome to the Whiny Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family. Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene and I am so excited to get to talk to Catherine Giovanni today, and I already love her. And I want to welcome you to the show today. Thank you so much for doing this with me.

Thank you so much for having me, Rebecca. I appreciate it.

Catherine is a renowned author and expert in personal development, widely recognized for her insightful and transformative approach to self-help and empowerment. With a career spanning over 2 decades, she has established herself as a leading voice in the field of personal growth, specializing in the areas of forgiveness, emotional healing, and interpersonal relationships. Katherine's passion for helping individuals overcome personal obstacles and unlock their full potential has been the driving force behind her acclaimed writing and speaking engagements. Her latest book, The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness: Unlocking Your Power, reflects her deep commitment to guiding others on their journey towards emotional freedom and inner strength. An eloquent speaker and compassionate mentor, Katherine continues to inspire inspire and empower a global audience through her work. And as I told Catherine before we started, I absolutely love the topic of forgiveness. I'm so excited to learn from you today. This is like fantastic. So let's start. Let's start with, tell us about your forgiveness journey and how you landed here. What inspired this journey?

Um, stress, hardship, It, it kind of, it kind of started in the 8th grade. My parents were getting a divorce. I was getting bullied in school, and as a result, I tried to commit suicide. So from that day on, and I had a friend who pulled me out of it, but from that day on, I kind of was like a walking ball of anger as one of those classic angry teenagers, right? And I kind of— and my parents, I thought, well, if I do everything the opposite of my parents, I'll be fine. So I got labeled a rebel. Um, quick PSA on that one: as an adult, that works fine, but when you're 16, it doesn't end well for you. You can't really do the opposite of what your parents are saying, can you? They kind of get angry at you. So I kind of went into my 20s, and I, I just was I was sick all the time. I was angry all the time. I didn't like my life. And then my mom got sober and she, we became best friends for the last 3 years of her life. And then she passed. Wow. With, from cancer. And that just about killed me. But it, something in my head kind of snapped and I thought, I can't keep this up. I can't, if I keep this up, I'm gonna die like she did. Yeah. So I just, I, I stumbled across forgiveness. Somebody said, well, you need to forgive. It was just one of those random conversations. So nobody teaches you how to forgive. They just tell you you need to forgive. Nobody teaches you the how. So I just started to say, I forgive. And that's kind of how it started. And it went, you know, I— as I forgave people, my life got a little better. I found my husband of 30 years. Life got— life got a little bit better. But that's kind of how it started. It was a breadcrumb trail. And it wasn't until last year I really figured out the step-by-step formula.

Oh my goodness.

A friend of mine, we, we finally figured out what the special sauce was.

Well, I want to hear the special sauce, and I want to hear, is that what led to the book? How did you get inspired to then write the book?

Well, this book is the first of three.

Oh.

And I wrote the forgiveness book, and I sent it to my editor, who's also a really tight friend of mine. She has a PhD, much smarter than me. And she looked, took one look at the book and she said, okay, you've written 3. And she chopped it into 3 books. Okay, whatever. But the reason I wrote the book is because when we discovered the how to forgive, um, I've written 12 books and I'm, I'm a trainer. It's, it's kind of what I do. And I kind of specialize in training concierge and, you know, people customer service, blah, blah, blah. I retired last year, but my knee-jerk reaction is to share. So I'm a writer, so I love to write. It's my happy place. So my knee-jerk reaction was to write everything down. That's how the book started, because I wanted to share the process.

Well, I appreciate that as someone who wants to learn from you. And I know your book is full of tons of techniques and how we forgive. Can you, can you start us off with a couple techniques? Can you give us some of the sauce?

It's really just one technique. It's only 111 pages. It's kind of short and sweet, mostly because people don't have a big attention span anymore. And the audiobook is going to come out soon, as soon as my younger son and I are going to produce it. So that'll be out probably next month.

But nice.

The trick to forgiveness is— here's one of the things— you can forgive anything. People, places, or things? Places and things. You can forgive buildings, you can forgive that. People look at me every— I've gotten asked more often than I can count, Catherine, I have forgiven this so-and-so. Yeah, sure you have. Might have to do it again. But what they did was unforgivable. I don't want to. Okay, I'm the only one that's going to look you in the eye and say you don't have to forgive the unforgivable. You don't. I don't care what anybody else says. You don't have to forgive the unforgivable. In the book, I'm going to have you sit down and write a list of the people, places, and things you want to forgive. Um, and it could be, it could be anything. And then, and I'll tell you, I'll tell you how a few of mine in a minute, and then I want you to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. The 10s are unforgivable. Leave them for last. My parents were a 10. Took a long time for me to get those 10s down to an 8, down to a 6, then down to a 3 when I could finally forgive them. So every time you forgive, it's like the layers of an onion, and the onion layers are coming off. Now, the 10s, the 10s are a bear. They're horrible. They, they may not even be appropriate for you to forgive, but you can forgive yourself. You can forgive the energy around yourself. You can forgive the building, the place, the chair, the table. You know, you can forgive a lot of other stuff around that event, and that's just enough to tip the scale in your favor. Let me be clear, it does not mean they were right. It does not mean that that you have to contact them. This is not AA. You don't have to reach out and contact these people. Forgiveness is selfish. It's pure. It's personal. You do it in the privacy of your own home. Nobody has to know you've forgiven them. And it doesn't mean that you— just because I forgive you doesn't mean I want a relationship with you.

That's good.

I probably don't. Yeah, I— and I'm probably not going to rekindle it. It just means that I want to stop thinking about your name. It means I want to go on Facebook and see your name and not look at your name and get angry. Yes, I want to be able to look at your name and just have neutral feelings about it. That's how you know you're forgiven.

I was going to ask how you know you're forgiven. So what if you're not on Facebook and you don't see their name?

Think about their name to see if you've really forgiven them. You know, when I forgive somebody, it's just a real quick mantra that I have in the book. You don't have to— you don't have to burn incense, you don't need crystals, you don't have to jump around on one leg. You know, there's really— it's, it's real simple. It's just a real simple, I forgive you, I forgive the energy. It's a real simple little prayer mantra, whatever you want to call it. And every time I actually truly forgive, like, you start with the number 1s. The girl in grammar school that stained your sweater. The, the— you were in the grocery store the other day and you got that shopping cart road rage. You know, everybody gets it, you know, because you do. You get in, you get behind somebody who's just going too darn slow because they're probably my age or older, and you know, you just— come on, come on, pops, you go faster. You can forgive those people. They're stupid easy. So you start with them. And whenever I forgive somebody and I know, I feel, um, a lightness in my chest. Not everybody feels that. I'm very sensitive to energy, but I can feel an actual lightness in my chest. And that's how I've personally known I've forgiven. Everybody has a different tell, so to speak. So once you forgive the easy ones, you will— you'll know. Most people just feel lighter. They— and it's a— it's not a feeling I could explain. You just kind of feel lighter, like like you've been carrying something on your shoulders and you just took off your backpack. You know, it's that feeling of just took off a heavy backpack filled with books. Oh, that feels so good. That's how most people feel.

Well, and I think we all deserve to feel that way. I think we all selfishly need to want that for ourselves. But what if we don't know where to begin?

You just, you just sit in the, sit at your desk, sit in, sit in a quiet place and just write a list of the people you think you need to forgive. Whatever names come into your mind, the name you're thinking about right now as we're talking, or for your listeners, the name you're thinking about as you listen to this broadcast. That's probably who you need to forgive. And then whatever comes out comes out. Like, uh, my friend, my friend Katie, she wrote down a little red wagon. No idea why she wrote down a little red wagon, but she forgave the damn thing because— excuse my language— but she forgave the darn thing because I guess at some point she was mad at it, so she forgave A Little Red Wagon. Personally, I forgave the year 1974. Oh, why did I forgive the whole year 1974? Because that's the year this whole thing, party started. That's when I tried to commit suicide. So I decided I'm gonna forgive. I forgave the players in there, the bullies, but I also forgave the school. I forgave my childhood home. I forgave the desk where I did my homework. I forgave my math tutor because he made me cry. I forgave, you know, I forgave all those things. And then I just kind of worked my way up. Now, one of the things I've learned is, please, you and your listeners, promise me with every fiber of my being, please only do 10 at a time.

Oh, that's good advice. Okay.

Because I didn't do that when I just, when I stumbled across this, this method. I forgave everybody and everything that I could think of, and I made myself terribly sick, and everybody thought I had the stomach flu, and I was in bed for 3 days. See, anger— when you get angry, you know, you get angry at your— let's say you get angry at your spouse, you think all that anger that's coming out of your mouth goes up into the clouds and dissipates, because that's what we all think. Once the anger's gone, it's gone forever. Uh, Sadly, no. As according to Einstein, uh, energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form. So the anger energy kind of floats around you and it doesn't go away. And the only way you can change that anger energy is through forgiveness. Now let's say this is anger, okay? I can— and I get angry— I can hold this off to the side for a very long time. When I'm first getting angry, it's fine, it's not that heavy. But the longer I hold on to this, the angrier I'm going to get. It starts to get heavy. So eventually it's going to kind of come here. Now I could still kind of see over it, so, and I could still talk to you, and I could still see opportunities that are coming. But now my arm's getting tired, and I'm still not letting go of any anger. So I'm going to have to use both hands. So now I can't— I'm— I— now it's like I've got a straitjacket on. I can't do anything. And if I continue to stay angry, eventually it's going to do this. Now I'm not seeing any opportunities. All I'm seeing is the anger. I'm telling stories about it. I'm telling my friends about it because it's all I can see. And even if you're telling the stories funny, you're still telling the stories. There's still anger there. So eventually your life is just going to stop and you're going to get sick and tired and everything's going to fall apart. So that's— the energy of forgiveness is going to allow you to put down the darn glass. So now I can see opportunities, I can see my dream job, my dream life. I couldn't see it before because I was so focused on the anger, they were walking right by me and I didn't see them. Wow.

So you tried, attempted to forgive way too many people and then got yourself sick over it.

The anger, the energy in your body and hanging around your body has to go somewhere. And so your body— I'm going to be as polite as I absolutely possibly can, but it has to come out, let's just politely say. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you might yawn, you might cough, believe it or not, you might sneeze. And there might be some other ways that it might come out, type of, you know, food poisoning type of thing. So if you only do 10 at a time, you probably won't make yourself sick because you won't. But if you do more than 10, 12 at a time, there's a really good there's, there's a chance you might make yourself sick. Most people yawn, cough, or they just get really tired and want to take a nap.

So I am, I am going to guess that I cannot snap my fingers this minute and be done with it. I'm going to guess that it's a process and that it takes time.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. Mm. That's why I want you to start with the 1s, 2s, and 3s on your list, because they're easy. You can easily forgive these people. And as you forgive these people, you're gonna feel lighter. You know, believe it or not, the money is gonna start flowing. When I started forgiving people years ago, my clients increased. So I'm a college-educated girl and I thought, okay, what I do in my personal life should not affect my business. It didn't make sense to me at the time, yet it did. There was a direct correlation. And it's because I was finally able to see the opportunities. So you're going to get healthier. You won't get every Tom, Dick, and Harry flu bug that comes down the pike. You're going to start feeling better, and your kids will probably notice.

And, and we want our kids to learn to forgive, so we want to show them this.

Well, when I first started forgiveness, people would look at me and say, something different about you, you know. Did you lose weight? Did you do something to your hair? And it's like, you know, I used to be kind of coy about it because, you know, I'm actually a very private person, so I didn't want to tell them everything. I said, no, I'm just treating myself better and forgiving people. And I just kind of sloughed it off because I was still in the very beginning part of my journey and I was trying to figure things out. And until I figured it out, I didn't want to share. Because I didn't want to make people sick.

So can you talk about forgiving places more? I'm trying to think. I can't think of one place that I need to forgive.

There might be one place— your childhood home. Um, it could be the desk in elementary school because maybe you were bullied or you got a, a D or an F on a math test. It could be anything, you know. I, and I forgave things as they came to my head, even if I didn't understand it. I forgave my childhood home. I forgave my native city, New York. I forgave 1974. I forgave all sorts of things. I forgave the stairs in my old apartment, in my old house, because I fell down them once. Oh, you know, it's— I forgave a bunch of things, and I forgave places, I forgave locations. And the biggest person I would forgive in each session, with the 1s all the way to the 10s, is I would forgive myself. For the part I may or may not have played. And forgiving yourself is probably the hardest one, and that's probably gonna be the focus of book number 2. Forgiving yourself.

Well, so this is hysterical cuz you're reading my thoughts because as I'm coming up with questions, you're answering the questions. And I think that what I wanted to say is that I think people don't realize the need to forgive yourself and things.

No, they don't.

No, and, and I think we think about everybody else that we need to forgive and we forget how important that is. So you're saying that's going to be a whole nother book. That's a whole nother topic.

Well, forgiving yourself is hard, you know, with the number 10s, forgiving yourself is very hard because you don't want to believe that you played any part in that horrific thing. And you may or may not have. Um, But forgiving yourself for the ones, twos, and threes, it's also hard because it's like, well, that was stupid, I had nothing to do with it, but I'm going to forgive it. So forgiving yourself for any part you may or may not have played— you may not have played any part— but forgiving yourself is going to lighten up the energy significantly, and it's going to help a lot.

Well, and, and, you know, I'm not trying to be difficult here, but what if I cannot feel like I can't forgive myself.

That's—

I'm not talking—

I've told you I'm not a normal person. I'm not— I don't tell people the normal things you expect me to say. If you can't forgive yourself, that's fine. Just every time you go and forgive people, keep saying, I forgive myself, whether you believe it or not, because it's an onion and the, the layers are eventually going to strip down. If forgiving yourself is a 10 That's fine. You can put yourself as a number 10, and eventually you'll get it down to an 8. You'll get it down to a 6. You just have to keep— get— you just have to keep at it, you know. You— and in the book, I'll tell— in the book, if you, if you forgive somebody and you know it didn't work, I mean, you know it didn't work, you can feel that it didn't work, okay? Well, I want you to stand up and I want you to shake like a dog. And I mean that because studies have proven that dogs and animals shake to relieve stress. I've never run across an animal that suffers from PTSD. They don't. They toss it. Once they're safe in a safe place and they know they're safe, they toss it and they shake. So go around and you might want to be alone because you'll feel like an idiot shaking like a dog. So, you know, shake like a dog, walk around, you know, get it all out and then go back. And try again in 24 hours.

Oh my gosh, I love this advice. And I'm laughing. I'm staring at my dog as we're talking because he does that all the time.

Yeah, they just shake it off. Taylor Swift has a song about it. Shake it off.

Thank you, Taylor. She is spot on.

Shake it off. She is absolutely 100% spot on. Shake it off. And, you know, Meaning physically shake it off like an animal will, because every animal in the, in the kingdom will shake it off because their brains aren't talking them out of things. You know, animals are smarter than us. They don't talk themselves out of something their intuition tells them to do. Us, we do.

Yeah. My, my mom often says, blow it to the wind, and that helps me.

Yeah, that's right.

I like, I like, I like that one too. So can we talk about the concept of power with forgiveness and how power comes into play?

Years ago when I first started, I decided to start with my number one. My number one was a friend of mine from grammar school who, um, you know, I'm 62, so who knows what happened. I just knew that we hadn't spoken in at least 20 years at the time. This is like 20 years ago. We're going back a while. Um, yes, I am that old. Um, but it was— this was about 20 years ago, and I sat in the middle of my bed and I thought, I can forgive this person easily. So I did. 2 hours later— this is not going to happen with everybody, it's just happened— this just happened this one time. 2 hours later, she calls me on the phone. I hadn't spoken to her in 20 years. So we talk And I'm a curious little bear. And I said, you know, I have to know, after all these years, why did you call me today of all days? She said, well, it was the darnedest thing. About 2 hours ago, which was exactly when I was saying the forgiveness, when I was forgiving her, an earring or figurine, I think it was, fell off my shelf that you gave me way back in school, and it landed in the middle of my floor. So I figured I should give you a call. Oh my goodness, we were 700 miles apart. So if forgiveness— forgiving a level 1 person has the power to do this, imagine what a level— what it would do for a level 6, 7, or a 9 or a 10. Imagine what the energy will do to your life.

Well, and I wonder— okay, so first of all, I absolutely love that story, I have to say that. But I wonder if we even know everybody that we need to forgive. Like, I'm right.

I don't— once you, once you start forgiving, it'll be the darndest thing. You will magically come up with more names. And it's like with the— as the onion peels, more, you know, I used to look at, I used to look at the ceiling. I really did. I swear to you. And I say, you know, someday I need to get to the center of this onion because it's Getting old. But as, as you peel off the layers, you will magically think of more names that you haven't thought of in years.

I am not surprised to hear that at all. And I think that as you help people forgive, there's probably common challenges that you're seeing that people are talking to you about. Are there specific challenges that you're seeing that are getting in the way?

I like to tell people to imagine the person you're gonna forgive in your mind's eye. Um, that's not easy for everybody. Can you see your childhood bedroom in your mind right now? Can you see the color of the walls?

Yes.

That's clairvoyance, by the way. That's probably another topic for another day, but that's clairvoyance. It does not mean you're going to start seeing Stephen King ghosties come around the pike. It means that you're a, you're visual. You were probably a visual learner in school as well.

Yes.

You like to see things.

Yes.

I'm what they call clairaudient. I hear things. Oh. Yeah. I'm actually very intuitive. But that's, again, that's, that's another conversation.

Oh, are we gonna do, can we do that on another day?

I wrote a, I wrote a whole book on it called The Little Bird on Your Shoulder. It's a whole nother thing. But what I'm, what I'm saying is not everybody can, can imagine stuff in their heads. So if you're one of those people, they can't see the person in your head and kind of play a movie and go through all the past, then get a chair and get the person's picture or something in your house that represents the person, place, or thing that you're forgiving and talk to the chair. Mm. And that— and once you're finished, you can get rid of the picture. You can toss it. You can burn it. Don't burn your house down, please. You know, you can, you can do whatever you want with it. And if you feel you haven't forgiven the person, well, put that picture down and circle back in 24 hours, next week, circle back again and do it again. And eventually you are going to intuitively know that you've forgiven them because you'll look at that picture and you're going to feel nothing. That's what you want. You want, you want nothing.

I think that takes a lot of Yeah, yeah.

But everybody can do this. I mean, and everybody's— just to circle back real quickly because you were interested— everybody has a little bird on their shoulder, and everybody's intuitive. All these gurus and stuff, you can do what they're doing. You really can. You either see things, hear things, feel things, or know things. Everybody does it one of four ways. Some people only do it when their life's in danger. A friend of mine was driving, she fell asleep at the wheel. All of a sudden she heard as loud as anything, she heard the words, wake up! And she woke up and immediately turned the car on and narrowly missed getting killed. For myself, I'm violently allergic to exercise. I have a little problem about it. And back in 2011, all of a sudden I had the feeling, this feeling I couldn't shake it. I was hearing it. This huge feeling you need to take up jogging. What the hell? I mean, me? But I couldn't shake the feeling. So I took up running. I started the Couch to 5K running program and I went from a 6, you know, a 14, 16 size down to an 8. I knew that. I knew it was coming down. I knew the weight was coming off too fast. I knew it. And the day before my birthday in 2012, I am a big fan. Listen to me, women, I'm not kidding. Self-exams because I found a lump. Hmm. And the surgeon told me that— and, you know, I wrote a book about this too. I've written a lot of books. But the, the surgeon told me if I had not taken up running, we would not be having this conversation because I'd be dead. It was in a very strange spot. Oh, you can learn to do this. I was walking across the street with my dog Maggie, and all of a sudden I hear the words, she's not going to stop. Well, I'm in my 60s now, and I've learned to listen to the little bird on my shoulder, so I stopped. And sure enough, somebody ran the light, and it would have killed— probably would have killed Maggie before me. But everybody can do this. Everybody has this. You walk into a room and it just feels off. You don't know why. Or you're going to school and something— you just, you just, you just know something's just not right. That's, that's the little bird on your shoulder. It can see farther than you can. And if I don't listen to it, my life gets a little wonky.

Oh my goodness, I have so many books to read.

I gotta get reading.

I want to read that.

So Forgiveness is the game changer. I mean, you can listen to the little bird on your shoulder, but forgiveness is a good place to start. It is a game changer.

Absolutely. I just think that when you're holding anger, it's just not good for you in so many ways.

No, it's not. It'll, it'll, it's toxic. It's completely toxic. It can cause all sorts of bad things to happen to you. And you, you know, Overlooking the fact if you're a walking ball of anger, you're good. You're, you're, your circle of friends is going to go down because nobody's going to want to be around you.

Well, and it's not, it's not fun for our family either. I mean, it's like, it's distracting and it's consuming and not good for anyone involved.

If you're living with your number 8, 9, or 10, I could ask this question too. What do you do if you live with a person? Oh, okay. Well, do the forgiveness because it's going to help you. Forgiveness is personal, it's selfish. It's going to make you feel better. It's not going to make them feel better. It's not going to change their life. You do it for you. It doesn't mean that they were right. You do it for you. But tomorrow they're probably going to piss you off again, so you keep forgiving them. And what's going to happen is you're going to get more positive you're going to get happier. So there's a little entertainment value in here because the happier you get, the more miserable they get. And it's probably going to be very entertaining to watch their reaction to you because you're going to start to change, and it's going to allow you to be able to tolerate living with this person or not tolerate living with this person so you can leave, whatever, whatever the circumstance. Really good advice.

And I, and I think that what I'm wondering over here is, is it different depending on the context? So you've got family, you've got friends, you've got work people. Does it look differently with different people?

They're all at different levels, aren't they? Yeah. Work people could, you could have a number 10 work person. You could. If you are working with a number 10, might I, might I suggest you move to a different department or get a new job? You know, Where working with a 10 is probably making your life real toxic. But that's why I want everybody to rate these people on a scale of 1 to 10, because once you rate these people, you can easily toss that first group, which is going to lighten your load and make you feel better. The 5s, 6s, and 7s, a little harder. You're kind of thinking about these people. They're kind of, kind of taking over your life a little bit. But after you can, you can, after doing a few mental gymnastics, you can probably forgive these people. And then the number 10s, maybe. How I get to forgiveness every time— I'm actually not a very religious person, but there's a passage in the Bible that gets me to forgiveness 10 out of 10 times, and I'm going to paraphrase it. Jesus is nailed up on the cross, he's probably in a boatload of pain, and he looks up and he says, forgive them, Father, they know not what they do. Oh, so I can forgive my— I can forgive my parents because they did the best that they could. You know, if, if I'm 62 and I'm talking to somebody who's 10, I can't get mad at them for not knowing calculus because they haven't taught it yet. I can't get mad at that. So that's how I forgave my parents. They did the best what they can with the tools they had at the time. Was it good enough? Sure. No, it wasn't. It wasn't good enough. But I can forgive that because they didn't know any better. That's how I forgave the 5s, 6s, and 7s. That's, that's kind of how, that's, that was my mental gymnastics. That was my way of getting over a lot of the humps.

And it sounds like the 10s just take a lot more time.

They do. Be kind to yourself. It's 10s and you don't have to forgive the 10s. That's why they're last. You don't have to forgive the 10s. You can forgive yourself and move on. Forgive the table, forgive anything. You don't have to forgive the 10s. Now, someday in the future, you might be able to circle back and try forgiving the 10 again, and you may not. And if you can't, I'm here to tell you that's perfectly fine. 10s are bare. Forgive yourself and move on. You just want to stop thinking about these people.

Well, and I think that what I am seeing with the person in particular that I am thinking about is that it's the same story that they're telling themselves that is eating them up and making them sick. And it's very hard to watch. So even if that person is not able to forgive, it's hard for me to watch this. I would like to see them forgive.

But they're not going to forgive because I grew up in a dysfunctional house, two alcoholic parents, and I wore— and I tried to commit suicide. So I tried— wore that as a badge of courage for years. It was my story. It was who I was. I talked about it. I was proud that I survived it. So if I gave up my story, who would I be? Mm. I would— didn't know who I would be if I gave up my story. It was my story. It was my identity. And that's the problem with a lot of people. These things become their identity. And if they lose their identity, well, then people will talk to me different. They won't do nice things because they feel sorry for me. And I kind of like people doing nice things for me because they feel sorry for me. But when you lose that identity, your authentic true self will stand up. The real you, the you, you came onto this earth to be. You're not that, that damaged person. There is a strong eagle inside of you, and it's just a matter of owning that. And do you know, do we know who that person is? No, but I sure darn well would like to meet you.

Mm. I love that so much, and I'm wishing that right now. So it's mostly parents who listen to this.

Mm-hmm.

So can we talk about parents and kids and how to teach this to our children?

I think teaching the, the, the sliding scale of 1 to 10 to your, maybe your teenage kids and even the kids who are in middle school. I wish I taught that to my, to my sons. They didn't learn it till later. And I think that's gonna help with the bullies. Mm-hmm. You know, the thing with bullies is we're all, everything on the planet is vibrating, everything. And it's an energy that surrounds all of us. And when you vibrate differently than somebody else, it's going to feel bad to them. And that's what happens with bullies. It feels bad. I remember once I was in a, um, I have a couple stories about this in the book, but one that's particularly funny. I was in a restaurant and this woman came up. There was 4 of us and I was with some intuitive friends of mine. And so she came and took everybody's order and then she took my order and she took one giant step back. And I'm kind of looking at her and I politely— my concierge, I used to be a concierge trainer, and so my concierge training kicked in. So the customer service Catherine came out and I politely gave my order and she just kind of looked at me and she fled to the back to the kitchen like she'd seen a ghost. Huh. Okay. I'm pretty cool. I'm okay. You know, this has happened to me before. And then she came out. And she gave everybody their plate very politely, I might add. She threw my sandwich at me like a Frisbee. She tossed it across the table like a Frisbee. She tossed it and all the food and the sandwich just kind of bounced.

Oh boy.

And then she ran back to the kitchen. I fully expected her to come back with holy water or something and sprinkle it with me. And my friend leaned over and said, she's scared of your energy. I was vibrating so differently. She literally was scared of me. Oh, now I could go into a store and it could be empty, and sometimes when I leave, the store is full. I'm always tempted to send them an invoice and say, you know, you're welcome, I got all those people in here. Because for everybody that's attracted you like a moth to a flame, there are people who are not attracted to. And the bullies in school, that's what it is. I was bullied in school because people didn't understand me. They did— they just I would walk into a room and I just, I was different. I was vibrating different. And that's what happens to bullies. Now, when it comes to a child, there's not much, you can't explain that to a kid who's in middle school cuz they just won't understand it. But what you can do is tell them to forgive that person and say, well, is this a 1 or is this a 10? And if it's a 10, then see if you can get the child to forgive themselves for anything they may not have played. Might be a little hard cuz they're gonna look at you and say, well, it wasn't my fault. I didn't do anything. You could start getting a whole mess of attitude. But you're going to start the conversation going. Teaching people how to forgive at a young age, I think, is critical because I'm 62 and I only learned how to, to really properly forgive 2 years ago. This would have been a great thing to know as I was growing up, and I wouldn't have taken offense. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have done a lot of things if I'd known how to do this. Wow.

I, you know, I love this topic. I told you that. So if I want to start today, I need to start a list.

You need to start— well, you might buy my book on Amazon.

Yes, yes, you might.

It's on Amazon. It's The Ultimate Path to Forgiveness. Um, don't forget to leave me a review, please. I haven't gotten many yet. Um, but the first thing to do, if you even— if you don't want to buy the book, is to sit down and make a list. And don't judge anybody, anything you write down, and just do it blind. Whatever forms in your head, even if it's a stupid little red wagon Write it down on the piece of paper. It doesn't matter. And then I want you to take— then I want you to rate these things from 1 to 10 and start with the 1s and slowly move your way up. It's just, please promise me you won't do more than maybe a dozen at a time because you might get— you might, you might not feel well. You might. And after you forgive, you might get a little dizzy, you might get a headache, you might— you're probably going to be tired. But please drink a lot of water so you can flush it out of your system. Just go drink. Just go drink a bottle of water. I'm a big fan of coffee, but even I will drink the bottle of water. I'm staring at— Coffee doesn't count, sadly. No, coffee.

I'm staring at my coffee. Coffee does not count. Okay, so where can everybody go find you?

You can go find me at my website, CatherineGiovanni.com, and Catherine is spelled really weird. It's K-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E-Giovanni.com.

Isn't that interesting? Because you said your energy was different growing up, probably still is, and your name is spelled differently.

That's true. I should— I've been cursing my mother for years. Maybe I should thank her. I think it's beautiful.

I really like how it looks that way. I have never seen it before on paper, and I was like, I need to make sure that I'm pronouncing this right.

Yep. Yep. It's a very strange spelling.

I love it. Well, I can't thank you enough for your time and for talking about this with us today.

Ah, it's my pleasure.

This is Rebecca Greene, and I wanna want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

This show has been produced by Market Domination LLC. To discover how you can have your own show completely done for you and turn it into a real published book and become the authority in your marketplace, go to www.marketdominationllc.com/podcastoffer.

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