Vishen Lakhiani explains how replaying past hurts keeps pain alive and shapes your expectations in ways that block opportunity. Forgiveness isn't about excusing what happened, but rewiring your mind so you can move forward with confidence instead of fear.
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Most of us are not huge on the concept of forgiveness. We like it in theory. We've heard those quotes that get attributed to Buddha about anger being a hot coal that burns the person holding it. On paper, it sounds nice. In practice, it's a little bit more difficult than that. We want to let go of the anger we feel towards our ex friends, our ex lovers, our parents. But doing so doesn't sit right with us. We think those people don't deserve our empathy. And maybe we're right, maybe they don't. But here's the problem with the way our minds work. The more we focus on something, the more it grows, the more our minds form patterns around that thing. And after enough time spent fuming internally, the pain that we are feeling doesn't live in the past anymore. It invites itself into the present. Holding on to anger means that you're refreshing your pain. Every time you think about that situation where you got screwed, Every time you interact with someone who reminds you of that person who betrayed you, Every time you look in the mirror and remember that you that you bit the line, you fell for the trick you signed onto that deal you shouldn't have. Your mind internalizes that feeling and it integrates it into the way it thinks about the future. Your mind goes, okay, person A hurt me in the past, which means I definitely shouldn't trust person B. My first business ended up failing, so my next one will probably be a disaster. I let myself down by having faith in the wrong thing in the past. So I can't trust my judgment any longer going forward. The pain you carry forward becomes a self defeating pattern. But there's an infl reason why that pattern forms. You hang on to the pain of the things that hurt you deeply. Because somewhere deep inside your mind, you think that you can still change the past. Your mind thinks that if it can stay angry long enough, if it can find a way to carry out revenge, if it can make that person pay for what they did to you, then whatever that horrible thing was will un happen. You're holding onto the hope that this thing that has gone so horrendously wrong for you will change. But it won't. What happened is over. In most cases, it has been for a very long time. And in the meantime, while you're concentrating all of your energy on what you cannot change, you're neglecting what you still can. Your future. What have I told you, right here, right now, that the path to radical success in life, to outrageous personal success and joy, was not drive or money or even a streak of good luck. What if I told you that it was possible to stop carrying around the wounds you've been holding onto for decades upon decades of your life? That you could rewire your mind to press the leap on pain it's been reliving all of those years? What if I told you that doing so would not only lighten your mind and body in the present, but completely reprogram the way you think about the future? Because it would. When you are willing to forgive the harm that's been done onto you, you rewire your past, your present and your future. Your past because you no longer look back on old memories with regret. Your because you stop being preoccupied by the story that your pain is telling you. Your future because you can now approach new opportunities with confidence and optimism rather than cynicism and doubt. Forgiveness isn't about letting your enemies walk free and absolving them of all wrongdoing. It's about finally letting yourself walk free into the better future that is waiting for you. Into the bigger person you are capable of becoming. Into the next phase of your life, where the dead weight of your past has been dropped and you are finally ready to walk forward into the incredible life that you deserve.
