Hal Elrod: I want to talk with you about something that every one of us has experienced at some point in our lives, probably more than once, and that is damaged relationships, whether it is a friend that you haven’t spoken to in years or a parent that let you down, or a partner that hurt you, or maybe that you hurt. It’s rarely easy, but it is possible to heal. It is possible to repair a damaged relationship, to rebuild that relationship, and although healing doesn’t always mean things go back to the way they were because sometimes it means creating something even better, even stronger, something more real, more honest, more human than ever existed before.

And if you’ve gone through a difficult relationship and come out on the other side of it. Maybe it was a marriage. I have friends. In fact, part of what inspired today’s episode is I have friends, they’re married, have been married for many years, well over a decade, and they’ve had a pretty tumultuous marriage, a lot of challenges. And in recent times, they have repaired, rebuilt, healed their relationship, and they are the best they’ve ever been. And that should give hope to anyone who, you know, they’ve been on the brink of divorce many times. And they’re stronger and more mature and more resilient and more connected because it wasn’t always roses and butterflies. Is that the phrase, roses and butterflies? It wasn’t always that, right?

It was really challenging and they were hanging on by a thin thread at times. But because they committed to stay together, they’re now in this blissful… And it’s not just like this like, anyway, it’s a sustainable, strong, connected, respectful, loving marriage because of a lot of the advice I’m going to share with you today. And it’s not that I gave them the advice. In fact, a lot of what I’m sharing, I’ve learned from them, from research, from my own experiences repairing and rebuilding and healing relationships.

And I want to start by saying this, I mean, I guess I already started, but it’s a quote from Tony Robbins. It’s, “The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships.” And there’s a 75-year-old Harvard study on happiness that found that the single greatest predictor of a happy and long life was close, healthy relationships, not money, not success, not even health. Relationships. And I found that to be true in my own life. My wife, Ursula, and I, if we’re not getting along, if we’re fighting, if there’s conflict, there’s probably nothing more so that negatively affects my mental health and my emotional well-being. And then that spills over into my ability to focus and be productive. It affects my ability to even fall asleep at night.

And the same thing is true if my kids are mad at me and I also struggle with if I’m at odds with a coworker or a colleague or a business partner. And I’d imagine you can relate to that, right, that when you’re experiencing conflict in one or more of your important relationships, it affects your mental health, your emotional well-being, and other areas of your life. And it does affect your physical health too, right? I mean, because stress is one of the main causes of disease. Our body breaks down when it’s in a state of constant stress. And I know that conflicts and relationships definitely does that for me.

So, another thing that inspired the episode today is yesterday I witnessed, actually it was two days ago now, I witnessed someone very close to me repair a relationship with their brother. And it had gotten so bad that they had considered permanently cutting each other out of their lives after having a very close relationship for most of their lives. Now, that was likely an emotional response and an overreaction. And more on that later. But I watched them heal this relationship that I thought, “I don’t know if this is going to work. I don’t know if they’re going to be able to heal it like they both seem really, they’re ready to just call it quits,” which to me, I’m talking to both of them, going like, “You can’t do this. The relationship’s more important.” But thankfully they healed.

Also, over the past six months, I’ve repaired a damaged relationship with my 15-year-old daughter which I’ve touched on in the past. And then I’ve also repaired and rebuilt my relationship with my wife on more than one occasion, and that does include a few times where we weren’t sure it was salvageable. So, if you have a relationship in your life, listen up, this episode is for you, if you have a relationship that you’re struggling with that you need to repair, rebuild, and heal. So, what I want to share with you today is what I’ve learned from personal experience, obviously, but also from science, from experts, and from people in my life that I have studied and really understood what enabled them to go from a seemingly unrepairable, broken, damaged relationship to rebuilding something that is, like I said, even better than it was before. So, we can heal, repair, rebuild our relationships, not just cope, not just move on, but truly heal.

And I’m going to share today’s episode. I broke this down as I was preparing this into five steps, so you can kind of think of these sequentially. Step number one, understand what broke the relationship. Okay, let’s start here. It’s because before we can rebuild something, we need to understand what caused it to fall apart in the first place so that we can, A, address what caused the fracture, but also so that we can prepare like in the future so that we’re addressing the root cause so that it doesn’t just keep happening again and again and again. Most of us when we have relationships, especially in marriage, right, the same patterns, the same triggers, the same traumas, the same conflicts just tend to repeat themselves over and over and over again.

Dr. John Gottman, he has studied relationships for over 40 years and he says the biggest predictor or predictors, I guess plural, of a relationship falling apart are what he calls the four horsemen, his four factors. Number one, criticism. Criticize your partner, criticize your kids, criticize your spouse. Eventually, that relationship will break down and fall apart and they will resent you. Number two is defensiveness, getting defensive, never admitting fault, always defending your position yourself, maybe your ego. Often it’s our ego. In fact, our ego is a lot of this, but our ego rises up and defends itself and its position and justifies why, what it did. Even if it hurt you, even if it was harsh, it was justified because of X, Y, and Z.

Number three is contempt. Again, these are the four horsemen, according to John Gottman, that are the biggest predictors of a relationship falling apart. Number three is contempt. If you hold contempt against someone, empathy, it goes out the window. As soon as you feel contempt toward a person, you can’t put yourself in their shoes. You don’t feel empathy. And the fourth is stonewalling, where I think stonewalling often comes from — what’s the word I’m looking for? When you’re indifferent, right? You’ve just given up. You’re just you’re done.

And of those four, contempt is the most toxic, according to John Gottman. So, it’s the moment that we stop seeing someone as human and start seeing them as the problem. That’s when contempt sets in. We see them as the problem. We see them as the enemy, right? It creates this polarity where we’re like, “They’re the enemy. They’re wrong. And I’m right.” And I’ve seen this, you probably have too, but in relationships, in friendships, marriages, even business partnerships. And as I said earlier, once contempt sets in, empathy goes out the window.

So, why does this happen? Part of how our brain works is to blame for this. So, when we feel hurt or we feel threatened in a relationship, the amygdala, the fight or flight part of the brain, it takes over. In fact, Daniel Goleman calls this an amygdala hijack. We’re no longer thinking clearly. We are not solving problems. We are reacting. And I know, for me, and I see this with people in my life, right, and usually you can tell when someone feels hurt or threatened.

And again, maybe it’s the ego that feels heard or threatened, but you can tell because that’s when they, right, it’s like the Incredible Hulk when the Hulk goes from being mild-mannered Bruce Banner to all of a sudden he’s green and muscles and ripping through his clothes. It was like now the amygdala’s been hijacked. And you don’t want to meet the Hulk when he is angry, right, because you can tell the person is now angry, they’re now raising their voice, they’re now attacking, and maybe they are saying things or very often that they will later regret, things that might not even make sense.

You’ve ever been in an argument with somebody and they’re saying things that are just like there to put you down, they’re telling you that you do this or you don’t do that, and you’re bewildered because you’re going, “That’s not true. Like, that’s not based in reality.” But they’re not thinking clearly. As Daniel Goleman says, it’s amygdala hijack, that fight or flight part of the brain. They are now in typically fight, right? That’s where a fight breaks out because of the amygdala being hijacked. And by the way, what that can help you do when you understand the basic science of what I just explained, that you can actually, it helps for me to feel empathy toward another person when they are angry.

I go, “Oh, they’re feeling threatened right now. They’re feeling scared right now. They’re feeling hurt right now.” So, think about that. When somebody gets angry and when somebody goes on the offensive, you might immediately think, “How dare you? You jerk. You’re a terrible person for saying the things you’re saying.” But if you actually look deeper underneath the surface, you go, “Oh, that person’s hurt and they’re scared. They’re threatened. Oh.” And if you understand what’s actually causing their behavior, that opens the door to empathy and you’re like, at least for me, It’s not being a doormat. It’s leveling up your consciousness, elevating your consciousness to go, “Here’s what’s actually happening right now.”

So, I’m not going to let my amygdala get hijacked. I’m not going to match them with the same attacks and aggression. I’m going to keep my brain from that fight-or-flight state. And this is easier said than done. I get it. But the first step is awareness. If you’re aware that, “Oh, this is what’s happening,” now, you can be more thoughtful in your interpretation of what they’re saying and why they’re saying it and then be more thoughtful and measured in your response to what they’re saying. You can let it, literally, it’s almost like let it go in one ear and out the other. You don’t need to take it personally.

When I was 20 years old or like early 20s, maybe 25, my wife, Ursula, and I did Landmark Forum. And that was one of my biggest takeaways that I’ve remembered to this day is never take anything personally. No matter what another person says, it’s far less about you and far more about what’s going on inside of them that is causing them to say the things they are saying that they may later regret. So, again, remember that. If you’re taking notes, take some of these notes. Don’t take anything personally because it’s about them. If they’re yelling at you, you can guess that their amygdala was hijacked. They’re feeling hurt, they’re feeling threatened, they’re feeling scared, and now they’re taking it out on you. And it’s like they’re not coming from a place of consciousness. They’re coming from a place of fear, which is a very low level of consciousness.

All right. So, step one is understand what broke the relationships. You really need to understand what was it. Was it criticism, one of the four horsemen? Was it criticism? Was it defensiveness? Was it contempt? Was it stonewalling? Did someone do something that hurt you? But if you actually ask, why did they do it? Maybe they didn’t mean to hurt you. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe they didn’t understand the consequences. Empathy is really the key here when you’re looking to understand what broke the relationship.

Step two, take radical responsibility. I recently had my friend Fleet Maull on the podcast who wrote the book, Radical Responsibility. We had him on you can go listen to that episode. I don’t know. It was probably a month or two ago. But here’s the hard truth and this is the healing truth. Healing begins with you. You have to take responsibility. When I wrote my first book, which you might not even know this book exists, it’s called Taking Life Head On! I wrote it in 2000. I published it in 2006. It took me like six years to write it about my car accident being hit head-on by the drunk driver but Taking Life Head On! And in that book, one of the primary lessons that I taught in the context of me being hit by a drunk driver and having to decide how I was going to handle it is I had to take radical responsibility.

And the phrase that I use in the book is that the moment you take responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you gain the power to change anything in your life. So, think about that. And I’ll just use the car accident as an example. In fact, there’s a couple of times I’m going to bring this in today. But it wasn’t my fault that the drunk driver hit me, right? I came out of a coma and I have 11 broken bones. I was dead for six minutes. Six days in a coma. And this drunk driver, this 31-year-old man I had never met before who decided to drink alcohol at a bar, get in a car, and hit me head-on almost ended my life and potentially ruined my… I mean, he could’ve ruined my life, right? Or, I mean, who knows?

Sorry. The reason I’m pausing there is like it’s how do you define “ruined your life” but meaning I could have been in a wheelchair the rest of my life. But anyone in a wheelchair, I don’t feel like you should think that that ruined your life so that’s why I’m doing backflips here. Here’s my point. I realize it might not be my fault that I’m in this condition, right? That it’s the drunk driver’s fault. That’s fair. But it is my responsibility how I respond. I can’t change anything that’s happened up until this point. So, there’s no value in blaming someone else for things that I can’t change.

What’s the value in that? My ego feels justified? “It’s his fault that my life is the way…” Okay, what are you going to do about it, Hal? Right? Like, talking to myself in the third person. But what can you do about it? Like, how are you going to respond? It doesn’t matter who’s at fault. And I want you to take this on for yourself. I want you to think about a person in your life that has wronged you. And maybe you’ve blamed that person for your mental and emotional well-being. You’ve blamed that person for maybe it was your parents that did things to you that caused you trauma, that caused you to suffer, and maybe you blamed your limitations, your limiting beliefs, your circumstances on people or forces that were outside of your control.

I want you to think about that. Is there anyone you’ve ever blamed, “It’s their fault that I am the way that I am. It’s their fault that I am in the circumstances that I find myself in. It’s their fault.” And here’s what I want you to consider, is that blame helps you assess who’s at fault but responsibility determines who’s committed to moving forward. Like, it doesn’t matter who’s at fault really. There’s a certain you should be aware of that, so you don’t go engage with that person in the same way and have the same thing happen again. But ultimately, to me, it’s like, “Okay, great. The drunk driver was to blame for hitting me. He’s at fault.”

Okay. But I can’t change that. There’s no point in dwelling on that. There’s no point in feeling bad about it. There’s no point in condemning him. There’s no point in allowing my amygdala to get hijacked and just be angry with him. And as weird as this may sound, I wasn’t those things because, I don’t know, I feel like this is one of my blessings is to view people through this lens of unconditional love and empathy and forgiveness. So, I hope some of this resonates with you. It may not resonate with you as like how you operate currently. Some of you it does, but you might be listening going, “Oh, how could you? I would hate that drunk driver.”

But for me, it was like I decided to forgive him and we’re going to get into forgiveness in a second. But the point being, I took responsibility for my recovery and for my mental health and my emotional well-being. Like, what was I going to do? Assign that responsibility to him? He didn’t care. He didn’t even know me. So, Brené Brown says that vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage, and that truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness. Now, when I think back to relationships that I’ve been able to heal, they always start with me asking, “What part did I play in this?”

So, even if the other person was at fault or let’s say they’re 95% at fault, what was my 5%? So, this isn’t a direct parallel to the drunk driving example. In that case, I took 100% responsibility for my recovery because that wasn’t a relationship I was trying to heal, right? So, it’s a slightly different context, but the principle of radical responsibility still applies. And that was an extreme example of like I had every right to blame the drunk driver. But when it comes to a relationship, you might say, “Yeah, it’s their fault. They did these things to me or they didn’t do these things, or they didn’t follow through, or they cheated on me, or they violated me, or they abused me.”

If it is a relationship that you want to heal, and we’re going to talk about in step three, we’re going to talk about some relationships you may not want to heal, but we’re talking right now about damaged relationships that you want to repair and rebuild and heal, right? So, if you’re going to do that, start by asking, “What part did I play in this?” And so, again, even if the other person was 95% at fault, what was your 5%? Now, I came across a study from UC Berkeley that found self-awareness increases empathy and relational satisfaction. So, what does that mean? It means the more honest you are with yourself and what part you have played in something, the more capable you are of connecting with others or re-establishing a connection with others.

So, take a moment and ask, when you’re thinking about a relationship in your life that you want to heal, one that is damaged right now, what wounds are you carrying into the relationship or did you carry into the relationship? And what story have you been telling yourself about that person? It goes back to contempt when you make the person a villain, when you make them wrong, when you make them the problem, when you make them the enemy. And my question: is that story helping you or is it hurting you? Is it perpetuating the damage in the relationship because you keep telling yourself that this is a bad person?

I have a fundamental belief that most people, if not all people, but I’ll start with most, most people are doing the best that they can with who they are. And if you had lived that person’s life, been raised by their parents, maybe you go, “Yeah. No, they’re my sibling. I wasn’t raised by the parents,” okay, had the same friends, experienced the same challenges, no two people lived the same life. If you had lived another person’s life, there’s a very good chance that you’d be the same as they are. You’d have the same effects to your subconscious mind, the same trauma deep in your nervous system, right? So, it’s easier for us to say, “I would never do that,” but ultimately, if you were that person, there’s no way you can know how you would respond if you had lived another person’s life.

So, when it comes to taking radical responsibility, again, healing begins with you. And so, you have to ask yourself, A, you have to say you’re responsible for whatever outcomes you want in your life if that means healing the relationship. In the context of my accident with the drunk driver, it was like, I want to move forward. I want to be happy and healthy and grateful. I don’t want to live as a victim for the rest of my life and feel sorry for myself and be miserable. That sounds like… It’s not what I want. And we’re going to talk in the next step about clarifying your highest hopes for the relationship. We’ll get to that in a second. But it starts with taking radical responsibility. You cannot blame someone else. I mean, you can but, remember, blame determines who’s at fault.

Responsibility determines who’s committed to moving forward, who’s committed to repairing and rebuilding, and healing. So, responsibility is where your power lies. And I’ll repeat that quote from my book, Taking Life Head On!, “The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life, it’s the moment that you gain the power to change anything in your life,” and that applies to every aspect, including your relationships.

Step three. All right. So, once you have understood what broke the relationship, once you’ve decided, “Okay, I’ve got to take radical responsibility for what I want moving forward for the outcomes that I want.” Step three is to clarify your highest hopes for the relationship. So, before you could rebuild a damaged relationship, it is crucial to get clear on your highest hopes. What are the ideal outcomes for what that relationship could look like if it were fully healed? So, ask yourself, what do I really want here?

Now, maybe it’s a deeper connection. Maybe it’s more honest communication. Maybe it’s just enough healing so that like the burden that you’re carrying with you because you’re this person, like you guys never got closure. Maybe that’s the outcome. Maybe you don’t want to re-engage and rebuild the relationship. Maybe you just want to repair it so that you can both go your separate ways. But there’s no closure. It was too much left unsaid. Or maybe it’s just simply you want the ability to be in the same room without tension. Maybe it’s a person that you have to see regularly and you guys like avoid each other because of the conflicts from your past.

So, getting honest about your ideal outcome helps you begin with the end in mind, and it gives you direction, it gives you purpose. And rather than just reacting from a place of guilt, pain, or even obligation without a clear vision.

You’re probably going to find yourself stuck in a cycle of effort with no real sense of progress, right? Meaning, like, if you don’t know what you want for the relationship, then potentially, you can’t align your effort with the outcome. It’s like anything in life, any goal you set, right? Like, you got to begin with the end in mind, and then you work backwards from there. And clarifying your highest hopes for the relationship, it also helps you answer an even tougher question and a crucial question. Is this relationship worth rebuilding? Is it worth repairing? Is it worth salvaging? Because sometimes, even with your best efforts and your best intention, the other person may not be willing or for some reason, they might not be able to meet you halfway or maybe the damage has revealed a pattern that you’re no longer willing to accept, right? So, maybe you thought when you hit play on this podcast, you’re like, man, yeah, I really want to repair that relationship. Why? Because you experience pain and discomfort when you think about the other person because the relationships, it’s not healed, or there was no closure.

So, you might’ve clicked play on the episode thinking, I want to heal the relationship. But then when you actually clarify your highest hopes and you really get quiet with yourself and you imagine, does this person bring me joy, right? Think about Marie Kondo’s book. I know it was organizing your house and such. But she would have you, if you haven’t read that, it’s the Magic– what is it? Something Magic of Tidying Up, I think I’m butchering the title, but it’s something like that. It’s about keeping your space clean and how that feels for you and whether or not you should get rid of certain things like clothing or furniture or clutter in your house.

And what she has you do is she has you put your hand on your heart and ask yourself, like, pick up a shirt, does this spark joy for me? Close your eyes. And you get this immediately, like nervous system reaction of does this thing, does this spark joy for me? And that’s the criteria that she gives you to determine if you should keep it or if you should get rid of it. If it sparks joy, if it literally and it’s literally a visceral feeling like, uhm, it does, I feel joyful because this shirt, I wore it on my wedding day, or my grandpa gave this to me or whatever, right? And you put it back, I’m going to keep that one. It does spark joy for me. And you pick up another one, you go, no, I don’t get rid of this one because I’ve just thought I might wear it someday, but it doesn’t spark joy. It’s like, I don’t even care. I don’t like it. It has nothing. Then you get rid of that one.

Well, the reason I’m using this comparison is for people in your life, when you are envisioning your highest hopes for a relationship, picture that person, put your hand on your heart, think about them at their best and you at your best and your relationship with them at its best, and ask yourself, does this spark joy for me? And see what comes up for you. And by the way, it’s very important, what I just said is a very important distinction in this step that you don’t just visualize the person and ask yourself, does this person spark joy for me? Because if you have a tumultuous relationship at the moment, the odds are that’s going to be a hell no. It doesn’t spark joy for me, the person, it’s stress, like our relationship is falling apart or it’s damaged, and like that, visualizing that person sparks stress for me, anxiety for me.

That’s why it’s crucial that you first ask, you envision, you close your eyes and picture that person smiling, laughing, like maybe picture yourself the last time you guys were together having a good time or maybe picture yourself at your favorite restaurant that you went to with that person where you guys have so many great memories, like picture the relationship at its best because your highest hope would be that it gets back to that place, not the place that it’s currently at. So, you need to envision that person at their best, their relationship at its best, and then put your hand on your heart, close your eyes, and while you’re visualizing the two of you engaging in a loving, playful, harmonious relationship, the one that is defined by your highest hope for that relationship, then you ask yourself, does it spark joy?

But if it doesn’t, right, if you’re like, even at our best, I always felt judged by that person. I felt like they never listened to me. All they did was talk about themselves. They didn’t really care about me. You know what? No. I don’t want to repair the relationship. And then here’s the beauty. Boom. Healing. The healing can happen almost instantaneously when you realize, oh, I’ve been allowing myself to feel emotional pain over the conflict and the disharmony with this person, because I thought I wanted something different, but when I actually try to envision my highest hopes for the relationship, it’s that I never see this person again. It’s that I never talk to them again.

They served a season of my life, but they don’t spark joy for me. They don’t make me a better version of myself. In fact, I’m worse when I’m with them, I’m anxious. And as I’m saying this, I’m picturing people in my life and in my wife’s life and in my kids’ lives, like friends that were there for a season, and then eventually realize that, oh, we’ve outgrown each other or grown in different directions, right? So, again, it’s important that your highest hopes for the relationship, you might determine that again, that damage in the relationship revealed that pattern that you’re no longer willing to accept and knowing what you hope to experience in a restored relationship allows you to evaluate whether those hopes are realistic, whether they are worth investing your time, energy, and your heart into the healing process, whether that’s actually in your best interest or if the healthiest thing you can do is just let go and be at peace with that, right?

Step four of five, forgive to free yourself. This is step four. Forgive to free yourself. So, people often think forgiveness is about the other person, but it’s really about you. So, again, going through the steps, step one, once you’ve understood what broke the relationship, and number two, you’ve taken radical responsibility, understanding that it all comes back to you. Healing begins and ends with you or begins with you at least. Step three, you’ve clarified your highest hopes. Step four, so once you’ve done these things, it’s about deciding to forgive the other person and/or to forgive yourself so that you can pursue that relationship and apologize.

So, see, these are two sides of the same coin, but forgiveness is the coin and it’s often the hardest step. You’ve got to either forgive the other person or forgive yourself for making the mistakes that you made if you were the one at fault. And you’ve got to own that and you’ve got to apologize. You’ve got to forgive yourself, so that you can move forward. And I know that forgiveness, the idea of forgiving, especially another person, but also ourselves, can bring up resistance. And maybe you’re thinking like, Hal, no, they hurt me too much. I will never forgive them.

And believe me, I get it. I have a friend who similarly, she was hit by a drunk driver. It’s a very similar experience and she– I don’t remember all of her injuries, but it was a major car accident. Her response to the drunk driver was very different than mine. They were complete opposites. So, I forgave the drunk driver because I mean, from my perspective, like, he made a mistake and he didn’t maliciously try to hurt me and that was how I viewed it. And again, most people are doing the best they can with who they are. He obviously had some issues where he gave into the vice or the temptation to drink alcohol. He made a poor decision to get in the car after he drank, which, I mean, raise your hand if you’ve never in your life done that. I think there are less hands up than there are down, right? Did I say that right? Anyway, you get what I’m saying. So, I forgave him. Well, she has never forgiven the drunk driver. And I don’t know how long ago it was. I mean, I’m going to say 10, 20, 30 years. It was a long time ago. She’s never forgiven the drunk driver. In fact, every year on the anniversary of the car accident, she posts on Facebook saying, “I hope you burn in hell.” And she says a lot more than that, but that’s part of the message.

And I want you to think about why do you forgive another person? Most of us struggle because we think they don’t deserve our forgiveness. They wronged me. Again, they hurt me, I will never forgive them. But when you understand forgiveness is about you more than about them, this is about liberating yourself. When I say forgive, to free yourself, I use the word free because I like alliteration, forgive to free. All right? But it’s really liberate, like you’re liberating yourself, you’re freeing yourself from a harboring anger and hate and resentment. And as I’m saying these words with this viscerally, like I am imagining this person that I know that she harbors all these things, the drunk driver that hit her, he’s not suffering over these things unless he hasn’t forgiven himself for the mistake, but she is continuing to suffer for decades after it happened.

So, one of the most defining moments for me was when I faced the drunk driver in court. And again, he had nearly killed me. And I could have held onto anger. I could have said, I’ll never forgive him. He ruined my life. He deserves to be punished. But instead, I chose to see him, to view him through the lens of empathy. And that’s one of my core values is to view every person through lens of love, empathy, and forgiveness. I imagined his wife and his two young children, right? He was 31 years old. He had two young kids. I imagined his family without their dad because of one terrible choice that he made that night. And he had probably done it before, I don’t know. Maybe he was an alcoholic, maybe he was addicted, right? I don’t know.

But I forgave him. And not for his sake, but for mine. In fact, we never even spoke. He didn’t even speak English. I never talked to him, but I forgave him. And by forgiving him, the moment I forgave him, I felt completely free. No resentment, no hate, just peace. And if anything, sadness for him and for his family more than anything. There’s a book by Desmond Tutu called The Book of Forgiving that addresses this. He says, “Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us.” Again, that friend of mine who hates the drunk driver, she’s tethered to the drunk driver, many years after it happened.

So, forgiveness isn’t about letting them off the hook. It’s about unhooking yourself from the pain. And let’s be clear, forgiveness does not always mean reconciliation. Sometimes the most healing thing you can do is forgive someone privately in your heart and mind, body and spirit, then let them go from your life. But if reconciliation is possible, if it is safe, if it is mutual, if it aligns with your highest hopes, your highest vision for the relationship, then forgiveness is what opens the door to it.

And from there, when the time is right, you might consider offering a real apology or inviting one, but not for closure, not to get something in return simply because it’s the person who you want to be. This is one of the most important principles I believe in life, but particularly related to relationships is who are you going to be? Who do you choose to be? Like, whenever I hear someone justify, if someone mistreats another person and they go, yeah, but you don’t know what they did to me, I go, okay, so who you are is based on how other people are? Oh, that’s no judgment. That’s your choice.

But I like to think about the idea that there’s, to me, I don’t want to say a higher level of thinking because that’s condescending, but I mean, maybe it’s, I don’t know, a more useful way of thinking, right, which is no matter how someone else treats me, no matter how someone else behaves, I know my values and nothing that anyone else can say or do or not do or not say is going to change the person I am committed to being, how I’m going to show up. Another book to reference, Why Won’t You Apologize? by Dr. Harriet Lerner. She said it beautifully, “The courage to apologize well is not about the relationship, it’s about who we want to be.” So, what does a healing apology look like? How do you do it? It’s sincere. It acknowledges the hurt without excuses. And by the way, let me be clear, I am terrible at apologizing. I am in no way on my high horse here. This is me learning this from my wife Ursula. Like, I am terrible at apologizing.

And part of it is because I don’t really require apologies. Like, again, the drunk driver never apologized. I just forgave him. I don’t require an apology from someone to forgive someone, and this is like a little bonus lesson, I think I’ll spend like 30 to 60 seconds on. Think about that. Many people, I know many people, that person owes me an apology, and I will not forgive them unless they apologize. And for many people, it goes beyond that and they have to apologize the way that I think people are supposed to apologize. I know that you either know someone like that or you are like, yeah, that’s how– they better apologize. I’m not going to forgive someone that doesn’t apologize.

Do you understand the point? We’re forgiving to free ourselves. It doesn’t require an apology from somebody else. And that’s why I’m not good at apologizing because to treat others the way you want to be treated, well, I don’t need to be apologized to, so I don’t think about like, oh, I need to apologize. I get over stuff because I forgive. I understand you’re doing the best you can with who you are. And so, I move on. I forgive you. I love you. There’s empathy and love and forgiveness, and I move on.

So, because that’s how I operate in my own consciousness, I don’t think to apologize and I don’t do it very well. I’m getting better. So, what I’m sharing with you is as much advice for me, and I didn’t finish sharing it. I wrote this down word for word because I wanted to, I was like, reflecting, what does Ursula tell me? Like, how am I supposed to apologize that I consistently get wrong because I don’t remember this? So, I literally, I’m like, if I can’t remember it with my wife, I might not remember it on the podcast, so I’m going to write it down.

So, here we go. A healing apology, it’s sincere. It acknowledges the hurt without excuses, and that’s my– I always make excuses. I’m like, but the reason was I didn’t mean to because blah, blah, blah. All right, so it acknowledges the hurt without excuses. It shows empathy even if you don’t fully understand the other person’s experience. That was a challenge for me too. I’m like, I don’t even get why you’re so upset. It doesn’t matter. You express empathy, I’m sorry that you are hurting, even if you don’t understand the experience that the other person is going through.

Also, it includes a commitment to change. This is a big one. My wife would be like, I’m not going to listen to your apology if you’re not going to do anything. If you’re going to keep doing the same thing over and over again, don’t waste your breath apologizing. I’m like, oh. So, it includes a commitment to change and maybe most importantly, it gives the other person space and time to consider the apology. You can’t force healing, right? And often, I was guilty of that. I’m sure I probably still am from time to time, but I would apologize and if Ursula didn’t immediately go, okay, we’re all good now, right, if she was still upset, I’m like, geez, I said sorry, what do you want from me? I know you can relate to that, either you’ve done it or you’ve experienced it on either the giving or the receiving end, right?

But you can’t force healing. And my wife’s like, I need time to process what you said in the context of the emotions that I have been experiencing for the last hour or days or whatever weeks, right? So, you can’t force healing. You can only take responsibility for yourself, apologize sincerely, acknowledging the hurt without excuses, showing empathy, even if you don’t fully understand the other person’s experience and why they’re so hurt and upset. And it includes a commitment to change. And then again, give the person space and time to process and to receive– actually, in the other order, to receive and then to process the apology.

So, forgiveness might be one of the most powerful choices that you ever make, and it’s not just to repair a relationship, it is to reclaim your peace. Again, you are forgiving to free yourself, and I encourage you to not base whether or not you forgive somebody on whether or not they apologize or the words they use and them saying the words that you expect for the correct apology. No. Forgiveness is something that you do. It’s based on who you are. It’s based on who you choose to be and how you choose to show up in your relationships. It’s to love and forgive other people, not because they’re perfect, not because they do everything you want them to do and meet all of your expectations, but because it’s who you choose to be, someone that lives in a state of forgiveness and thus, you free yourself from the burdens of resentment and contempt and all of those other painful emotions that people often harbor.

All right, and step five, and I’ll keep this one short. We’re like 15 minutes, 13 minutes over the time that I intended. I went off on a lot of tangents. But step five is to take time to rebuild trust. Take time to rebuild trust. Okay? And on both ends, it takes time, right? You can’t rebuild trust with a quick apology and be like, hey, you’re going to trust me now. I apologize. No, it takes time. It’s done through consistent action or actions over an extended period of time. And I broke trust with my wife in our early marriage. I never cheated or anything, but like, I just– I’m trying to think of even what examples I can use. I just know that she didn’t trust me for certain things, like how I would show up in our relationship. She didn’t trust that I’d be there for her because she’d be emotional and I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to receive it, to be there. So, then I would get like upset because I was scared because I didn’t understand why. She couldn’t get over things and on and on and on.

The point is, all of the healing that’s happened in our relationship, so not just trust, but trust is a form of healing, it all took time. And referencing Stephen Covey, who wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he also wrote the book, The SPEED of Trust. And in that book, he said, “Trust is built with consistency,” right? So, it’s not with one big gesture, it’s not with flowers or grand apologies. It’s with little consistent actions over time, an extended period of time, just like you can’t– what did I say earlier? I said, you can’t rush something. Oh, you can’t force healing. You can’t rush healing, right? It’s the same thing with trust. You can’t force it, you can’t rush it, but every time you show up differently, every time you follow through on your word and every time you choose empathy over ego, you are building trust again. It is a slow process. It takes typically a long time, but I promise it’s worth it.

I think about the relationships in my life that have been damaged, that have been fractured, that I have intentionally identified that I wanted to repair, that I wanted to rebuild, that I wanted to heal. And again, the most obvious one is my wife and me, just being in a ma– if you’re married, you know, right? Your marriage is typically up and down and you go through valleys and it’s challenging and you might question things at times. And so, having gone through these periods where it was these, whether it was the drunk driver or it was business relationships or my wife, right, it takes time, but it is absolutely worth it.

So, I’m going to leave you, final reflection here, I’m going to leave you with a few questions to reflect on. Number one, which relationship or relationships, there may be more than one, but maybe start with one, right, don’t overwhelm yourself, but which relationship in your life needs healing? Which relationship do you want to repair and rebuild, I don’t know why I’m struggling with the word rebuild, and heal? And then what are your highest hopes for that relationship? And what are you still holding onto that’s keeping you stuck? Is it anger? Is it resentment? Is it contempt? Is it one of the four horsemen that we talked about earlier? And who might you need to forgive even if they never apologize?

So, there’s some questions to reflect on, and then I want to challenge you, before the day ends today, make the first move. Send the message, write the letter, speak the words, like you don’t have to fix it all today. You just have to take the first step. You just have to open the door. And remember one of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said. They’ll forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” Let that be your guide. Don’t try to be right. Don’t try to justify why you did what you did. Just focus on empathy, love, forgiveness, connection, your highest hopes for the relationship, and let that be your guide, how you make that person feel when you reach out, you apologize, you express your highest hopes for the relationship, which I encourage you to do. If that feels right, let them know and focus on how that feels for you, how it feels for them.

Thank you so much for being with me today. We’re going to wrap it up there. Be the one who heals, be the one who leads with love. And until next time, take care of your relationships and they will take care of you, because remember, I’m going to go back, what was it that Tony Robbins said, right? The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships. So, no matter how difficult, damaged, seemingly unsalvageable relationship is, you can always repair, rebuild, and heal. All right, I love you so much. I’ll talk to you next week.