The Mindset Mentor - How to Forgive and Let Go of Your Past

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Forgiving yourself and others will bring you more peace, calm, and happiness. We'll explore how letting go of grudges lifts a huge weight off your shoulders, and how understanding that everyone, at their core, is innocent and often hurt can help you empathize and release resentment. Discover how holding onto anger only hurts you and learn to let go for a more peaceful life. We'll share stories that illustrate the power of seeing beyond actions to the wounded child within, and discuss the importance of self-forgiveness, recognizing that everyone is doing their best, including you.Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. I put out episodes four times a week for you. Also, if you're out there and you want to join my inspirational text message group, if you live in the United States or Canada, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to talk to you about how to let go and how to forgive. And when I say this, I mean like in a really deep, meaningful way. What I'm going to talk to you about today can absolutely change

your life and make your life so much easier. It's just so much weight that will be lifted off of your shoulders when you learn how to do this. It will bring so much peace into your life. And it is extremely simple, but just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's easy. And so this is going to be a really, really deep episode. And I'm going to talk to you about how to forgive anyone in your life and also how to let go so you don't carry burdens with you anymore. It's like that quote, the mountains that you're carrying, you're only meant to climb. And so today we're just going to talk about forgiveness. We're going to talk about that. And I've talked with many people who have said when I'm like, hey, you need to learn how to forgive. They're like, no, I would never forgive them. You don't know what they did to me.

Forgiveness is never for the other person. Forgiveness is for you, so you can let go of the burden of holding on to it, and the way that I've changed my perception, because for the longest time, I held grudges, and I didn't want to forgive people and all of that. But it's really hard to have the profession that I have and not just every single day be humbled by the experiences and the life that people have, all of the things they have to go through in their childhood and in their life and the stuff that they go through. It's really hard not to have compassion for people. And what I have come to realize and truly believe deep down in my soul is that at the core of every person that you meet is innocence. Every single person at their core, if you were to be able to push away

all of the stuff that's in the way that they think is them, that's not truly them, all of them, all of that stuff at the core of them is good. And stuff happens in life that takes them away from that. But it doesn't mean that's not who they truly are. It just means that they are lost in some sort of way. You know, we don't necessarily stay innocent. Things happen. Trauma happens. Society happens. The world happens. And what we're all searching for in this world is peace. We're not searching for happiness. That's a fleeting emotion. It's here. Sometimes you could be happy. You wake up and you're happy in the morning. You had a great cup of coffee. Someone cuts you off in the way to work and it just screws up your entire day. You get pissed,

right? That's happiness. Peace is just a state of being. I remember one time I was working with a coach years ago, and he's like, what do you want in your life? And I was like, you know what I want more of? I want more of that feeling. And that's really just the feeling of peace, right? But you cannot have peace in your life if you see the world as bad and you see other people as guilty. You can't. You just can't have it because you're constantly on guard. And even if you're not mentally, don't feel like you're mentally on guard, your body is on guard. Your shoulders are always tense. Your eyebrows are all just kind of, you know, just a little bit. They're not relaxed. They're not relaxed. Got a little bit of just a, you know, face, you know, just a little bit, it's not, they're not relaxed. They're not relaxed. Got a little bit

of just a, you know, face, you know, and it's like you're, sometimes you're biting down your jaw, you get TMJ, your jaw is too tight. It's like, you get, you're too tight. You got to get more loose. So if you see, you can't have peace if you see the world is guilty and bad. If you watch the news, my God, you're going to think that the world is fucking insane. So what you have to understand is that the key to unlocking peace is to see the world as good and to forgive no matter what. No matter what, Rob? Yes, no matter what. No matter what. And I'm going to talk to you about why that is. It's not, once again, I said, it's not easy, but is absolutely, definitely going to make your life way easier. And I want you to understand this. Anyone who has done bad to you or has hurt you in some sort of way is lost.

Okay, go with me on this. Anyone who's done bad to you, anyone who's ever hurt you is lost. Anyone who does bad is lost. They do not know what they're actually doing. Because if they did, if they had the awareness to think about how their actions are affecting other people around you and they're able to feel what it feels like to be affected by them, if they were to put yourself in your shoes, they wouldn't do it. They do not know what they're actually doing. So in some sort of way, they're lost. Anyone who has hurt you is hurting themselves because they're taking actions that are bringing them further away from their true self. They are walking further off the track

into the woods. They're lost in some sort of way. And so to hold on to resentment towards that person who is lost only hurts us. And so now we have a lost person and now we have a hurt person. Well, I would at least like to not be hurt anymore and let go of that. And if they want to find themselves and not be lost anymore, that's up to them. And so I don't want to hold any resentment towards people. And so for me, when something happens to me, I'll feel things and I'll feel emotions and all that. But then I start to think about how can I just let go of this? How can I not hold resentment? How can I forgive this person? And it's like the phrase like Mark Twain says, he says, anger and resentment is the acid that burns the vessel.

It's the acid that burns the vessel. It's like holding onto a hot coal and hoping that that hot coal hurts somebody else. No, you have to let it go. That's the only onto a hot coal and hoping that that hot coal hurts somebody else. No, you have to let it go. That's the only way. And so that anger and that resentment, it's just that you're white knuckling your way through life sometimes. You know, like for instance, I'll give you an easy example, right? If someone breaks into your house and they steal stuff from you, you can not want to forgive them. You can be mad at them for what they did. But I promise you this, at their core, they don't want to be doing what they're doing. They don't want to be doing what they're doing. That might be a 27-year-old adult, but really what it is, it's a grown-up child in an adult body who was not loved correctly.

Or it's someone who thinks that the world is not safe because their parents didn't make them feel safe. And now they feel like, well, I need to go take from other people to be able to make money, to feel more stable, to feel more safe because I don't never, I've never felt that safety in my life because it was never given to me in my childhood. It's someone that's hurting. And when we can see that it's someone that's hurting, it's easy to have more empathy for that person and have more peace. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. And one of the things that really helped me with this, just to give you guys an idea, was I remember there was one moment I had a

coach of mine that asked me, do you hold any resentment towards your parents? And I was like, no, I don't think so. I think I've gotten over everything with my dad. I think everything's good with my mom. He's like, okay, I want you to sit with that question. I kind of sat with it and I was like, you know what? I do think I resent my dad. And so I started working through it and journaling it. And, you know, for those of you that don't know my story, if this is your first episode to listen to, my parents got divorced when I was 10 because my father's an alcoholic. My father passed away when I was 15 from liver failure, from being an alcoholic. There's obviously childhood trauma that comes with having an alcoholic father. And

after really sitting with it, I was like, you know what? I do resent my dad in many ways. He wasn't there for me to teach me how to be a man, how to shave, how to, you know, interact with people in the world, how any of those things, like he wasn't there for me in those moments. And so I started feeling that resentment. And then I was like, well, why wasn't he there for me? Why did he become an alcoholic? I started getting deeper and deeper into it. And I was taken back in like a meditation session to think about my dad when he was a child, session to think about my dad when he was a child, you know, so I was seeing, I was, I was mad at the 48 year old man who caused the trauma in my life, who was an alcoholic, who didn't overcome it. And who passed away when he was 48 years old. What I didn't see was the child that was still wounded inside of him that made him become an alcoholic and have an addiction. And so I started

thinking about that, like, well, what actually happened? And if you don't know the story of that, my father, when he was 12 years old, heard a gunshot. He walked into his parents' room and his dad had just shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun. So my dad walked into the room right after his father had killed himself. And so that was 12 years old. And so once I thought of that and I put myself in my dad's place and in his shoes, I was like, oh my God, I can't have resentment towards a 48 year old man because what I really need to do is show love to the 12 year old child. And it completely changed the way that I had thought about everyone else in my life and everyone that I come in contact with.

And I realized that any person who shows up in a way that doesn't feel real and authentic and loving and truthful, hurts you, screws you over, steals from you, breaks your heart, whatever it might be, is a child that just has some sort of wound that they never really overcame. And when you can start to see that, you can start to have empathy for people. And there is my, there is no resentment that exists inside of me for my father after realizing this. And I was like, he was just, I can't imagine what that 12 year old boy had to go through, you know? And so I can't be mad at the 48 year old guy. What I need to do is I need to, I need to show love and energetically think about showing love to that 12 year old child. And so you can

see the adults, but you can also see the hurt child that's behind it. If you can see the hurt child that's behind it, oh my God, forgiveness is so much easier. If somebody cheats on you, you're in a relationship with them, that has nothing to do with you. You have to realize that this has nothing to do with you. You might think that it does. It has to do with probably their lack of love for themselves, which came from a lack of love that probably came from their parents. And then, you know, they have to go search for someone else to try to fill a void that they can't fill because their parents didn't give them the love that they wanted or deserved when they were a child. It's a search for love is what it is. It's a search for acceptance. It's a search for self-worth.

That's what it is. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with a wounded child that's now an adult. There's only this. There's only insanity and there's sanity. And when I say this, when I say insanity, I don't mean like clinically insane. But what I mean is sanity is to be in a state where you do right for yourself and you do right for other people. That's what sanity is.

You're doing right for yourself, you're doing right for other people. Insanity is to be in a state that hurts other people. And when you hurt others, you hurt yourself, which is also even more insanity. Because what happens is when you hurt somebody else, you carry that wrongdoing with you. Everything in this world is just basically love and fear. You've heard that before. Love is sanity. Anything that is not love is insanity, right? Love, sanity. Everything else that's not love, insanity. Everyone is just where they are and they're doing the best that they can with what they have. And once you like really understand that at your core, it's so much easier to forgive too.

Everyone's doing the best they can. And if they really screwed up, that was the best that they could do in that moment. But I promise you this, if you were in their exact same shoes, you went through their exact same childhood, had their exact same parents, went through their exact same raising and all of the millions of little teeny tiny seconds and things that have happened in their life, you would be exactly the same as them. You would make the same choices. We like to think like, oh, I would never be like them if I had their life. No, no, no, you would. You would make the exact same choices. Someone's actions are always a reflection of their consciousness. You know, when you look at, I like to look at, I'm not religious in any sort of way,

but I like to look at all the different texts that are out there, the different figures that are out there and say, like, can I get some inspiration from this? And a good person you can take the inspiration from is, whether you believe in him or not, you can just take the story if you want to, is Jesus, right? The story of Jesus being murdered. At the moment where he's being murdered, he says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they're doing. He even saw, he could see past their actions to the consciousness that they were and see they do not know what they're doing. They are lost. A sane person would never do those actions. Get it? So that's really what it comes down to. What our truest self should see is a sick person that's in need of healing. In that case of the people that's murdering somebody else, that's a sick person that's in need of healing. In that case of the people that's murdering somebody

else, that's a sick person that's in need of healing. Somebody cheats on somebody else, that's a sick person that's in need of healing. Somebody screws somebody over, steals from them, that's a sick person that's in need of healing in some way. What the ego sees is an evil person that's in need of punishing. But what your truest self, if you could take a step back, is a person who is sick that needs some healing in some sort of way. And so everyone wants happiness and everyone wants peace. Even the person that's screwing you over wants peace and happiness as well. But everyone is always doing what they believe will bring them happiness and peace. And if we judge and condemn that person,

we strengthen that within them. So if someone steals from me, right? And I judge and condemn that person, we strengthen that within them. So if someone steals from me, right, and I judge and condemn that person, I strengthen that version of them that is a thief. So if someone steals from me and then I judge them and I condemn them and I call them a thief and I do whatever it is, I'm strengthening their own identity as a thief and they're thinking in their head, I'm a thief, which then makes them more likely to create actions in the future as a thief would. So what's the best thing for me to? Release it. Let it go. That person could do whatever they want to, but I'm not going to reflect the thief back to them because I want them to hopefully be

able to break that pattern that they're in. If someone's a thief and they're a cheater and they're screwing someone over, they're doing whatever it is, they don't feel good about what they did. I promise you that. Their truest self, their core, their deep consciousness behind all of it, they know that it's wrong. But if we judge that person, if we label them, it strengthens that belief that that's what they are. And they're more likely to do it again in the future. So I want to at least try to break that pattern. I want to release it for myself and hopefully maybe they can release it in themselves so they don't do it to someone else again. Right? Because if I say it to them, they see it in themselves and they're going to need to keep doing the thing and think,

oh, that's who I am. I'm a thief. Oh, I'm a cheater. I'm going to do this. Oh, I'm a person who screws people over, whatever it is. I'm not going to play a part in that thought that they have of themselves. The hardest part to do is to try to forgive and to love that person. If you could try to forgive and love somebody, it allows you to release it. And at the same time, it allows them to start releasing it as well. I remember seeing a video that one time was like a really touching video. And there was a lady whose son was murdered by, it's like this teenage boy. Her teenage son was murdered by this teenage boy for like a couple hundred bucks or something like that. And it was a video of them in the trial. And, you know, the kid was sentenced, whatever it was happened. And then the mother came up, mother of the murdered son comes up to the kid who murdered her son and

she said, I forgive you, can I give you a hug? And then she gave him a hug and this kid just broke down in tears. If a woman can forgive somebody who murdered her son, I'm pretty sure all of us can try to work to forgive somebody else. Because what she was able to see in that moment was that was a child that probably just wasn't loved in his childhood. I'm going to give him that love. I'm going to release it for myself and hopefully be able to release it from him as well. And so that's really what it comes down to. So that's forgiveness of other people. When we're talking about forgiving other people, we're also talking about forgiving ourself. The hardest person to forgive a lot of times is yourself.

And if you're going to be able to go on this path of forgiveness for other people, you have to do it for yourself. If other people are doing the best that they can with whatever they have, of course, you were always doing the best that you could with whatever you had. So if you did something three years ago and you're still beating yourself up for it, it's time for you to let it go. It's time for you to forgive that person, that version of you that you were, because you did the best that you could in that moment. And so if you're

going to forgive other people, you've also got to go on the journey of starting to forgive yourself. If you can do that, man, I'm telling you this, your life will be so much more calm, so much more peaceful. When you can forgive other people, you can forgive yourself and you can just decide to go on your path and not let anything affect you no matter what it is that happens. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If this episode impacted you, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in it, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Also, at the same time, if you love this podcast, you'll probably love something I have that's called Mindset Mentor Plus. Mindset Mentor Plus is for every single episode that comes out of this podcast. Mindset Mentor Plus is for every single episode that comes out of this podcast. Mindset Mentor Plus subscribers are going to get a whole lot more.

So they get multiple detailed multi-page worksheets, three, four, five, six pages. Sometimes they go deeper into every single episode than just the podcast does. You can print these out. You can underline them. You can highlight them. There's also journaling questions for every single episode. There's assignments for every single episode. We do our monthly Q&A session in there as well. There's also a community of over 1,300 people that you can

connect with. If you want to learn more about it, there's a website that tells you all about it. There's a video on there that I recorded for you that tells you about it as well. So you go to mindsetmentor.com. Once again, mindsetmentor.com. And the best part about the whole thing, it is less than a dollar a day. So if you want to learn more about it, go to that website. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.