The Mindset Mentor - How to Forgive Those Who Have Hurt You

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host. Rob Dial, if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button. So you never miss another episode. And if you did not hear four days ago, we opened up tickets to my three-day live event here in Austin, Texas. And by the end of day one, we'd already sold over 100 tickets. So if you're ready to stop holding yourself back and unlearned, the identities, the fears, the limiting beliefs and the bad habits that are capping your success, your happiness, your money, and your relationships, go to Freedom Live.26.com.

This event will sell out. And right now, the tickets are the cheapest they will ever be. Once again, it is Freedom Live, 26. I'm going to talk to you about the one decision that really does have the power to completely change the quality of your life. Because most people spend years trying to be happier, while unknowingly holding onto and gripping onto the very thing, that's keeping them from finding happiness. And if you don't make this one shift in your life, you will continue to relive your past no matter how much your life changes. Because when you're walking around and you're holding on to pain and resentment and betrayal and blame and anger for other people, it doesn't just like weigh you down. It also warps the way that you personally see the world.

it's going to warp the way that you see other people, and it's also going to warp the way that you see yourself. And so today I'm going to talk about forgiveness, which doesn't sound like the sexiest subject in the world, but I want to talk to you about forgiveness, about letting go to what you no longer need, and I really want you to understand today is about reclaiming your peace. Because if you don't let go of the anger and the resentment and you don't forgive, your life will never be as peaceful as it should be. Okay. So let's dive in. The first thing I want you to understand, I want to be completely honest with you, okay? Forgiveness is very, very simple, but it is really, really challenging. Like, it's not easy. I'm not going to bullshit you, right? The hardest part of forgiveness isn't necessarily about the other person.

A lot of times, the hardest part of it is about you. And what I really, really need you to know is this. when we look at every human, and I'm going to make a statement that some of you are going to be like, I don't know if I agree with that. But just go with me for a second. I want to actually explain it to you, okay? At your core, at every single person's core that you come in contact with is innocence. Every person is good at their core. Now, could they have done bad things? Because they have learned bad things? Absolutely. But at their core, how they were born is innocent. How they were born, how they were born is they were good. But then life happened. And for them, some of the most terrible people that have ever existed in this earth are really just children who were not loved right. That's really what

it comes down to. I have never seen somebody who was loved correctly and well and treated well by their parents that came out to be a piece of shit. I just haven't. Right? Life happens. So trauma happens. society has conditioned us in many different ways. Parents projected their pain onto their child. And then there's teachers and churches and systems that might have hurt people as well. And all of that is layered on the original innocent person that was born into this earth. Like I've never met a baby and being like, that's a bad baby. That's a baby that's definitely evil at its core. Right? No. So now, we're walking around, bumping into each other's wounds is what we're really doing. Like I always say this,

and you've heard me say this on the podcast before. If you see someone who's just a guy who's a 47-year-old man that's just a blatant asshole to everybody, what you're really seeing is a wounded child that is in an adult's body. That's it. That's what it comes down to. I've been doing this now for over 20 years. I've been into helping myself, helping us. other people, neurology, psychology, and all of that, cognitive behavioral therapy. And what I have found is that the longer that I am in this industry, the more that I work with people, the harder it becomes to not have immense amounts of compassion for other people. Because I have heard some of the worst things you could possibly hear about what children have gone through and people have gone through

and what things have happened to people. And, you know, when you see someone that's a 47-year-old man just yelling at a bunch of people, it's probably a seven-year-old whose dad was emotionally or physically or abusive to him or his parents left him or his mother was a drug addict or an alcoholic, something happened that made that person who they are. It is just a wounded child in an adult's body. And so when you look at it this way, and this is what's most important because we're going to talk about forgiveness today. And so somebody became who they are because of trauma that happened to them in their childhood,

in their adolescence, things that have happened to them in their adulthood. And when you see someone that's addicted to drugs, you're usually seeing a child who wasn't loved correctly. It's in an adult's body. I've said it and I'll say it again over and over again. It's hard not to have immense amounts of compassion when you've heard so many crazy insane stad stories of what people have gone through. And maybe you haven't heard as much as I have, but I just really want you understand.

I truly do believe after being in this industry for as long as I have, more than half of my life, I only have more compassion for people, especially the ones that are the most lost. Because I hear about what happened to them and how they became who they are. And so you need to know that all of us, what we're not really searching for is happiness. What we're searching for is peace. What we're searching for is this feeling of being content. And happiness is fleeting. peace is like a state of being right happiness is like an app on your phone uh that you can like go in and out

of peace is like the operating system that's really what we're trying to get to when i say peace i don't mean like immense amounts of joy i just mean like content things are pretty good no matter what happens everything is okay inside of it piece is basically the thing that all of the systems and apps run af of right and so i want you understand in this is you cannot have peace if you see the world as a bad place, if you see the world as guilty. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. And so what we're all really searching for is peace. And you cannot simultaneously hold resentment towards other people and really feel peace and be free. It's like trying to swim with an anchor tied to your ankle. You cannot have peace

if you do not forgive. And I know that all of us can find forgiveness in some sort of way. I remember seeing a video a few years ago that really, really hit me. And it was a video of a father whose son was murdered in court giving a hug to the man who murdered him and saying to him, I forgive you and I love you. And it wasn't like for show or for bullshit. Like you could tell. He was noticing that the guy who murdered his son was lost. He was a lost soul in the that he needed to forgive him so that he could free his soul, but he could free his own soul. And I remember seeing that and being like,

if that guy can do that from that place, I could probably figure out a way to forgive people who screwed me over, stole money for me, or cut me off in traffic or whatever it might be. So let's go deeper into all this, because it's really important because if we're gonna talk about forgiveness, we really need to understand the state of humans around us. Like, why do people do bad things?

Have you ever thought about that? I think about it all of the time. No child is born into this world. No baby's born into the world doing bad things. They learned something incorrectly or they got lost along the way. And so why do people do bad things? This is the type of stuff that I ask myself when I'm like singing at home drinking coffee all by myself

and I'm trying to figure out the world, right? It's not because they're evil. It's because they're lost. Okay? Like let that land for a second. It's not because they're evil. It's not because they're possessed by some demon. it's because they're lost.

Anyone who hurts another being, whether that be a human or a dog or whatever it might be, is hurting themselves first. And you might be like, what the fuck is he talking about, right? They're hurting themselves first and then they're hurting others

because they have cut off from their own true, pure essence. Their actions are symptoms of their suffering. Do you get this? Because this is like really, really deep for us to understand. They're covered. off from their pure essence, their soul, who they are, and their actions are symptoms of their

suffering. Like, think about it. A thief, it's likely a child that was forced to survive because their parents couldn't do that for them. And so they learned, I have to take from others in order for me to survive. Or they were taught by their parents to steal because that was the only way they could get by. So it's just a learned pattern or a protection mechanism in some sort of way. A person who's a cheater, you know, if you've been cheated on by somebody, is likely somebody who never got the love that they truly needed or the self-worth from their parents. And their cheating is them looking for validation from anyone that will give them attention. Yeah, when you look at someone who's a liar, it's likely someone who has learned that the truth was not safe, whether that be with their

parents, whether that be in their household. And lying became a habit because of that. And so when you zoom out and you stop trying to see the monster, which a lot of us do, it's easy when we're hurt to try to turn somebody else into a monster and you start seeing a wounded inner child that's just flailing in pain. The child who learned a behavioral adaptation in order to protect themselves when they were younger, you really start to understand how people are, right? And so when you look at it real basically, I'm going to use a phrase that's going to be interesting. you right in this world there's only sane and there's insane and I don't mean insane like in the movies right when I'm talking about sane and insane I'm saying sane is when you act from love

when you act from alignment when you act from grounded self-respect when you act from your true place insane is when you act out of fear when you act out of survival when you act out of alignment and you are disconnected from your true self so there is sane and there is insane saying anyone that is actively harming other people in some sort of way, whatever that be, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, stealing, whatever it might be, cheating, lying is operating from disconnection from other people, but especially from their self. They are not in their right mind, literally, which is insanity, right? And so forgiveness, when you look at forgiving people, because I spent a lot of people,

a lot of time talking about other people, but I really need to prep you for what I'm about to say. Forgiveness isn't saying what you did to me is okay. It's not. It is saying, I will no longer let your pain, yours, the pain of their past, poison my peace. So if I have somebody who stole for me and I'm mad about it, maybe it's a friend that I had and I thought they were part of, you know, my friend group and they stole money for me or whatever it might be, I will no longer let your pain of your past, poison my peace, because that person is acting from pain. You know, Mark Twain said, resentment is the acid that corrods its own vessel. When your resentment and anger, if you're holding on to that, it's not hurting anybody else. It's hurting you. It is burning you up from the

inside out. I've never seen somebody who's just full of immense amounts of anger and has great blood work and blood pressure and heart rate and all those things. They're burning themselves from the inside out. Forgiveness, therefore, is not something that you do for another person. It's something you do for yourself so that you can remove yourself from their pain of whatever happened to them, and you can find peace with yourself. It is something that you do for you, not for them. You don't even have to physically go to them and say, I forgive you. It's just, hey, I'm going to release this burden. I'm not going to focus on this anymore. I forgive that person because they were lost. So you're finally letting go of this burden that you've been caring for.

for way too long that you no longer needed to carry in the first place so that you don't let that get in between you and your peace. Because this is going to be another hard phrase for you to really take in. The truth is everyone is doing the best they can with what they've been given. And that might seem like, oh, I don't like that phrase at all. Everybody is. Not just some people, everyone. I challenge myself to play devil's advocate in my head all of the time. And when I have something done to me, and I've had some pretty brutal things happen to me in my childhood and past and in business and all of these different things, I try to put myself into the perspective of the other person. And I think to myself, if I was raised in their home,

with their parents, with their trauma, with their wiring, with every single millions of little teeny tiny events that happened through their entire life, from the moment they were born to the moments that they screwed me over, I would likely probably make the same choices. You would likely make the same choices. This is not an excuse for harmful behavior. This is just a way to mentally see a different perspective and to try to understand how somebody gets themselves to that point. Because understanding leads you to compassion. And compassion is what's going to set you free. when you can have compassion for every single person no matter what is it they do to you, that's what do you become free. If you read the Bible, what does Jesus say? Turn the other cheek.

Right? He doesn't say punch the other person back. He's like, hey, let it go, turn the other cheek. Because that compassion for every single person leads to freedom. So often when I talk to people who have had hard childhoods and resentment towards their parents and I asked them what they went through and they're like, oh, my parents, I hate them because they did this and I hate them because they did this. and I wish my mom would have done that and my mom always acted this way, my dad always did that and my dad was never around, and I asked them what their parents' childhood was like. They usually, actually, I've never heard somebody say anything other than their parents' childhood

was worse than theirs was. Almost every single time someone gets a watered-down version of the parents' childhood. And when you can see that, they realize like their parents did try their best, but they might have gotten trauma from their parents, but it's just like the watered-down version of it compared to what their parents. parents got. And then when you can see it from that perspective, immediately compassion for the parents comes in. And so if you can learn to love your greatest adversary, you will be able to let go of the burdens that you've been carrying for way too long. And so let's get real and raw for just a

second, right? What about the person who fucked you over? What about the person who screwed you over? Like, because that's probably a thing that you're thinking. What they did hurt you and that wasn't okay, you're right. It did hurt. It wasn't okay. But if you let that pain calcify into bitterness, into resentment, into anger, you don't just lose from what they did to you. You lose over and over and over again from the first event. And then every single time you're carrying that burden into every single moment and it's hurting you in your next relationship or it's hurting you in your business or it's hurting you with the relationship with your children. Like lots of people are still carrying pain from 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. So maybe the most of the most of the most of the most of the

most radical act of rebellion against the other person for whatever they did to you is forgiveness. The act of fully letting go of the event so that you can have space in your life to move on. Now the hardest person for you to forgive is you. This is where your deepest peace lives though. The version of you that stayed in the relationship for too long. The version of you who quote unquote knew better. The version of you who snapped and lashed out and yelled at that person or screwed somebody over, the whatever it is that you did for the younger version of you that didn't know any better because you

did the best that you could and so you are not your worst moment you're not the thing that you regret the most you are still worthy of your own love your own acceptance and your own forgiveness if you can forgive everyone in your life and forgive yourself the grand prize is peace if you want to continue to hold on to bitterness and anger and be unforgiving you will honestly never really find true, true peace in your life. And so I want you understand your forgiveness. It's not weakness. It's strength. It doesn't justify the other person's action. It frees you from the story. People hurt others because they're disconnected from themselves. You can choose peace no matter what, even when other people choose pain. And then after you forgive other people,

realize that forgiving yourself is the ultimate act of self-love. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, you would love to come to my three-day event here in Austin, Texas. Once again, we've already sold over 100 ticks in the first couple days. So if you're ready to stop holding yourself back and you want to unlearn your fears, your limiting beliefs, your bad habits, your identities that are capping the success in all areas of your life. Go to Freedom Live.26.com before Early Bird Pricing goes away. Once again, Freedom Live 2026.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way. Leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.