The Power of Forgiveness, Part II: The Healing Power of Forgiving Ourselves

Welcome to part two of our conversation about forgiveness. As we shared in our last episode, we noted a distinct and organic trend emerge through some of our previous topics.

Whether we were talking about good ego vs. bad ego, cultivating relationships in our lives, or wrestling with fear, George and I noticed some element of forgiveness was required to move through these opportunities and challenges to truly create a pathway toward living beyond your default.

⚡ Go Deeper: What It Means to Forgive Others (+ Why It Matters)

In the first part of our conversation on forgiveness, we started with the external expression of forgiveness. More specifically, we focused exclusively on what it means to forgive others. We explored what forgiving others can (and should) look like, what it doesn't look like, and what benefits we reap as a result of leaning more into a mindset that embraces forgiveness.

Of course, our ability to forgive others is only one part of the forgiveness equation. Much like other "big life concepts" such as love and happiness, our ability to express and bestow forgiveness to others begins with our ability to find forgiveness and self-compassion within.

Today, for the second part of this conversation, we are turning inward to reflect on the importance of forgiving ourselves, as well as what it looks like in practice, and how it helps us propel forward.

QUESTIONS WE EXPLORE

• When did George first realize forgiving himself was part of the package deal, so to speak, when it comes to living a life beyond your default?
• Why do so many people struggle to forgive themselves?
• What about those moments where we may feel forgiving ourselves isn't enough – we also need the ability to atone or perhaps desire the forgiveness of others?
• How does our ability to forgive ourselves correlate to our conversation regarding the language we use to talk to ourselves about ourselves? And why does recognizing this connection matter?
• What are some of the benefits we've experienced as we've learned to be more forgiving with ourselves? And what does the science say?
• How can we tell the difference between moments when forgiving ourselves is required and when it's not because we've actually done nothing wrong?
• What does forgiving ourselves look like in practice?
• What advice does George have to those who are truly struggling to find a way to forgive themselves, perhaps because they feel they are beyond redemption?

Creators and Guests

Host

George B. Thomas

A catalyst for growth!

Host

Liz Moorehead

Content therapist and speaker.

What is Beyond Your Default?

What Is Beyond Your Default? "Everyone keeps telling me I should be happy, but I'm not." “I feel stuck.” “I have a calling, but where do I start?"

Right now, you have a choice. You can continue living within your default norms, playing it safe, clocking in and out every day, and scraping by to achieve what's supposed to make you happy hopefully. Or you can choose to accept the challenge of living beyond your default. Stop wishing to live your "best life” and start living your best life. Success leaves clues. And they're waiting for you to discover them.

George B. Thomas: 00:03

Only me being able to make the decision to drop out of high school, which listen if there's a way not to start your life for me like that was a way that man dude why would you do that? Why are you that stupid? Like, why would you let somebody else impact your life? Now what are you gonna do? Like, you can't even read or write.

George B. Thomas: 00:25

Like, your grammar sucks. Like, you're bad at math. I'm purposely running through narratives that would, like, go through my brain for years years years. And I was like, I can't live in this, like, mental waste dump. And so I've started to realize, like, to move forward, to gain traction, to become unstuck in this just toxic waste dump of mental bullcrap.

George B. Thomas: 00:56

Like, how do I do this? Right? How how do I go? Where do I go? No.

George B. Thomas: 01:01

No. Actually, I was a pastor of a Nazarene church. He was the pastor of my grandparents' church. Had a conversation with me about forgiveness, forgiving the math teacher, but also forgiving myself for the actions. Because here's the very interesting thing.

George B. Thomas: 01:18

My math teacher hurt me once. I continue to hurt myself over and over and over again.

Liz Moorehead: 01:28

Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. My name is Liz Morehead. And as always, I'm joined by George b Thomas. How are you this morning?

George B. Thomas: 01:35

I am doing really good. I'm excited, Liz, to see where this conversation goes because while I have done what we're talking about, I don't know if I've ever unpacked that I've done what we're talking about.

Liz Moorehead: 01:51

And you know what's interesting for me about this is that this is something I have actually prioritized as one of the top things in my psychological sphere that I've been working on this year is the forgiveness of the self. Let's go ahead and loop the listeners in. Right. So this is part 2 of our conversation about forgiveness. If you missed last week, I would encourage you to go back and listen to it, but you certainly don't need to listen to it to start with this one.

Liz Moorehead: 02:21

But as we shared in our last episode, we noted a distinct and organic trend emerging through some of our previous topics. And it didn't matter if we were talking about good ego versus bad ego or cultivating relationships in our lives or wrestling with fear. You and I noticed that there was some element of forgiveness that was required to move through either these opportunities or challenges to truly create that pathway forward in terms of living beyond your default. Now in that first part of our conversation on forgiveness, we started with the external expression. Right?

Liz Moorehead: 02:56

Like, what it means to forgive others. And what does it look like? What doesn't it look like? Why it's so important? What are the benefits we reap?

Liz Moorehead: 03:04

And so on and so forth. But today, for the second part of the conversation, we're turning this conversation inward to reflect on the importance of forgiving ourselves as well as what it looks like in practice and how it helps us propel forward. So, yeah, this is something where I am very interested in this conversation, not only on behalf of our listeners, because like I said, forgiveness is incredibly important, but this is also something I'm working on as well. And I think it's something we all have to work on to some degree. George, let me start our conversation today with a question.

Liz Moorehead: 03:40

When did you first realize forgiving yourself was part of the package deal, so to speak, when it comes to living a life beyond your default?

George B. Thomas: 03:50

First of all, Liz, let me just say that I also believe that I'm probably gonna be teaching myself today. One of the fascinating things about this podcast is things will come out of my brain, and I'll have to relisten or think about what I just said. Now to your question, I realized it at a very young age, but there's a difference between realizing something and implementing something. Okay? So when I say young age, I'm talking, like, 20.

George B. Thomas: 04:19

Right? Because, unfortunately, I had a very interesting beginning of my life. And as I've told a couple times on this podcast, the story of my math teacher and telling me I would never amount to anything and me, the only me being able to make the decision to drop out of high school, which listen, if there's a way not to start your life for me, like, that was a way that man, dude, why would you do that? Why are you that stupid? Why would you let somebody else impact your life?

George B. Thomas: 04:50

Now, what are you gonna do? Like, you can't even read or write. Like your grammar sucks. Like, you're bad at math. I'm purposely running through narratives that would go through my brain for years years years.

George B. Thomas: 05:04

And I was like, I can't live in this mental waste dump. And so I started to realize, like, to move forward, to gain traction, to become unstuck in this just toxic waste dump of mental bullcrap. Like, how do I do this? Right? How how do I go?

George B. Thomas: 05:28

Where do I go? And I actually was a pastor of a Nazarene church. He was the pastor of my grandparents' church. Had a conversation with me about forgiveness, forgiving the math teacher, but also forgiving myself I like, a like, a lot of what we're gonna talk about is gonna be predicated on what I just said of, like, when you don't forgive yourself and you rerun the narrative, you are punching yourself in the face or the gut repeatedly even though the other person and by the way, sometimes there isn't another person in the scenario. In my case, there was another person, and there has typically been, but sometimes I just do bad stuff to my like, just try to make bad decisions.

George B. Thomas: 06:26

I don't know if you humans out there make bad decisions. Sometimes I do this. But, like, the thing is and I again, going back to your question is the realization of and trying to do and doing the best that I could along the way, but I still don't know if I'm a master at what we're talking about. I think I've gotten really good at it. I think I've shortened the length of time it takes me.

George B. Thomas: 06:52

But, again, with practice comes, you know, greatness. High school dropout. I've been through a divorce. Like, I've just made a lot of bad decisions. I'd put myself in places where I don't belong.

George B. Thomas: 07:04

And one of the capsulating moments, actually, if you think what I was talking about, like, 18, 19, 20, the education of understanding that you have to forgive yourself to about a year and 4 months ago. At this point, when you, Liz, asked me, what does it look like if you show up as a whole as human? That was kind of an unlock moment for me of, like, I know these things. I've tried to achieve these things, but you know what? It's just time in my life to actually do this thing fully, to forgive myself fully, to accept who I was and who I am and who I will be in the future.

George B. Thomas: 07:45

But I can only be who I will be in the future if I'm not weighted down, if I'm not stuck in that toxic waste dump. And last week, by the way, the the peanut butter of this jelly episode. Last week, I talked about the 1% that can turn into a flame and just combust when you don't forgive others. I feel like I need to run the narrative for people's brain is if you don't clean up 100% of the toxic waste dump, it will still drip through and corrode other portions of your brain that you're not paying attention to.

Liz Moorehead: 08:21

You know, what I find fascinating about what you're saying here, it aligns with, quite frankly, the parallel I drew while I was helping us prepare for this episode and doing the research. I noticed that there was a direct correlation between one's ability to forgive oneself and our ability to speak well to ourselves about ourselves. Now for those of you who have been listening, we've done a previous episode on this on the importance of the language we use to talk to ourselves about ourselves because our thoughts and the way we talk to ourselves about ourselves conditions us to perceive reality in a certain way. But there was this particular quote that jumped out at me that I wish I could remember where I found it. I was scrolling on Instagram and I just happened to see it and I just really just hit me in the face.

Liz Moorehead: 09:10

You will always be limited by the story you tell yourself about who you are and what your identity is. And I've noticed in times of my life where I have really struggled to forgive myself, the story I then tell myself about myself is drastically colored in a very, very negative light. So what will happen is that you will create artificial limitations in your life about who you are, what you're capable of, and more importantly, what you're deserving of based on whether or not you could just look at yourself in the mirror and be like, hey. Yeah. I kinda screwed that up.

Liz Moorehead: 09:48

I kind of screwed that up. And I have to be able to move through that.

George B. Thomas: 09:52

Well, and I think part of that, Liz, piggybacks on the fact you're doing that based off of artificial futures that you've put inside of your brain. Meaning, if I didn't do that thing, I could be here. If I didn't do that thing, I could be over here. And one thing that I know as humans, the grass is always greener on the other side. And so instead of living your reality or living your truth, being able to fantasize about these false futures that you could have had is one of the worst things that you can do because you can't go back.

George B. Thomas: 10:27

And I love that you brought up quotes because, by the way, I just have to say, I love Oprah for so many different reasons. Like, a couple years ago, she was at inbound, and she was one of the guest speakers, and I was, like, down for everything that she had to say. I love her story. I love her podcast. She does a really interesting podcast that we can share a link to in the show notes, but her quote that around this topic that we're having today, she says, forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.

George B. Thomas: 10:59

It's accepting the past for what it was and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward. And when I think about that, and we're we're literally on a podcast called beyond your default, which if was we translated it as moving past, moving forward, like getting to a place, and this idea of just giving up on hope that the past could have been any different. It just is what it is, is the unlock to get you to where you actually need to go. And instead of fantasizing about a false future, it's being able to live fully in the one that you create.

Liz Moorehead: 11:38

Well, this segues nicely into the part of the conversation I wanted to have right now, which is what are some of the different ways in which people struggle to forgive themselves? So you've spoken a bit here about, you know, these false aspirational futures that we feel are now outside of our reach. What are some other reasons do you think that people struggle to forgive themselves?

George B. Thomas: 12:00

There's gonna be people that are gonna love what I'm about to say, and there are gonna be people who hate what I'm about to say. And what I have figured out over time, myself and others around me, is that we are really bad at understanding how wonderfully made we are, how exactly we are what we're supposed to be, how we have been designed for a purpose, how we are spectacular and beautiful, and we don't use those words towards ourself very often. And it's funny because there's this layer of me that because of so many years trying to be humble, go back and listen to the episode, that I would not speak of myself this way. And I see that other people don't really say I am who I am, and that's good enough. That's actually exactly what I'm supposed to be.

George B. Thomas: 13:03

And so we don't necessarily forgive ourselves because we don't think as high of ourselves as we should. It's okay in my mind that we put ourself on a little bit of a pedestal. Now not narcissistic, not egotistical, but listen. We wake up every morning, and we have the ability to be or do anything that we wanna be. The only thing that is limiting us is ourselves, and what's fun is this conversation that we're having, the unforgiveness of historical things or the unforgiveness last week of other people is one of the major or 2 major hurdles that we put in our way.

George B. Thomas: 13:49

And so preparation for this episode, you sent a couple articles. 1, I was like, ugh, this is like death to read through. I'm quickly realizing I would much rather watch some YouTube videos or some, like, TED Talks then get into, like, the psychological, journal blah blah blah, whatever it is. Now don't get me wrong. I pulled some stuff out of there, and there's some stuff that I was like, oh, that's that's a very good talking point.

George B. Thomas: 14:20

But you sent this other article, and I where I sit was like, oh, man. I wanna read this every day. I should make a recording of this so people can play it, so they can listen to it. And then all of a sudden, my brain I flipped a switch, and I was like, oh my god. This would actually be difficult for old George to do.

George B. Thomas: 14:44

This would be difficult for old George to hear. Old George wouldn't believe these things, and and what it is is Liz sent this article on it. There's a lot of good resources, by the way. We'll put it in the shots. It has 20 self forgiveness affirmations.

George B. Thomas: 14:59

I'm gonna read some of these. And when I read some of these, what I want you to do, well, first of all and I'm not gonna get all woo hoo here, but I as I'm reading this, as you listen to this podcast episode, I want you to close your eyes. I want you to pay attention to your body. And what I want you to pay attention to your body is I want you to pay attention to the comfort and the way that you start to breathe either slower or if you get uncomfortable when you hear these things, and you're applying these things that I'm reading to yourself as you're hearing them.

Liz Moorehead: 15:32

I think it might be beneficial for our listeners. I'm gonna do that, and then I'll report at the end how I'm feeling.

George B. Thomas: 15:38

Yes. Yeah. I think that's good. So, listeners, you're gonna do this too. Close your eyes and just take a deep breath.

George B. Thomas: 15:44

You can think about yourself, think about your body, inhale, exhale, pay attention to your chest, like expanding and then contracting, and just take a couple breaths. And then I want you to think about if you woke up every morning and you said to yourself, I am worthy of forgiveness. I am human, and sometimes I make mistakes. I can learn from my mistakes. I forgive myself for what I did.

George B. Thomas: 16:18

No one is defined by one mistake or one incident. I can let go of feelings of guilt and shame. I can forgive myself as I would forgive others. I deserve to treat myself with compassion and kindness. I love, forgive, and accept myself with all of my imperfections.

George B. Thomas: 16:45

I am worthy of others' love and acceptance just as I am. By accepting responsibility for what happened, I can achieve personal growth. Now I'm gonna pause there, and when you're ready, go ahead and open your eyes. But that was only 11 of the 20. And what I want you to honestly do, and Liz, I'm going to get your response here in a minute, is, first of all, listeners, if you would like something created around all 20 and a little bit of music and whatever that you could listen to on a daily basis, You just need to let me know.

George B. Thomas: 17:21

I'll create that thing. But I need you to be honest with yourself and be like, how did that make me feel? So, Liz, when you were listening to that, unpack where your brain was going.

Liz Moorehead: 17:32

One of the things that I have been working on, and we talked about this in previous episodes, is understanding what feelings are when they manifest in specific parts of your body. I think we talked about this during the fear episode. I literally was a 40 year old woman who had to be shown a chart about what it means when you feel feelings in certain parts of your body. So I can now tell you my first immediate reaction, and I am someone, by the way, who has a daily meditation practice. I spend a lot of time doing breath work.

Liz Moorehead: 17:59

I spend a lot of time doing these things. I immediately felt anxiety. I felt immediate anxiety starting to gather in my chest. I could feel the immediate resistance of this is okay for others, and this is not okay for me. And I'll be brutally honest.

Liz Moorehead: 18:18

You know, when I think about, you know, the answer to my own question of why do people struggle to forgive themselves, it goes back to a conversation you and I have had a thousand times, which is what do you do when you run into old versions of yourselves? The thing is is that anytime we make a mistake, anytime we have some sort of failure in our lives, right, that is a moment for us to grow, to move through, but sometimes we're going to run into the consequences of our own actions over and over and over again, and we have to meet that old version of ourselves again. And that's really hard sometimes to deal with depending on what it is. Toward the end of it, it was something where I allowed myself to just observe the feelings I was having. You know, I can feel the feelings of anxiety in my chest, but I'm going to stick with this.

Liz Moorehead: 19:07

And I felt a lot better toward the end. But I think what it really illuminated for me is that I think sometimes we think we are more self compassionate than we actually are, and that we are intensely damaging to ourselves just because we are a human who happened to make a mistake. Maybe once, maybe twice, maybe thrice. Who knows? Sometimes it takes us all a while to figure out, hey.

Liz Moorehead: 19:32

The hot stove is hot. Maybe we shouldn't keep touching it. Some of us learn the hard way. You know what I mean? But that's what arose for me, and I was very surprised by it and how immediate it was.

George B. Thomas: 19:43

It's interesting because, for me, I knew that I started to like, because I was down for this. But when I connected my old self to this, I got to this point of, like, why did because, by the way, I got very anxious too when I put my old hat on versus, like, who I am now. And then what's interesting is I broke it down to, like, why did my brain do that? And there's something about I'm worthy of. I forgive myself for.

George B. Thomas: 20:11

I deserve to those narratives that are being put in your brain. It's like, and then it gets to this line. I love, forgive, and accept myself with all of my imperfections. We try to stay so clean and so neat and so tidy on the outside because then it's like this perfect fortress of a human that everybody's like, oh, they have their shit together. Yet inside, it's this, like, messy, toxic.

George B. Thomas: 20:48

We spend so much time on the exterior, and we need to spend so much more time on the interior of ourselves and our brain in in this this topic that we're having today.

Liz Moorehead: 21:00

Well, think about some of the labels that you were using earlier today about yourself. And I'm gonna use these examples, George, not because I think you're holding on to negative connotations of them, but more to illustrate a point. I think when we say things like, you know, for example, my version is, you know, I'm not a high school dropout, but I'm a college dropout. Right? I've talked about this quite a bit.

Liz Moorehead: 21:20

You know, I spent a lot of my life just feeling like a perpetual disappointment, like I'm just never living up to the expectations of people around me. And so when you carry these stories with you and this is what I was saying earlier, right, about the importance of the language we use to talk about ourselves. And if we're not forgiving ourselves for things, sometimes it's not even forgiveness. Have you ever noticed that we feel the need to forgive ourselves for things where if you talk to another person, they're just like, there's nothing to forgive. You were a human who woke up that day and had a human experience.

Liz Moorehead: 21:48

Right?

George B. Thomas: 21:48

Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: 21:48

But, like, if you sit there and say, well, I'm a college dropout. I perpetually disappointed both of my parents. I'm twice divorced. You know, why do something soul crushing once when you can do it twice for twice the price? Right?

Liz Moorehead: 22:00

You know? And it's one of those things where it's like, well, how do you paint yourself or believe yourself to be deserving of things when you feel like you're perpetually falling on your face or you're using labels that falling on your face or you're using labels that negatively impact you and how you talk about yourself.

George B. Thomas: 22:18

Yeah. It's so crazy, and it Liz, it's funny because you're making me think about something that, again, historically, that I did. God knew I needed 2 sets of parents. One set was not gonna be enough for this guy. So I have a mom and a dad and a dad and a mom, and I really don't like using the word steps anywhere, like stepmom, stepdad.

George B. Thomas: 22:40

I just no. I have 2 sets of parent. And it's funny because, Liz, there was a long time where each set would be like, man, we're proud of you. We're proud of all of you boys. Like, you boys are doing great.

George B. Thomas: 22:50

I have all brothers, no sisters. And my response was, like, external was thanks. Internal was literally like, good talk, bro. Thanks. Like, I couldn't accept the fact that they were proud of who I was or who I was becoming because I was like, well, they're supposed to say that.

George B. Thomas: 23:09

But then I realized, no. Actually, they're not. Like, the older I got and the more I looked at people around me, I was like, oh, there's probably some parents that may not say that because they're just butthole parents or because the kids are just butthole kids. Right? Like, it's there's, like, both sides of that story.

George B. Thomas: 23:26

But it's funny because now, you know, I hear them say that. And, again, it comes back to this moving yourself from being stuck, living a life beyond your default. But now when I hear my parents say that or anybody say that, like, I'm very accepting of those words. And I think it has to do with the work that has been forgiving myself for all of the bad decisions daily. Like, that's the thing I want everybody to realize is, like, I make bad decisions daily, and in the moment, I'll forgive myself for the bad decision, learn the life lesson from it.

George B. Thomas: 24:03

And one of the things I want people to take away, Liz, from this conversation or ask themselves, are you enabling in your life true forgiveness or fake forgiveness? And this would be towards you or towards others. This could pair nicely with last week's episode because here's the thing. And this is a a video, a TED talk I was watching, and it's a slide in the presentation, but I wanna bring it forth in this conversation. Because you can say, oh, I forgive them or I forgive myself.

George B. Thomas: 24:33

But if it happens to be temporary, like, then next week, all of a sudden, you're beating yourself over the head again. It's not forgiveness. If it's conditional, if I don't ever do it again, if they don't ever do it, that's not forgiveness. If, like, past is ongoing, motivated by fear or anger, is anywhere in that conversation fake forgiveness, not really doing the thing that you need your brain to do for it to be forgiveness. Now true forgiveness, if we think about this, it's permanent.

George B. Thomas: 25:01

It's unconditional. Your state or you state the past is over. It inspired or it was inspired by love, and it does take time to reach this true level of forgiveness. And, again, I love Oprah because on this slide, there's a quote from her that says, true forgiveness is when you can say thank you for that experience. And, Liz, I call back to the whole thing that I said about my math teacher.

George B. Thomas: 25:31

For years years, I wanted to punch him in the face, then I wanted to go back and say thank you. I don't wanna punch myself in the face anymore, by the way.

Liz Moorehead: 25:41

Personally, I like you in one piece just from a front capacity, but also, you know, work capacity. That'd be great. Let's just keep you whole and unpunched. Yes. What I'd love to hear from you, though, is what are some of the benefits that you've experienced personally in terms of when you started learning to be more forgiving of yourself, what did you see happen?

Liz Moorehead: 26:05

Because you referenced it earlier. Sometimes they give you fun, happy things to consume when for in preparation for this episode. And then in other times, you're just gonna get a big waterfall of scientific research because nobody teaches scientists content marketing principles. They're just not gonna get on camera. You're getting a white paper abstract and a lot of stuff.

Liz Moorehead: 26:25

The research that we looked through, and I'll link this in the show notes, it's from National Institutes of Health, is that it shows obviously that when there are high levels of self forgiveness in a person, it's linked with high levels of self esteem, low neuroticism, low levels of anxiety, depression, da da da da da. Basically, the kinder you are to yourself, the easier it is to release yourself from the mental prison of your brain. But I would be curious to hear from you as you've gone through this journey, as you've gone through this process of forgiving yourself, integrating all aspects of yourself, when you do this work inward, what are the benefits you see around you?

George B. Thomas: 27:07

Yeah. And there's a couple things that come to mind. Right? That's just how my brain works. The first thing I wanna share is imagine and I'll also, I'm getting visions of Tony Stark.

George B. Thomas: 27:19

Right? So, like, think about Iron Man and Tony Stark about how he has kind of that generator, that power plant in his his chest. Right? In any scene you see by the way, if you don't watch Marvel and you don't know who Iron Man is, go watch it. The story will make a whole lot more sense, but you always see this, like, glowing from his chest.

George B. Thomas: 27:40

Liz, when we have unforgiveness in our life, especially against ourselves, that lens is cloudy and dirty and there's stuff in the way. And as I would kind of clean up my ish, you know, all the stuff that I wasn't forgiving myself, what I realized is it was almost like I was cleaning that lens. And one of the things that I have realized that we as humans is we're supposed to shine our light, who we are. We're supposed to give it to the world. We are a gift.

George B. Thomas: 28:12

We are a blessing. It's hard to be that gift. It's hard to be that blessing. It's hard to shine that light if your lens is dirty. And so this idea of doing the internal work of cleaning the lens, of letting the light shine and being able to be the best of you for those who need you to be just exactly who you are in their life to help move them to that next place.

George B. Thomas: 28:35

So that's one thing that comes to mind is, like, it makes it very easy to do that. Now here's what's fun is the other thing that came to my mind when you're asked this question is how much when I truly did unlock it, it gave me what I would call a giggle moment. Meaning, I literally kinda giggled when I made this statement that historically I never would have probably made. And I put this out on social, and I talked about this idea of being a Jesus loving, cigar smoking, whiskey sipping, fast and furious, Tupac listening, Chris Tomlin, like, human. And that made me giggle because I was able to put all of these things that the world and me and my own brain historically would tell me that they had to be in these different compartments and only show up for these different people at these different times, but that's not how I was made.

George B. Thomas: 29:33

They were all in there. They were all me, and being able to show the world, like, this is really me and not care if I got judged and not care if I got judged. Now I'm gonna say that

Liz Moorehead: 29:52

for a 3rd time.

George B. Thomas: 29:54

I'm gonna say that for

Liz Moorehead: 29:55

a push back on that so far. You can't say it a 3rd time.

George B. Thomas: 29:59

But here's the thing, and not care if I got judged. Now I'm gonna finish the sentence because everybody's brain went to the external world judging me for the things that I put out. What I meant is that I would not judge myself for the things that I had become or who I was.

Liz Moorehead: 30:20

I feel like that's step 1. And and this is where I'm about to say something where I know after I hop off this episode, I'd be like, now, Liz, you know you should take your own advice. But here's where I get really hung up on the language piece of it. Because even if we're sitting here saying, like, and we're not gonna judge ourselves. We're not gonna judge ourselves.

Liz Moorehead: 30:38

Yes. Step 1. The step 2 to that is and all of those things are worthy of celebrating. Like, you have to flip that switch where it's not just teaching yourself to not judge yourself because I think sometimes what can happen is that if we program our brains to think that way, it's like, I'm gonna talk myself out of judging myself that other people will judge me for. No.

Liz Moorehead: 31:02

It's also about standing behind yourself and saying all of these seemingly contradictory things actually, when you blend them together, are what makes me unique. It's what makes me someone worthy of celebrating. And I think this is something where people really forget, like, we're all little weirdos. We're all little weirdos who love our little weirdo things. Like, my version of it is, like, I will go hard on, like, crazy deep cut classical music and opera debates and fast and furious debates and art and all of these different things.

Liz Moorehead: 31:37

Like, we all have these unique melting pot blends of perspectives and loves and passions and, like, all of these different things that make us uniquely human. But I think sometimes, especially given the society that we live in right now, think about what people are coached on if you ever wanna succeed on TikTok. You have to niche down. You have to be a very specific version of you. You can only talk about one thing.

Liz Moorehead: 32:08

We're being conditioned to be these very one dimensional. I know. We're conditioned to be these palatable versions of ourselves, whether that's from, you know and this isn't obviously throwing this out there at all parents, but, you know, the way I was raised, success had to look a very specific kind of way. Success was very narrowly defined. And it took me decades of deprogramming to figure out I actually had nothing to forgive myself for.

Liz Moorehead: 32:42

One of the things I struggled with is that when I was 14, I was sent from living with my mom to living with my dad. She suffered a mental health crisis. The decision was made that for my welfare, it was best for me to go live with my father. My mother was an incredibly beautiful and intelligent woman who I think at some point saw something in the mirror about herself that she did not like and decided she could never look at that again. So when she and I reconnected later in life, one of the things that she said was she could never understand why I had to step away and live with my dad, which first of all, was not my choice.

Liz Moorehead: 33:27

Number 1, like, I didn't have a say in that. That was the state of Virginia said this is where she has to go. And then the other piece of that was I carried a lot of guilt around as a

George B. Thomas: 33:37

14 year old. Why was I not more

Liz Moorehead: 33:38

understanding about complex teen year old. Why was I not more understanding about complex mental health issues that I actually had no business understanding? So I bring these things up because I think sometimes there's not necessarily surface level stuff, but I think sometimes we have to be very honest with ourselves that sometimes the sources of information that feed us this narrative of there's something to forgive are sometimes not accurate. Sometimes they are incredibly flawed. Sometimes they are coming from people who are, for better or for worse, without casting aspersions or judgments upon their character, they are not able to forgive themselves, so they are passing those savings on to you.

Liz Moorehead: 34:22

But I spent decades feeling like a terrible daughter, feeling like I was doing the wrong thing there. And now in hindsight, like, no, no, that is a completely inappropriate thing to ask a 14 year old girl to mentally process and handle. And it also is not taking any accountability for what actually happened. I know that was a a big diverging tangent there, but I think it's important to note that sometimes these weird narratives around what we think we actually need to forgive ourselves for are completely nonexistent.

George B. Thomas: 34:54

I actually love that you shared that. First of all, I know that there's gonna be people out there that are gonna hear it and be like, oh, I I needed that in my life. And Liz, I would agree with you. Some things that we're labeling, things we need to forgive ourselves for might not be that. But the thing that came screaming to the front of my brain as you were kind of telling that story is it might not always be truly forgiveness, but it is always going to be truly a lesson that can be learned.

George B. Thomas: 35:24

So there were multiple lessons that Liz had to learn through that journey. One of the lessons was, oh, I really don't have to forgive myself, which, by the way, is great when you realize that. It's almost like one minute you feel a certain way, you have that realization, and then all of a sudden you feel like somebody injected you with helium, and you're, like, way lighter and kind of floating a little bit because you're like, oh, wow. And that's the thing too that I would say about just lessons learned, but forgiveness as well as, like, it doesn't have to be difficult. Once you can get to the place where you can do the thing, at this point for me, it's almost like, oh, shoot.

George B. Thomas: 36:06

Look. I left the light off. I need to turn the light on. I need to flip the switch. Now this is after years of working on this, but now it's as easy as diagnosing a thing and then running it through my mental process.

George B. Thomas: 36:22

Now my mental process is hard to explain, but, again, going back to the research that you sent over, one of the things that I was like, oh, I need to make sure we unpack this in the episode is that there's this one section where they talk about the 4 r's of self forgiveness, and this at least gives the listeners a framework to be able to pay attention to after this episode because here was my biggest fear, by the way. My biggest fear of doing this episode is that you get to the end of the episode, and as a listener, you go, oh, man. I got a lot of ish I gotta forgive myself for. Like, we're kind of dredging up, like, the past, and all of a sudden, you're thinking things, and we're asking you to, like, think about being worthy and all of this stuff, and it can get messy quick. And so I'm like, man, they need some type of rubrics or matrix that they can put this through.

George B. Thomas: 37:12

And so this article talks about the 4 r's of self forgiveness, which, by the way, when you unlock self forgiveness, you unlock self belief, you unlock self love, and then you realize you as self can do anything that you want in the world. Anyway, the 4 R's talks about responsibility. So responsibility, the person seeking forgiveness takes responsibility and does not lay blame elsewhere. 2nd R talks about remorse. So this suggests that the individual should work through difficult emotions like shame to more offense specific emotions like guilt, which are more likely to motivate people to make reparations.

George B. Thomas: 37:48

So, again, this is responsibility, remorse, restoration. The next step is to actively try to make things right, repair relationships, and reaffirm any moral values that were broken. By the way, when you use the word relationship, if your mind immediately went to this sounds like we're talking external, no. Like, you have an internal relationship with yourself. There is that inner critic.

George B. Thomas: 38:13

There is that inner brain. There is, without being weird, versions of you that you're, like, trying to be and battling again, but repair that relationship internally. Responsibility, remorse, restoration, and then this is the one that I love. I love them all, but renewal. Renewal.

George B. Thomas: 38:31

This is a place of self forgiveness, renewed self compassion, and self respect. Through this process, the individual achieves moral growth, self forgiveness, self compassion, self respect. I mean, that's where I would want people to get to. You truly can love yourself to the layer or levels that you need to when you get all of this crap out of the way.

Liz Moorehead: 39:01

You know, it's interesting too. One of the steps that you mentioned in there obviously is remorse, repairing, making things right with people who you potentially may have harmed. I think one of the challenges that, you know I'll be honest. I've alluded to this over the past 18 months or so have probably been some of the most challenging. I woke up one day, looked around and realized out of fear, I had built an entire life that was only ever going to make me feel alone, miserable, and afraid.

Liz Moorehead: 39:34

Then I had to spend a lot of time reckoning with that. I had to spend a lot of time cleaning up the messes of old Liz's. I was like, man, she made a lot of choices. And also along the way, some people got hurt. And that was something I really had to reckon with because one of the challenges I've had in the past, and I'm sure we've all had moments like this in our lives, is that sometimes when we know we have done something wrong and we attempt to right the wrong, we give a genuine apology, some people are not always gonna accept it.

Liz Moorehead: 40:07

Some people are just like, it was the bridge too far. And maybe at some point, it'll get better, but that can't be the reason you stall out on forgiving yourself. There has to be this both end mentality of I am not asking for forgiveness with the expectation that I will get it. I am simply apologizing because let's acknowledge what happened. This is the apology that you deserve, and you have to allow the people outside of yourself to have their own experiences with that experience.

Liz Moorehead: 40:40

The reason why they may not be forgiving you may have nothing to do with you, or it may just be one of those things where, like, hey. Sometimes we fuck up. Sometimes we fuck up big time. But that can't be the reason that you suddenly decide, well, if they are unwilling to forgive me, then I cannot forgive myself.

George B. Thomas: 41:01

Yes.

Liz Moorehead: 41:02

And that's where I used to get hung up, you know, to go back a bit into my past. I think there are the 2 types of things where you don't get forgiven or get the forgiveness that you're looking for. In some cases, it's what I alluded to. Like, hey, sometimes it's just gonna be this thing where, like, that was the straw that broke the camel's back or for them that was just too big of a thing or it's just gonna need some time to heal. But in other cases, the reason why you're never gonna get it is because they're wildly unrealistic expectations.

Liz Moorehead: 41:33

My mother was never gonna forgive 14 year old Liz for not, quote, cutting her slack. And I had to go through this whole thing of understanding. This is where the script finally got flipped. Finally, one day, I had a breakthrough of I need to stop seeking forgiveness from her and realize I need to forgive her for this blind spot and move on. It is a very interesting thing that I think people get stuck on if there's another person involved and I'm not getting the forgiveness, the absolution, the, hey.

Liz Moorehead: 42:03

It's okay, buddy. We'll get through this. Like, they'll stall. They'll get stuck. Because if the other person can't do it, am I deserving?

Liz Moorehead: 42:12

I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

George B. Thomas: 42:14

So yes. Yes. To all of that. My brain kept going back to and, again, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, we're talking about these things like they're 2 totally different things almost, but they're so

Liz Moorehead: 42:27

Very interconnected.

George B. Thomas: 42:28

Very entwined. Like, for you to even ask for forgiveness of others, you probably have had to do a little bit of work to forgive yourself for making the bad decision or being part of the bad scenario that ran in. And after you ask for forgiveness, even if they don't give it to you from their mouth verbally, you have done your action, which allows you to then go back in word towards yourself and forgive yourself even more for that thing because you did what you could do, did what you needed to do In your right list, sometimes it takes time. Right? Time heals all wounds, they say.

George B. Thomas: 43:05

I don't know who they are, but that's what they say. I don't know if I believe that. But, anyway They

Liz Moorehead: 43:10

is very smart.

George B. Thomas: 43:11

They is very They they is very smart. But my my point is these are all tied in so tightly, and so I want people to realize that last week, one of the things we talked about is asking for forgiveness of others isn't necessarily for them. Does it help them? Yes. But it is literally helping you.

George B. Thomas: 43:32

Like, it's unlocking the things that need to unlock in you when you're asking for forgiveness or even forgiving others. It's like unlocking you and the kind of, like, if I were to take something that I said last week and bring it into this episode, it's like forgiving others and forgiving yourself and asking for forgiveness. These three pieces of this pie, I talked about that vial of poison that you're willing to drink, and it only affects you. It doesn't affect the other person. It's like paying attention to all three of those layers is like we're just gonna remove all poison off the table so that everybody can live a better life and not worry about, like, dying to some internal toxic waste dump that then becomes created inside their body, which, by the way, like we talked about last week, in the article that Liz sent over, this idea of unforgiveness, high heart rate, blood pressure, like, all of that, There are physical things that happen based on the internals that you allow to live inside of your body.

George B. Thomas: 44:36

And so it's just important for so many reasons.

Liz Moorehead: 44:40

One of the things that actually also has been very helpful for me, George, is that when I am in that cycle of learning to forgive myself for something that has occurred, that also requires me to speak to somebody else. I've stopped asking for forgiveness. I'm stopped going into those conversations where the goal is to get them to give me the outcome that I need to satisfy myself. And instead, it's just literally like, hey. You just are owed the apology.

Liz Moorehead: 45:09

Like, I've had that conversation with you where it's like, hey. Let's square this up. This was not good. I apologize for it, and let them have their own experience. Because I think when you go into those conversations and particularly if you're looking to find a way to forgive yourself or absolve yourself, if you're going to somebody else and there is some sort of wrong that you perceive that you have inflicted upon them or they feel that, the goal shouldn't be to get forgiveness.

Liz Moorehead: 45:38

The goal should just be to what you said in that list of things. When we talk about what is forgiving oneself actually look like in practice, it's more about ownership and accountability, not actually getting the absolution and forgiveness from somebody. It's just going in and saying, like, hey. I own the thing that I did wrong. That's not cool.

Liz Moorehead: 46:00

You deserve to hear that, and I'm sorry. Now how they react to that is entirely up to them, and they are allowed to have their reaction. And you shouldn't be pressuring them into that kind of thing.

George B. Thomas: 46:13

Yeah. I think, first of all, I love that so much, and it's funny because you definitely made my brain, like, pause there as you were talking. Because I think if you go into these conversations with yourself internally and with others externally based on ownership and responsibility versus based on goals and expectations. The first one will actually probably give you more of the results that you need, not the results that you want, but the results that you need versus if you come at it the other way with goals and expectations, you're probably layering an extra layer of ish on top of the already ish pile. I'm just gonna throw that out there.

George B. Thomas: 46:57

There's not a reason or a place for goals and expectations in the conversation of self forgiveness or forgiveness of others or any of this. Like, it's not the point. It's funny because, if I tie back into this, there's one other thing I wanted to make sure, Liz, that I brought up during this. And and, again, we'll share the resources. I guess I'm gonna be doing a reading also as as an additional resource at some point.

George B. Thomas: 47:24

I don't even know who Carl Jung is, by the way, but Carl Jung is a very smart human because there's a quote. Like, I read this, and it actually reminded me of a quote from a movie. I think it's called The Coach or something we are not afraid of. Anyway, I'll just read the quote. So Carl says the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.

George B. Thomas: 47:52

And the reason I wanna end with that quote, the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely, is I want you as a listener to realize that the conversation that we're having today is a top of the mountain conversation. Like, it is one of the hard things. Like, we might be talking about it like it's relatively easy, but I'm bringing this conversation to you as a 52 year old male who has made many mistakes and has had many opportunities to fail at self forgiveness and be successful with self forgiveness. Just don't use this as another point to beat yourself up. Don't use this as another point to judge yourself.

George B. Thomas: 48:41

Realize this is one of the things, like so many others that we'll talk about on this podcast, where you have to have a, I'm a grasshopper trying to become a sensei. While I'm trying to reach mastery, I'm going to always approach this one as a pupil for those that didn't get my first kind of analogy around this. It's something that I'm always and will will forever always be trying to get better at, trying to learn more, trying to unlock these little pockets that my inner self has gotten really good at saying we fixed but got really good at still hiding them. I got to find those pockets and and pop them and get rid of them and work through them.

Liz Moorehead: 49:24

I wanna end this conversation today with a question that is, okay, fine, deeply rooted in a personal request. George, I need you to bring out your youth pastor hat.

George B. Thomas: 49:36

Oh.

Liz Moorehead: 49:37

Are you ready?

George B. Thomas: 49:37

Okay.

Liz Moorehead: 49:38

Are we ready?

George B. Thomas: 49:39

Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: 49:40

What advice do you have for those folks who are still struggling to forgive themselves, who may be coming to the end of this conversation, and whether they like to admit it or not, there are maybe 1, 2, 3 things that they feel that they've done in their lives that are unforgivable, that may make them feel like they don't deserve that type of internal redemption that is required to truly forgive oneself. What do you have to say to them?

George B. Thomas: 50:07

I like how you set that up because you told me you wanted me to put my youth pastor hat on, which then allows me to actually, like, put on the gloves a little bit here. Listen. God loves you. God forgave you. If God can forgive you, why can't you forgive yourself?

George B. Thomas: 50:23

The thing is you can. Now what I want you to ask yourself is why are you choosing not to? Because that's what life is, by the way. Life is a set of choices. We make good ones.

George B. Thomas: 50:34

We make bad ones. But at this point in your life, listening to this conversation, if you are battling with the 2, 3 things, 4 things, 57 things, I don't care how many, that you feel are keeping you from being who you want to be, who you should be, who you've always felt like you're destined to be, then I need you to ask yourself, why am I choosing not to forgive myself? If a god who made me, if a god who loves me, if the people around me have forgiven me or don't think about these things, Why have I not made the choice to just set them down, to let them go, to be lighter, to move forward, to become who you need to become, to become who the world needs you to become. That's what I would say to them. Like, for me, I look at this, and I realize I reached a point in my life where I went from who would and why would they, forgiveness, to why shouldn't I?

George B. Thomas: 51:48

And there was no good reason why I shouldn't.