Speaker 1: I get a team. Welcome to another installment of you project.
Speaker 1: It's Harps Craig Anthony harp I hope you're bloody terrific.
Speaker 1: Another installment of us. Today, I'm talking with doctor Frederick Luskin,
Speaker 1: who's a world renowned I don't know if he likes
Speaker 1: to call himself authority, expert, guru, he's probably all of that.
Speaker 1: In the area of forgiveness, and in heading towards two
Speaker 1: thousand episodes, We've never had a conversation around forgiveness, so
Speaker 1: I've been somewhat negligent. But today is that day. Hi Frederick,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm fine? Thank you.
Speaker 1: In all of that time, I've never done an episode.
Speaker 1: It's funny because Melissa, who runs My Life, who would
Speaker 1: have sent you or your team the inquiry about getting
Speaker 1: you on the show. She said, oh, you're interviewing I've
Speaker 1: got three episodes today And she said, oh, you're interviewing
Speaker 1: someone who's fascinating in the morning. This said this to
Speaker 1: me yesterday and I said who and she said, oh,
Speaker 1: this PhD dude who's a guru one forgiveness. And I
Speaker 1: went like, I've never even thought to do a standalone
Speaker 1: episode on that. But anyway, I appreciate you. I'm super
Speaker 1: glad that you're here. And could you, rather than me
Speaker 1: read a bio, could you tell my audience a little
Speaker 1: bit about you please.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a ex hippie who has start at Stanford
Speaker 2: University for about thirty years, and for most of that
Speaker 2: time have done my best to continue to at least
Speaker 2: keep a shred of hippie nature going. So I teach meditation.
Speaker 2: You had mentioned sports. I am. I'm the mindfulness teacher
Speaker 2: for a couple of Stamford sports teams. I go into
Speaker 2: the corporate world and try to teach them about peace,
Speaker 2: love and grenelle try to be nice people. So I have.
Speaker 2: I've tried not to fully give up on that kind
Speaker 2: of innocent hope for a better future.
Speaker 1: Well, you've just given me the title of the show
Speaker 1: in the first one minute of our conversation, which which
Speaker 1: is peace, love and granola. So I'm just writing that
Speaker 1: down right now.
Speaker 2: Well that's that was one of the ways of kidding
Speaker 2: about the sixties.
Speaker 1: How yeah, I imagine what when you say you were
Speaker 1: trying to hold onto your kind of your hippie.
Speaker 2: Roots, did you did?
Speaker 1: Were you? Were you right caught up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the hippie movement. Yeah, you're not that old, right,
Speaker 1: How what do you know?
Speaker 2: I missed it by a bit. But so during high
Speaker 2: school I was a little young, but when there was
Speaker 2: a pro test against the war in Vietnam, we marched
Speaker 2: to the local park and we sang songs. And I
Speaker 2: remember going to school things where we would push for
Speaker 2: housing for low income people and that black people should
Speaker 2: be able to live in our community. So I remember
Speaker 2: that kind of positive protest energy. I dropped out a
Speaker 2: graduate school like a million years ago and started a
Speaker 2: vegetarian restaurant at the beach about an hour and a
Speaker 2: half south of San Francisco. And we used to get
Speaker 2: just dozens of people, you know, who would travel around
Speaker 2: and follow the grateful dead, and you know, we caught
Speaker 2: catered things for Neil Young's people because Neil Young lived.
Speaker 2: And so yes, I missed the heart of it, but
Speaker 2: my heart was there, and whenever I could bump up
Speaker 2: against it, I was delighted.
Speaker 1: And was there any for you at that time? Was
Speaker 1: there any kind of underlying spiritual philosophy or was it
Speaker 1: just about doing good and being good and connecting with
Speaker 1: others and helping.
Speaker 2: I was born Jewish, and while my parents were not
Speaker 2: religious at all, and there is a cornerstone to the
Speaker 2: Jewish something which says that you do your religion in
Speaker 2: the world. It's not otherworldly, it's how you treat your partner.
Speaker 2: That whole idea of heal the world social act is
Speaker 2: very resonant with that part of Jewishness. So I got
Speaker 2: that in Osmosis. You know that in order to be
Speaker 2: a good Jew, so to speak, you were supposed to
Speaker 2: do something of value. A little later in my life
Speaker 2: I did discover, like so many people of my generation,
Speaker 2: yoga and meditation, and again people a little older than
Speaker 2: I was, they went off to India and met gurus
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah blah. But I'll tell you one
Speaker 2: interesting story of this kind of link. Yeah, this was
Speaker 2: in the very late seventies, so this is a long
Speaker 2: time ago. And we had this restaurant, and I knew
Speaker 2: that Ramdas was living about ten minutes from where the
Speaker 2: restaurant was. So we sent him a letter, the three
Speaker 2: of us hippies who had started this place, and we said,
Speaker 2: you know, we love you, we thank you, We already
Speaker 2: be here. Now come visit us and we'll give you
Speaker 2: free food. So three days later he pulled up to
Speaker 2: the front of our place in a little red MG convertible,
Speaker 2: gets out of the thing, walks into our restaurant and said,
Speaker 2: you sent me a lovely letter. Here I am. So
Speaker 2: he sat with us for three four hours, telling us
Speaker 2: all of his stories about India and meeting his guru.
Speaker 2: And you know, he was saying to us, you're doing
Speaker 2: the right thing, you know, like you want to bring
Speaker 2: spirituality to action. We didn't fully know what he was
Speaker 2: talking about. We were young, but it was it was
Speaker 2: a very powerful meeting of somebody clearly much more at
Speaker 2: tune than I was to the spirit, who sabled us
Speaker 2: literally for hours. He sat in our kitchen and talked
Speaker 2: with us and you know, kitted around with us and
Speaker 2: guided us. And that was that helped to me articulate
Speaker 2: some of the inco wait things that were there inside
Speaker 2: of me but didn't have words for.
Speaker 1: Amazing now now didn't wasn't around us originally? Excuse my ignorance.
Speaker 1: Was he not originally a psychology professor or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, and the really the reason so, yes, he
Speaker 2: was a psychology prof us or at Harvard, Yes, but
Speaker 2: he had gotten his PhD at Stanford, right, right, So
Speaker 2: not ten years about seven years later I was teaching
Speaker 2: at Stamford. This is like maybe it was, yeah, about
Speaker 2: ten years later, a little more, I was teaching at Stanford.
Speaker 2: I wrote him another letter saying that you know, you
Speaker 2: came into our little hippie place. We thank you. I
Speaker 2: had bumped into a couple of times before. But I'm
Speaker 2: now a PhD student at Stanford. Will you come talk
Speaker 2: to one of my classes? He said yes, So he
Speaker 2: came down to Stanford because he hadn't been back on
Speaker 2: that campus in a decade and he had gotten his
Speaker 2: PhD there. And so we met again and he spent
Speaker 2: ninety minutes speaking to the class and then we went
Speaker 2: to snack together at the union. But part of his
Speaker 2: discussion with the class was his history of being a
Speaker 2: doctoral student at Stanford in the fifties, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was just a wonderful interaction.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, this is a weird question, but I'm just interested, like,
Speaker 1: when you are around somebody like him, is there is
Speaker 1: there a different energy? Like do you feel you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking about some psychological perception, but do
Speaker 1: you feel a different energy around somebody who is that
Speaker 1: deep into the journey.
Speaker 2: Yes and no. Right, I'm going to tell you that
Speaker 2: I'm more taken not by energy but by behavior. Okay,
Speaker 2: so let me tell you a ramda story and then
Speaker 2: a John Cabbage Zinn story. Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Ramdas story is when he came to Stamford to
Speaker 2: give that talk, I had handed out to everybody in
Speaker 2: the class a reprint of an article from Yoga Journal
Speaker 2: to introduce Ramdas. Now, I had given the class part
Speaker 2: of one of his books to read, but the book
Speaker 2: was old. But I gave him like a current you know,
Speaker 2: Yoga Journal. But I didn't read the issue. I just
Speaker 2: handed it to the class before he showed up. I
Speaker 2: started to read the issue and I was mortified. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: it wasn't it wasn't that flattering. And when Ramdas showed
Speaker 2: up at Stanford through the School of Education, I go
Speaker 2: up to him and I literally am going, oh shit.
Speaker 2: So I go round us. I can't thank you enough
Speaker 2: for coming, but I have to apologize because I didn't
Speaker 2: that the article that I gave the students about what
Speaker 2: you're doing now, and it wasn't that positive. You know,
Speaker 2: it didn't paint you in the best of lights, and
Speaker 2: I'm embarrassed. And he looked at me with a hundred
Speaker 2: percent sincerity, right in the eye and said, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter to me when anybody writes about me. Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2: And he said it with such conviction and such there
Speaker 2: was no embellishment. It was just this is his truth. Yes,
Speaker 2: that he taught me something that all the speeches couldn't
Speaker 2: have taught me. Yeah, don't be attached to your ego,
Speaker 2: don't worry about the world, just do your thing. So
Speaker 2: that was his teaching about that. He was in front
Speaker 2: of the class and didn't even blink one hair on
Speaker 2: his head about that they had seen something not totally
Speaker 2: flattering about him. Wow. So that's a Ramdas story, a
Speaker 2: John cabot Zinn story who started the mindfulness stuff. I'm
Speaker 2: at a group where he and I are participants. There's
Speaker 2: about twenty five people in a room and we're all
Speaker 2: there for I don't even remember, like holistic health or something,
Speaker 2: and somebody in the room objects to what John Caputsn
Speaker 2: had just said. He had just made a statement. A
Speaker 2: woman in the room like said to him, John, that's
Speaker 2: such a sexist thing to say, Like, why would you
Speaker 2: say something like that. Yeah, and John Capitsin looked at
Speaker 2: her and said, no, I would never have thought that
Speaker 2: be sexist. Explain to me what you mean. So she's
Speaker 2: told him. He thought about it for a minute and said,
Speaker 2: you know, it's still not something that would be natural
Speaker 2: to me. But I'm really sorry that I didn't have
Speaker 2: enough awareness before I said what I said, And I
Speaker 2: thank you for educating me. Wow, And that was That
Speaker 2: was the entire end of the discussion. The woman was happy,
Speaker 2: he was happy, everybody was happy. And again I watched
Speaker 2: what an untached ego sounded like. Is that a good
Speaker 2: answer for you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that. I love that. It's
Speaker 1: all about what people are doing, and yeah, it's why
Speaker 1: do you think? I don't know if this is in
Speaker 1: your wheelhouse, but I'm sure you have an opinion. Why
Speaker 1: do you think we are so worried about what people
Speaker 1: think of us? Why are we so attached to approval
Speaker 1: and validation and often from people will will never meet.
Speaker 2: Well, I can speak from my own insights, Yeah, that
Speaker 2: there's a piece of me that wants to be liked
Speaker 2: and approve of because my own self approval is not sufficient,
Speaker 2: So I'm weak you know, I don't have a deep
Speaker 2: enough sense of being okay, So I require somebody else
Speaker 2: to validate me, come in and rescue me. And if
Speaker 2: they take it away or don't offer it, then then
Speaker 2: my lack becomes larger and I get anxious. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I don't have enough like self love in here. So
Speaker 2: if they take theirs away, I'm like skating on thin
Speaker 2: ice withold hot choose. That's what it. That's what it
Speaker 2: kind of feels like. So that's one two. I think
Speaker 2: as human beings, we are social creatures, so we have
Speaker 2: some built in survival needs to belong, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: to to have a group, to be approved of, to
Speaker 2: have shared values, and to know that if things happened,
Speaker 2: there are people who will help us. So when we're rejected,
Speaker 2: that that builds up a legitimate social anxiety to some degree.
Speaker 2: Then I think there's also the i'm gonna say the
Speaker 2: cost that many people have had of poor parents. You
Speaker 2: know that they didn't get validated, they didn't get mirrored,
Speaker 2: they didn't get loved as children enough. So there's a deficit.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a their upbringing was not sufficient, Like
Speaker 2: they didn't get enough soul, food and so they're always
Speaker 2: looking for it because it wasn't there developmentally when they
Speaker 2: need it. So that's three right off the top of
Speaker 2: my head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I agree. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: how even as a coach or a mentor or you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I sit with people that I'm meeting for the
Speaker 1: first time and they're way more worried about what I
Speaker 1: think of them than what they think of them. And
Speaker 1: you know, that's something that we talk about. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's talk about your Well, I'm sure you've got many
Speaker 1: fields of expertise, but so I want to talk about forgiveness,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about your books, your research.
Speaker 1: There's maybe the dumbest question, but I just want to
Speaker 1: start with it. So can you define forgiveness? Like what
Speaker 1: is forgiveness? Like? What is it? What does it mean practically,
Speaker 1: like emotionally, psychologically?
Speaker 2: So do you need validation that that was the dumbest question?
Speaker 1: No, I'll just believe it, can you? No, I need
Speaker 1: validation that it wasn't the dumbest No, Craig, that's not
Speaker 1: a dumb question. No, you're not a dummy. You're a
Speaker 1: bit of a dummy. But no, exactly what I did
Speaker 1: what I did. That's that's why you're the smile one.
Speaker 1: You're going, Okay, So what is rough? What is? You know?
Speaker 1: What is what is forgiveness as a process, as a
Speaker 1: psychological construct, as a as an expression of emotion. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. Forgiveness is the ability to
Speaker 2: see your life clearly enough, including the suffering. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not denial, it's not minimizing. It's I may have
Speaker 2: had really bad parents, or I may have been beaten,
Speaker 2: or I may have been abandoned. Is to see your
Speaker 2: life clearly enough, both the bad and the good, so
Speaker 2: that you don't have to live back there, but can
Speaker 2: see it, accept it, and open your life enough to
Speaker 2: what's next. It's like right here, right now, I can
Speaker 2: tell you. You know, I've been deeply loved at times, and
Speaker 2: other times I've been rejected. You know, there's a truth
Speaker 2: and a presentness. But the forgiveness goes from Okay, when
Speaker 2: some of those rejections I may have gotten stuck in,
Speaker 2: I forgive that so I can be in the present
Speaker 2: with clarity and not leave lots of my energy or
Speaker 2: thing behind. So I'm just open to my life. The
Speaker 2: whole thing you know, it's like I don't kept to
Speaker 2: constantly go over like the person who mistreated me in
Speaker 2: two thousand and ten. But I don't ignore it or
Speaker 2: minimize it. I don't pretend it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Hey, that. Yes, I've spoken a little bit doc lately
Speaker 1: about I'm listening to a book by an author. Her
Speaker 1: name is Abigail Schreier. She wrote a book called Bad
Speaker 1: Therapy and Bad Therapy. She talks about the idea that revisiting,
Speaker 1: you know, past trauma, and going every Tuesday and sitting
Speaker 1: down with your psychologist or your psychiatrist and you know,
Speaker 1: talking about that thing as you alluded to, that happened
Speaker 1: ten years ago or whatever it was. For some people
Speaker 1: it's there are peutic. For some people, it's actually quite
Speaker 1: destructive and toxic. And all it does is reopend.
Speaker 2: To tell you that for most people it's destructive. Yeah
Speaker 2: that when enough time has passed, Yeah, and you've shared
Speaker 2: the woe with me story so that some people have
Speaker 2: heard you. Yeah, generally speaking, redoing it over and over
Speaker 2: is not a good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that I've always thought that, but I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard anyone, you know, kind of say that out loud
Speaker 1: and yeah, and I think also, you know one of
Speaker 1: the things about you know, so I told you I
Speaker 1: come from an exercise science background, so prescribing exercise for people,
Speaker 1: and you know, talk about nutrition and lifestyle and sleep
Speaker 1: and all of those things. And I'm doing, you know,
Speaker 1: my doctorate in europsych at the moment and all of that.
Speaker 1: And like my experience is that there's no set formula
Speaker 1: for everyone, right, and so what will work for what
Speaker 1: will work for one person won't for another. You know,
Speaker 1: this exercise prog for you might be perfect for me,
Speaker 1: it's terrible for you. Eat a certain food and it
Speaker 1: works for your body, but it doesn't work for my body.
Speaker 1: I give you some advice that's good advice for you,
Speaker 1: But someone else with a similar issue, I give them
Speaker 1: that advice. It doesn't work or it's terrible. And I
Speaker 1: think this like in science and psychology sometimes and medicine,
Speaker 1: like there's almost this prescriptive thing that you know, this
Speaker 1: is the problem, this is the solution, rather than taking
Speaker 1: into account individual variability. Like I can eat almonds, I
Speaker 1: love them. You eat almonds, you have an anaphylactic reaction,
Speaker 1: you know, So trying to understand the individual needs of
Speaker 1: the person.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I'm going to articulate it. Both are
Speaker 2: true that there are general tendencies and then within those
Speaker 2: general tendencies, lot of individual variants. But for the exercise world,
Speaker 2: clearly it's better to move than not, you know, for
Speaker 2: the diet world, it's clearly better to have a varied
Speaker 2: plant based diet than not. But that doesn't mean there
Speaker 2: are absolute prescriptions that fit everybody. That would be my taking.
Speaker 2: With getting over being wounded or being mistreated, there are
Speaker 2: a couple of like global truths. So one of them
Speaker 2: is you have to grieve that wound, so you have
Speaker 2: to acknowledge it, you have to honor the suffering that
Speaker 2: comes from being wounded, you have to have a community
Speaker 2: of some people to share it, and you have to
Speaker 2: give it some time, like the brain requires time to
Speaker 2: integrate hurtful experience. So it would be generally wrong to
Speaker 2: tell people, you know, if you come home and your
Speaker 2: partners in bed with someone else, to just get over it,
Speaker 2: because generally speaking, on nervous system can't do that. The
Speaker 2: issue comes with let's say it's six months later and
Speaker 2: some people have been smart enough to yell, kick, scream,
Speaker 2: hate the person talk badly about them, draw little deaf
Speaker 2: things about them, and then they get that through their system,
Speaker 2: and six months later they're ready to go, Okay, I
Speaker 2: got it out of my system. I'm ready to move on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some people, maybe a year later are are still struggling
Speaker 2: with all sorts of things. But maybe two years later,
Speaker 2: it then becomes okay to tell people, you know, whatever
Speaker 2: it is, enough time has passed and you need to
Speaker 2: move on. But nobody can know whether that's appropriated six
Speaker 2: months or eighteen months for somebody, but you can know
Speaker 2: that you know this has gone on long enough when
Speaker 2: it's like excessive. So that's one dimension where how long
Speaker 2: and how intensely do you great grieve and argue? Another
Speaker 2: dimension is like within your suffering, Like some people are
Speaker 2: more private, and some people don't you know, they don't
Speaker 2: need to let twelve people know. So you might have
Speaker 2: somebody who has you know, and I hate hue party
Speaker 2: for their ex spouse, and somebody else just takes themselves
Speaker 2: out to dinner. However, the research is clear that you
Speaker 2: have to tell a couple of people. If you just
Speaker 2: stuff it inside, yeah, you're going to suffer more. So again,
Speaker 2: I hope you see what I'm getting at, there are
Speaker 2: some general tendencies, and there's a lot of variance within
Speaker 2: those tendencies.
Speaker 1: What's it the opposite end of the style of forgiveness?
Speaker 1: So what's the antithesis of forgiveness? What word or term
Speaker 1: would you use?
Speaker 2: A grievance, a grudge, you know, a story that cements
Speaker 2: you as a victim. Those might be opposites to forgiveness.
Speaker 1: What's the What are some of the potential physiological consequences
Speaker 1: of both? Like, what might you know? Real forgiveness to
Speaker 1: me seems like not only mentally and emotionally a healthy thing,
Speaker 1: but physiologically a healthy thing. And you know, resentment hate
Speaker 1: has you know, a physical consequence, So like, apart from
Speaker 1: the mental and emotional benefits, I guess it's also good
Speaker 1: for our body. I guess it's also good for our
Speaker 1: physical health.
Speaker 2: Well, just you know, if you're going to sit there
Speaker 2: right now and imagine that you need to spend the
Speaker 2: next ten minutes, I'm not asking you to do it
Speaker 2: talking about the worst people in your life or the
Speaker 2: people who have harmed you the most. Even just thinking
Speaker 2: about it makes your whole body feel heavier, yes, and
Speaker 2: it disrupts your heart rate. You can feel it just
Speaker 2: by anticipating it. You go, oh shit, and your heart
Speaker 2: starts getting a little chaotic and your muscles get tired.
Speaker 2: That's just thinking about it. If, on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you think about, well, you know, where was I the
Speaker 2: most resilient? Where where did I take life shit? And
Speaker 2: you know, deal with it successfully and move on and
Speaker 2: not be stuck about there. When you think that, you
Speaker 2: have an upsurge in energy and a deeper sense of like, wow,
Speaker 2: I'm good. But it's not just a mental thing. It's
Speaker 2: a full body thing. Yeah, So if you think of
Speaker 2: your day as some parts of your day you're just bitching.
Speaker 2: You know, nothing's good enough, you hate everybody, like the
Speaker 2: traffic sucks, Everything sucks. It's a full body experience, you know.
Speaker 2: All you know absoil yourselves everything. They get that, And
Speaker 2: then you think of other parts of your day when
Speaker 2: you say you're forgiving, like you know, if you live
Speaker 2: with somebody, they make a mistake and you go, honey,
Speaker 2: that's okay. You're you're basically a wonderful person. Why would
Speaker 2: I hold this? You can feel in your body the
Speaker 2: freedom of that. When you hold a grudge time after time,
Speaker 2: after time you stress your body, yes, yes, and over
Speaker 2: time that kind of stress can wear out the weakest
Speaker 2: aspects in your body. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, thoughts and feelings have a physiological consequence, and I
Speaker 1: always talk about this with groups about your body. Can't
Speaker 1: distinguish between what is real and what you think is real?
Speaker 1: You know what you're focusing on? What about doc? What
Speaker 1: about people who are listening to this and they're thinking
Speaker 1: this all makes sense, except he doesn't understand my partner
Speaker 1: or my ex partner, who's a complete prick, who doesn't
Speaker 1: deserve forgiveness, who never said sorry, who is a fucking idiot, like,
Speaker 1: who's just a self centered narcissist, who's a fucking sociopath?
Speaker 1: Like fuck that guy? Right, Well, that somebody's listening going, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, But you haven't met this person in
Speaker 1: my life. What do you have to say to them?
Speaker 1: And I'm not questioning per se. I'm just curious around that.
Speaker 2: When I said to you, what is forgiveness? And I
Speaker 2: implied that it was a pleasant, centered acceptance of the
Speaker 2: truth of your live, you can say that I dated
Speaker 2: or married very poorly. I made a big mistake. I
Speaker 2: didn't recognize the signs I enabled terrible behavior and the
Speaker 2: guy was a girl, was much worse than I thought possible.
Speaker 2: That's all true, but that doesn't keep you stuck five
Speaker 2: years ago. It's just true right when you're in that
Speaker 2: he's an idiotic sociopath who should rotten. Hell, you're still
Speaker 2: in argument with your own life. Yeah, And the only
Speaker 2: person who can suffer from arguing with your own life
Speaker 2: is you. So if you like, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: give you a funny example. Because a very good friend
Speaker 2: of mine that I taught with at the university for
Speaker 2: twenty years, she retired. You know, she's ahead of me
Speaker 2: a little bit, and she was talking about this past week.
Speaker 2: She went with somebody close to her to the doctor
Speaker 2: because it was an anxiety producing thing, and she went
Speaker 2: to support this person and that was wonderful, but she
Speaker 2: brought up a time in her past when her partner
Speaker 2: then had not supported her. And this was, believe it
Speaker 2: or not, in the eighties, and she still referred to
Speaker 2: him as an idiot. So at that moment, at that
Speaker 2: very second, she's still blaming them for something that was
Speaker 2: forty years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So she hasn't fully forgiven because in the present moment,
Speaker 2: she can't say, you know, I had a very trying
Speaker 2: experience when I was vulnerable and the person I depended
Speaker 2: on simply failed me. That's a truthful statement, but that's
Speaker 2: in the present and is not blaming somebody for ruining anything,
Speaker 2: And so I can simply live my life. You know, Yes,
Speaker 2: this person let me down, but of course I've forgiven
Speaker 2: it because this moment and tomorrow I want to be
Speaker 2: able to love as best I can and not be
Speaker 2: burdened by all the crap that I've gone through.
Speaker 1: So the forgiveness, the act of forgiving, is not for
Speaker 1: the other person.
Speaker 2: It's for us, of course, because the act of ruining
Speaker 2: your life is for you. Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, So when somebody says, when someone says he or
Speaker 1: she doesn't deserve my forgiveness, they're actually getting it wrong.
Speaker 2: They might be right, but that's not a reason to suffer.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, I think some people get confused on
Speaker 1: that because it's like, I feel like the idea of saying,
Speaker 1: oh it's okay that you hit me, that you mistreated me,
Speaker 1: that it's not fucking okay. But I feel like when
Speaker 1: they say I forgive you, then that's what they think
Speaker 1: they're saying, and so there's a reluctance there, but it's
Speaker 1: not really that at all. It's really I'm liberating myself
Speaker 1: from that bullshit. Well who decides, yeah, like, who decides
Speaker 1: if they deserve my forgiveness? So you' judge of the universe.
Speaker 2: That do you know?
Speaker 1: Well, I am thanks for asking.
Speaker 2: So at least that's being truthful. Yes, Like, this person
Speaker 2: behaves so badly that I decided that I'm never letting
Speaker 2: it go. Well, that's fine, But to say they don't
Speaker 2: deserve it, you, first of all, have no idea whether
Speaker 2: they deserve it. They might have such a hard life
Speaker 2: and maybe their unkindness to you was tripped in them
Speaker 2: something become a better person? Who knows? Yes, But your
Speaker 2: judgment of them is never accurate enough because let's say,
Speaker 2: you know, let's even take something awful like a hitting
Speaker 2: r U driver kills your kid, and you know, you
Speaker 2: don't even know who they are, but you could ten
Speaker 2: years later they don't deserve my forgiveness. What they did
Speaker 2: was unforgivable and you don't even know who they are.
Speaker 2: How do you know? Yes, they might have made a mistake,
Speaker 2: and who knows. I'm not excusing bad behavior, But you
Speaker 2: asked me what it is, and it's an ability to
Speaker 2: tell the truth. It's different than your throwing around your
Speaker 2: judgments and your opinions and your hostile ideas forever.
Speaker 1: Did you have a moment in your hippie dyes, in
Speaker 1: your vegetarian restaurant dies when you stepped away from academia,
Speaker 1: you know, because obviously you stepped back into academia at
Speaker 1: some stys. Did you have a moment an epiphany which
Speaker 1: was the genesis for this curiosity around forgiveness?
Speaker 2: I had two of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was very badly hurt decades ago by an abandonment
Speaker 2: and it literally ripped to my life for about three years,
Speaker 2: Like I didn't trust after that. I had a bitterness
Speaker 2: to my tone, like you know, if this person can
Speaker 2: do this, then all bets are off and life is scary.
Speaker 2: And it's true, you know some of it. I hadn't
Speaker 2: made peace with the truth. But for like three years,
Speaker 2: I was a bitch and I subjected my wife to
Speaker 2: like nastiness that she didn't deserve because I had lost faith.
Speaker 2: And then one day we had a child. This is
Speaker 2: a long time, it's thirty years ago, and she's at
Speaker 2: home with the baby, and I get home and she says,
Speaker 2: I need you to go shopping, and I'm in a grouchy,
Speaker 2: paint in the s mood. I don't want to go shopping.
Speaker 2: She hands me a shopping list, she says, you got
Speaker 2: to go here, you got to get these items. And
Speaker 2: now so I go out, giving myself a full pity
Speaker 2: party about I'm working all day and I have this
Speaker 2: battle axe wife who's like, I mean, I'm.
Speaker 1: Just ha ha ha, I'm.
Speaker 2: In oh ruin my life mode. I get to the
Speaker 2: store and they don't have what she wanted, Like she said,
Speaker 2: you got to go to this store because they have
Speaker 2: this I had a park like two miles away. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I get to that spot, they don't have what she wants,
Speaker 2: and my mind literally blows or fuse, like nobody loves me.
Speaker 2: Life isn't fair, you know, all sorts of self pitying nonsense.
Speaker 2: And then something inside of me snaps and I noticed
Speaker 2: that I'm in a supermarket in San Jose, California, and
Speaker 2: all I am is sitting in a supermarket and they
Speaker 2: don't have a couple of items, and everything else in
Speaker 2: my life is abundant. Everything I have a partner, I
Speaker 2: have a child, I have a job. The only problem
Speaker 2: was me, and that moment of looking at all the
Speaker 2: food and this big supermarket in a shopping center change
Speaker 2: me wow, Like, wow, boy, do you complain a lot? Fred?
Speaker 2: And you have this lovely person waiting for you at home?
Speaker 2: What the hell is wrong with you? But I had
Speaker 2: used that wound, that pretty bitter betrayal. It made me
Speaker 2: act as if that was like an eclipse and the
Speaker 2: sun no longer was out. I had put this wound
Speaker 2: up between me and the sun, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: son's gone. I hate the world. My life isn't right.
Speaker 2: The minute I took this wound away, the Sun's there
Speaker 2: and it had always been there, but I hadn't seen it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And that's what came to me. Oh okay, Fred, So you,
Speaker 2: by your terrible handling of this very painful thing, you
Speaker 2: ruined a couple of years of your life. Not them,
Speaker 2: they did terrible things, and then you ruined your life.
Speaker 2: That was the epiphany that I had.
Speaker 1: That's the spice between life situation and life experience. And like,
Speaker 1: sometimes our situation is great, but in the middle of
Speaker 1: that situational circumstance, our self created experience is anything back.
Speaker 2: Right, yep. And so the other definition that we have
Speaker 2: of forgiveness, the simpler definition is making peace with the
Speaker 2: word no. Yeah, that's our simpler definition. Like you're going
Speaker 2: to get a lot of ways that life doesn't give
Speaker 2: you what you want? Do you think you need? And
Speaker 2: instead of holding grudge about it, you forgive it. You
Speaker 2: forgive the fact that you get no. So the no
Speaker 2: in that situation is I didn't get loyalty and connection.
Speaker 2: But we I mean, you know, I've been doing this
Speaker 2: for a long time, and I get bored if I
Speaker 2: say the same thing, so I over time, I vow
Speaker 2: different things. But there's so much pain you would ask
Speaker 2: me a half hour ago, And we're so attached to
Speaker 2: getting what we want that we have a hard time
Speaker 2: forgiving the world when it doesn't give it to us.
Speaker 1: I've got a question, maybe my last question. What is
Speaker 1: the question that you would want people to ask you
Speaker 1: around this that they tend not to like. I feel
Speaker 1: like you probably get asked a lot of the same stuff.
Speaker 1: What is a great question that you wish somebody would
Speaker 1: ask that might be more enlightening and more helpful.
Speaker 2: Why in this short life when I'm not here for
Speaker 2: that long on planet Earth. I spend so much of
Speaker 2: this precious time that I have arguing and fighting about
Speaker 2: what I didn't get, rather than spending more time saying
Speaker 2: thank you for what I did get. That would be
Speaker 2: the most pressing question to ask people.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I could talk to you for hours, Doc,
Speaker 1: So let me just give a quick plug for your book.
Speaker 1: So Forgive for Good, a proven prescription for health and happiness,
Speaker 1: Forgive for Love, the missing ingredients for a healthy and
Speaker 1: lasting relationship, stress free for good, ten scientifically proven skills
Speaker 1: for health and happiness? Is there another one? Or is
Speaker 1: that the three?
Speaker 2: I'm just about to publish early next year a book
Speaker 2: called Forgive for Recovering. We've been teaching people in recovery
Speaker 2: from addiction a lot about self forgiveness so they will
Speaker 2: have fewer triggers. That's that's the latest research I'm doing,
Speaker 2: So that would be it. The general book that sold
Speaker 2: a lot of copies and help people all over the
Speaker 2: world is Forgive for Good. That is as accessible a
Speaker 2: result of research that exists in this field. And if
Speaker 2: people want to look up any more about me, my
Speaker 2: website is fred Luskin dot com and you know, there's
Speaker 2: like YouTube videos all over the place. I'm a public
Speaker 2: it's not hard to find me. And you know, forgiveness
Speaker 2: is good for you.
Speaker 1: It is forgive for good is on audible? I suppose
Speaker 1: it's not.
Speaker 2: They never made a really a companion for it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know why forgive for love is but for good.
Speaker 2: Probably it was too long ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah cool, Hei, Well say goodbye, but Fred, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for chatting with me. You're a gem. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you, and you didn't need to do this, but
Speaker 1: you graciously did. So thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Thank you. And I have to tell you part of
Speaker 2: my appreciation over these thirty years for the fact that
Speaker 2: so many people in this world who have sought out
Speaker 2: the Stanford Forgiveness Project. I mean, yeah, we didn't. We
Speaker 2: didn't start it with any illusions. I'm thankful enough that
Speaker 2: we got some influence that I generally say yes to
Speaker 2: people who are like nice and normal as a way
Speaker 2: of paying something forward for all the publicity we got
Speaker 2: when we started. So that's partly my answer back to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for asking absolute pleasure