Speaker 1: Really now, really, really.
Speaker 2: Now, really, Hello and welcome to this episode of Really
Speaker 2: No Really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden. In today's episode,
Speaker 2: Jason and Peter explore forgiveness with a five time Nobel
Speaker 2: Peace Prize nominee and author of the first scientific study
Speaker 2: on person to person forgiveness. We'll also find out about
Speaker 2: the practice of unconditional forgiveness, how the legal system deals
Speaker 2: with forgiveness, and the scientific reason we blame people, plus
Speaker 2: Jason's mother's non scientific reason for blaming people, and now
Speaker 2: God forgive me.
Speaker 3: Here they are Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden.
Speaker 4: Well, here we are, everybody. It's already been a day.
Speaker 4: We have a children's show filming outside the studio. They're
Speaker 4: not supposed to be here.
Speaker 5: By the way, But you know what, let it go.
Speaker 5: Let it go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, it's very hard for me to let it go.
Speaker 4: I know people have trouble letting things go.
Speaker 5: Some do and some don't. No, most do. Trust me,
Speaker 5: I'm pretty good. We'll talk about this after we talked
Speaker 5: to the guests.
Speaker 4: All right, So here's our really for the day, everybody.
Speaker 4: This was a little thing that I read I came,
Speaker 4: I came across online and I went, really, so, apparently
Speaker 4: Bennettict Donald. You've heard of ben Atic Donald, Right, we've
Speaker 4: all heard of bennettic Donald. What did he really do?
Speaker 4: What was his big mistake? Christ faux Pas trader? That
Speaker 4: seems like a little bit of a you know, he
Speaker 4: gave he gave.
Speaker 5: Information to the British gave Yeah.
Speaker 4: He sold He sold out information to the British troops
Speaker 4: in seventeen eighty one, who then raided the British troops
Speaker 4: raided and burned the city of New London, Connecticut. Now
Speaker 4: I will I'm gonna spoiler. New London, Connecticut still exists
Speaker 4: to this very day. So it wasn't. It wasn't the
Speaker 4: end of the story of New London, Connecticut. But New London, Connecticut,
Speaker 4: for the last two hundred and forty two years, every
Speaker 4: year has a parade and a celebration where they burn
Speaker 4: an effigy the trader Benedict Arnold. Two hundred and forty
Speaker 4: two years later, they get out None of these people
Speaker 4: were alive then, none of these people probably even have
Speaker 4: ancestors that they can trace to this incident. But they
Speaker 4: get out there and they burn this guy in effigy
Speaker 4: year after year after year.
Speaker 5: So Jason mentions this to me and says, we should
Speaker 5: do an episode on forgiveness because these people are they're hard,
Speaker 5: they're holding on.
Speaker 4: This is a whole hundred and forty two years.
Speaker 5: So we were lucky to get Professor Robert enright on.
Speaker 5: This professor is called a game changer in modern psychology
Speaker 5: by the American Psychological Foundation. He holds in and I
Speaker 5: hope I say it right and correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 5: Aristotleian Professorship. Did I get it right?
Speaker 4: Aristotlian, Aristotelean, you just had to hit all the teas
Speaker 4: aristotle Alean Professorship in Forgiveness Science at the UW.
Speaker 5: Madison School of Education's Department of Educational Psychology. He's also
Speaker 5: a five times Nobel HEAs Prize nominee, winner of the
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two American Psychological Foundations Gold Medal Award for
Speaker 5: the Impact in Psychology, and on and on and on.
Speaker 5: When it comes to the field of forgiveness, I try
Speaker 5: and find us guess this is the guy who are
Speaker 5: the guy? And this would be the guy. And we're
Speaker 5: so happy he's on, especially today, Oh boy, because we
Speaker 5: started with a lot of stuff. He's got tips and
Speaker 5: I had to almost talk to then it was it was,
Speaker 5: it was a little bit Harry this morning. Thank you
Speaker 5: so much for coming.
Speaker 4: On under doctor Robert Enright. Welcome to really know, really.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much for having me, Peter and Jason.
Speaker 6: I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: So right away, Jay, you should ask him forgiveness for
Speaker 5: what we may do. Yeah, really can we can? We
Speaker 5: can we have preventative forgiveness? Can we have it ahead
Speaker 5: of time? As they thoughts? What do they call it prophilactic?
Speaker 5: Any prople actively or an anticipation of it? And the
Speaker 5: other thing I got to ask you because we don't
Speaker 5: know you yet, but you seem like an honest fellow
Speaker 5: who's gone deep on forgiveness. There's more about forgiveness than anything. Really,
Speaker 5: five nominations for Nobel Peace Prize and you haven't gone
Speaker 5: it yet. You gotta be a grudge. You have to
Speaker 5: be someone that we're holding something outside rightbody a minute.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was one announce today already from an imprisoned
Speaker 6: woman in Iran. She deserves it more than I do.
Speaker 6: So there's nothing to forgive there.
Speaker 5: You go. Wait, wait, wait, wait, so what you're saying
Speaker 5: six times, six times, you.
Speaker 4: Know, one more and you're gonna be right up there
Speaker 4: with me with the emmy. You know, Jason played, We
Speaker 4: didn't commiserate.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you're a Seinfo fan, but he
Speaker 5: played George Costanzer for what eighty two years on television
Speaker 5: and never got an Emmy for that role because people
Speaker 5: felt it wasn't that good. He just never perfected George.
Speaker 4: I guess somebody was always doing a better job at
Speaker 4: their thing than I was.
Speaker 5: That that is pretty And I hate to bring it
Speaker 5: up that way because I don't know if i'm you know.
Speaker 4: Two hundred and forty two years from now, they'll be
Speaker 4: burning you in for bringing that up.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about forgiveness for a minute. It's a complicated,
Speaker 5: complicated subject, and I loved prepping for this because it
Speaker 5: impacts us in so many ways. Number One societal forgiveness
Speaker 5: friendship forgiveness. One great example is I forgive my wife
Speaker 5: for the argument we had and she apologizes. I apologize
Speaker 5: because in Western culture we're apologizing. But then next week
Speaker 5: we fight and she says, yeah, but when you said so,
Speaker 5: apparently you're bringing that up again.
Speaker 4: You really didn't let go of that, or forgiving is
Speaker 4: not forgetting necessarily, So how do you navigate that?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 6: Well, forgiving takes time, So if your dear wife brings
Speaker 6: it up again, she still might have forgiven you, but
Speaker 6: she needs a little bit more time to get over
Speaker 6: that kind of annoyance, you see. And basically, forgiveness is
Speaker 6: being good to those who haven't been good to you.
Speaker 6: And when you do that, you don't tolerate what the
Speaker 6: other does. You don't excuse what the other does. You
Speaker 6: don't let the other walk all over you. You may
Speaker 6: or may not wreck and sile with the other. Of
Speaker 6: course you will with your dear wife. But if someone
Speaker 6: keeps hitting you over the head with a frying pan,
Speaker 6: and every time you go back to the person, they say,
Speaker 6: come a little closer so I can hit you a
Speaker 6: little harder, you then don't reconcile with that person. And
Speaker 6: then another misunderstanding about forgiveness, people say, be good to
Speaker 6: those who aren't good to me. Where's the fairness in that?
Speaker 6: And there isn't fairness in that, because forgiveness is centered
Speaker 6: and having mercy on others. But you don't forget to
Speaker 6: bring justice along with it. So as you are good
Speaker 6: to those who aren't good to you, seek justice as well.
Speaker 6: Ask the person put the frying pan down.
Speaker 5: Wow. But again that that is a very complicated thing
Speaker 5: and it's it's multifaceted. And I wasn't going to bring
Speaker 5: this up in the beginning, but we know Arnold Micauis
Speaker 5: Arnault was a founding member of the largest skinhead movement
Speaker 5: in the world. And Arnold said to Jayson and in
Speaker 5: me that like with the January sixth incursion or when
Speaker 5: you see tak A k rallies or Nazi rallies, he said,
Speaker 5: the counterintuitive thing you need to understand because he left
Speaker 5: the movement, and he said that the way I left
Speaker 5: the movement was by people being kind to me. It
Speaker 5: chipped away people that.
Speaker 4: He had not been generous or kind too, so it
Speaker 4: chipped the way it came to him.
Speaker 5: And he said, it's counterintuitive, but what you got to
Speaker 5: do is love these people, embrace these people, and understand
Speaker 5: these people rather than commit computatively, because they're all broken people.
Speaker 5: And what the way to co opt them is by
Speaker 5: forgiving and reaching out to them that way, because it'll
Speaker 5: never happen the other way. And the reason he left
Speaker 5: the movement and forgave was because of all those little
Speaker 5: acts of kindness by people he hated, who he marched against,
Speaker 5: who he spoke against, which was a pretty powerful thing
Speaker 5: for me and Jason at the time.
Speaker 4: It was very strong. Is that the essence of what
Speaker 4: you're talking about as being able to treat with charity
Speaker 4: and kindness and as you say, mercy those who not
Speaker 4: necessarily have yet earned it.
Speaker 6: Indeed, the forgiveness is not earned, you've got it. The
Speaker 6: idea of mercy is you give people the goodness even
Speaker 6: if they don't deserve it, and that can be spectacularly
Speaker 6: beautiful because most people don't expect it. They are sometimes
Speaker 6: stunned by it. And one I think real good lesson
Speaker 6: from what you just said about the skinhead movement. A
Speaker 6: lot of those in there probably have very wounded hearts
Speaker 6: from other people who treated them unfairly, and their fists
Speaker 6: are clinched and their jaws are tightened for what might
Speaker 6: have happened in their childhood, and they're now reproducing the
Speaker 6: wounds that happened to them toward other people. And once
Speaker 6: they can experience other's kindness, their hearts can soften, and
Speaker 6: then the cycle of patred or revenge, your acrimony actually
Speaker 6: can cease. And that really is I think the discovery
Speaker 6: in psychology about forgiveness that it can cut into the
Speaker 6: effects of trauma and heal people's hearts deeper than most
Speaker 6: psychotherapies that are being around for one hundred years.
Speaker 4: Defintely, But speaking to that, because what you're talking about
Speaker 4: for someone to be able to offer that gift to
Speaker 4: someone after they themselves have been harmed by that person,
Speaker 4: especially if the person who's harming them is not yet repentant,
Speaker 4: how do you make the argument or do you make
Speaker 4: an argument for it being beneficial for the person doing
Speaker 4: the forgiving? Is what is the benefit? What does the
Speaker 4: person who is offering the forgiveness feel or experience that
Speaker 4: makes it doable?
Speaker 6: You know's think about that. That's an important question. When
Speaker 6: people treat us deeply unjustly, what tends to happen is
Speaker 6: anger starts building in the heart, and psychologists make a
Speaker 6: distinction between healthy anger and unhealthy anger. Healthy anger is
Speaker 6: when someone treats you unjustly. At first, you say, look,
Speaker 6: I'm a person of worth, it's not fair. I'm offended,
Speaker 6: but you get over that quickly. Unhealthy anger is a
Speaker 6: very unwelcome guest in the human heart. The unhealthy anger
Speaker 6: comes into your heart, takes off his shoes, sits on
Speaker 6: the couch of your heart, and doesn't want to leave.
Speaker 6: And as you live with this unhealthy anger, which literally
Speaker 6: could keep it for forty years, you tend to have
Speaker 6: lower energy. You tend to be disrupted in sleep. You
Speaker 6: tend to perhaps ruminate on the other and that person
Speaker 6: and all the bad stuff from that person is now
Speaker 6: living in your heart. That person has a lot of
Speaker 6: power over you. Think about it. That person might have
Speaker 6: been unfair to you forty years ago, and all the
Speaker 6: effects of that are still in your heart. If you
Speaker 6: wait to forgive until you hear three little words, I
Speaker 6: am sorry, you're still giving that person way too much
Speaker 6: power over you. But forgiveness does paradoxically, our science shows this.
Speaker 6: When you decide it's a free choice to be good
Speaker 6: to those who aren't good to you, that anger in
Speaker 6: the heart starts chipping away, it starts going down, and
Speaker 6: then the anxiety, the depression, not even the not liking
Speaker 6: yourself can change, and that person no longer has power
Speaker 6: over you. So you don't want what has happened to you,
Speaker 6: to have the effects live with you till you take
Speaker 6: it to the grave. Take that person's power away from
Speaker 6: you unconditionally, before the person says anything otherwise, you're sitting
Speaker 6: there saying, Okay, have all the power over me you want.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna stay miserable until I hear the three little
Speaker 6: words don't let it happen.
Speaker 5: That is so good.
Speaker 4: Peter knows that I have been following a gentleman on
Speaker 4: social media for a while who's who is called sad Guru.
Speaker 4: He's a yogi and a guru, and he has this
Speaker 4: wonderful expression that I find so aspirational, where he says, yes,
Speaker 4: I feel everything everybody else does. I feel anger, I
Speaker 4: feel joy, I feel regret, I feel he says, but
Speaker 4: I don't give anyone else permission to take my joy
Speaker 4: from me. Big go, I can take my joy from me,
Speaker 4: but I don't give anyone else person to take it
Speaker 4: from me. And that was that was a great reflection
Speaker 4: of that statement. It actually makes it a little more
Speaker 4: knowable to me than just the aphorism.
Speaker 5: That makes sense that they have power over you. And
Speaker 5: I'm curious, doctoran right you have to forgive this Institute.
Speaker 5: I want to talk about that in a minute in
Speaker 5: the mission. And you've devoted this part of your life.
Speaker 5: I think I read that you were doing work that
Speaker 5: was academic work that just wasn't fulfilling, and then you
Speaker 5: found this and it became your calling. Yes, and so
Speaker 5: you're you're the guy. But I'm wondering and hearing that
Speaker 5: I've been really lucky like Jason, and we joke about
Speaker 5: this a lot, but he really is my best friend,
Speaker 5: and we have had knockdown, drag out fights about stuff
Speaker 5: that have bothered me, bothered him, and when it's over,
Speaker 5: I always am shocked, not shocked, but there's zero growth,
Speaker 5: There's zero leftover residual. It's never like, well I'm mad
Speaker 5: at him for anything that he's done. There's nothing there,
Speaker 5: which was a real eye opener for me. But my
Speaker 5: question is, and that's in that situation it works. But societally,
Speaker 5: we don't learn this in school, we don't have anybody
Speaker 5: instructing us. But there are cultures that forgive. And I
Speaker 5: started in preparation for this reading about Hawaii and the
Speaker 5: fact in the Hawaiian culture they have what's it called huna,
Speaker 5: which is unconditional forgiveness. No matter what the person has done,
Speaker 5: you forgive them for that very reason, because it's holding
Speaker 5: their power over you. How does that work? How does
Speaker 5: the society decide to adapt that, especially when we're legally
Speaker 5: the most punishing and incarcerating society, one of them in
Speaker 5: the world. Yes, you're right.
Speaker 6: A lot of that depends on the norms created within
Speaker 6: the group. Another example, if you recall, were the Amish
Speaker 6: when I think it was around two thousand and seven,
Speaker 6: a man came in with a gun into a one
Speaker 6: room schoolhouse and killed little girls and named others, and
Speaker 6: the Amish shocked to the world by attending his funeral
Speaker 6: and starting a scholarship for his children forgiving, and the
Speaker 6: world was saying, what's going on. I had a lot
Speaker 6: of media requests for that, and I had to say,
Speaker 6: I'd better find out what's going on because I don't
Speaker 6: know the answer. So I looked into it, and I
Speaker 6: found that the Amish practice forgiveness on a daily basis.
Speaker 6: It's part of their prayers, it's part of their norms
Speaker 6: and families. You see, they were building up their hearts
Speaker 6: with the strength of forgiveness, becoming what I call forgivingly
Speaker 6: fit prior to the atrocity, so by the time the
Speaker 6: atrocity happened, they had been practicing forgiveness and the little
Speaker 6: things of their everyday lives, their everyday local Amish community,
Speaker 6: and their families, so they were ready for this. It's
Speaker 6: the same thing with Hawaii. Another expression is help on,
Speaker 6: where they have the norm of forgiving those who have
Speaker 6: hurt them. Well, you are becoming forgiving, they fit. You're
Speaker 6: building your forgiveness muscle waiting for the atrocity to happen,
Speaker 6: because it's going to happen at some point. Many in Hawaii.
Speaker 6: You're ready for that. The Amish, certainly we're ready for that.
Speaker 6: You're right. In our society when we go to school,
Speaker 6: we teach kids to sit up straight, take the gum
Speaker 6: out of their mouth, conjugate verbs, and know what the
Speaker 6: capital of Missouri is. But we don't ask them to
Speaker 6: prepare for the injustices that invariably will hurt us all.
Speaker 6: And what's the point of education. Isn't it to prepare
Speaker 6: for adulthood? Why or why are we not preparing children
Speaker 6: for the atrocities that will happen to them, as the
Speaker 6: Amish have. We need to learn that lesson and put
Speaker 6: forgiveness into education because all the children. I would take
Speaker 6: it away from them if I could, but I'm not
Speaker 6: that powerful. They're going to have injustices against them.
Speaker 5: How do they handle By the way, another incident that
Speaker 5: I think we all remember is the female police officer
Speaker 5: who went into the wrong apartment and shot the unarmed
Speaker 5: African American guy in his apartment. And at trial, the
Speaker 5: person who died I think brother, came down and hugged
Speaker 5: the police officer. The family embraced the pe police officers,
Speaker 5: the judge did, and a lot of people watching it
Speaker 5: was so moving. I mean, I'm tearing out. You go,
Speaker 5: how they just killed somebody that you loved as a
Speaker 5: family member. How did you do that? And it spurned
Speaker 5: a lot of conversation because it was so foreign to
Speaker 5: our society to look at that and say, how are
Speaker 5: you doing that? How is that even possible?
Speaker 4: But in that particular example, and you know, there was
Speaker 4: the understanding that a mistake had been made, right, But
Speaker 4: I'm wondering about I also want to explore with you,
Speaker 4: you know, the practicality of how you do teach the
Speaker 4: steps of forgiveness. But before we get into that, is
Speaker 4: there how do you respond to anybody that might make
Speaker 4: the argument that if you are, as you say, preparing
Speaker 4: for forgiveness, if you're building the forgiveness muscle, does that
Speaker 4: make you more tolerant of abuse? Because, so I'm going
Speaker 4: to be really specific, Jews in Nazi Germany could see
Speaker 4: the small incidents of aggression building before the actual Holocaust began.
Speaker 4: If they were I mean, I'm not a historian, and
Speaker 4: I don't know what the process was there, But if
Speaker 4: they had all been for going, well, okay, let's forgive that.
Speaker 4: We can tolerate this, we can do that, We can
Speaker 4: give this. If they had been less of I don't
Speaker 4: know if it was forgiveness, but if they had been
Speaker 4: less accepting of the conditions as they were building, would
Speaker 4: they have avoided the greater Holocaust? Is there a possibility
Speaker 4: of being too accepting and too forgiving and therefore inviting
Speaker 4: calamity on yourself?
Speaker 6: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: None, okay, And.
Speaker 6: Here's why would we go deeply into forgiveness and get
Speaker 6: it right? And that's what we need to do as
Speaker 6: a society, not misunderstand it. We realize this, what happened
Speaker 6: to us was wrong, is wrong, and will always be wrong.
Speaker 6: We never back off from the rationality, the realization that
Speaker 6: these things are wrong. So what was happening in Nazi Germany?
Speaker 7: We're wrong.
Speaker 6: When you forgive, you don't focus on the wrong and say, well,
Speaker 6: maybe it's more right than I thought. No, no, no,
Speaker 6: it is always wrong. What's your target when you forgive
Speaker 6: the person? It's the other person, not the incident itself.
Speaker 6: And so when we forgive, we look at the other
Speaker 6: by widening the angle of our lens as to who
Speaker 6: this other is as a human being. And that's how
Speaker 6: we can be softer toward that person. But we bring
Speaker 6: justice alongside, and we ask something of that person, and
Speaker 6: we ask something, so these incidents don't keep going. Forgiveness
Speaker 6: can actually help you be more tough minded this way.
Speaker 6: Why because to forgive always is in the context without exception,
Speaker 6: of being treated unfairly. So when you see it's unfair,
Speaker 6: you stand firm and you never give up on that.
Speaker 6: You might have a softer heart toward the person. But
Speaker 6: now let's bring justice in and say get this done right, buddy.
Speaker 5: So when you bring justice in, that leads me to
Speaker 5: our legal system, our law. Okay, So our legal system,
Speaker 5: for instance, the bankruptcy on Wall Street. All the bankruptcy
Speaker 5: in two thousand and eight, nobody was even blamed, So
Speaker 5: there's not even forgiveness. Yet there are a lot of
Speaker 5: people who are still digging out from what happened there.
Speaker 5: And then you've got clemency and pardons that go to
Speaker 5: certain people and not to other people, and usually it's
Speaker 5: connections in power. You got most of America wants to
Speaker 5: forgive pot crimes. And yet, like I said, we're the
Speaker 5: most incarcerating society. So how does it work in our
Speaker 5: legal system because that seems completely if I may use
Speaker 5: a legal term for coct.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, there is a difference between legal pardon and forgiving.
Speaker 6: When we do the legal pardon, it's usually not the
Speaker 6: judge who's been offended, and so there's an issue with
Speaker 6: regard to the law, but nothing personal, and forgiveness is
Speaker 6: always personal. I am the one with the wounded heart.
Speaker 6: I'm the one who's reaching out. But you know, you're right,
Speaker 6: the legal system them desperately needs forgiveness, and here's where
Speaker 6: it needs it. We did a study of over one
Speaker 6: hundred men who were in a maximum security correctional institution
Speaker 6: and we interviewed them on any grave injustices that have
Speaker 6: ever happened to them in childhood or adolescents, grave issues
Speaker 6: like being thrown out of the house, like being beaten
Speaker 6: or sexually abused. What percentage of these one hundred men
Speaker 6: reported grave injustices against them in childhood or adolescence cloaks
Speaker 6: yet ninety percent? And you know what, forty percent of
Speaker 6: them never told anyone about it. And when I put
Speaker 6: myself in their shoes, I asked myself, how could I
Speaker 6: live under these circumstances. And so we have a situation
Speaker 6: of gravely abused people in maximum security prison, and the
Speaker 6: rehabilitation doesn't even have this on the radar. What we
Speaker 6: have to do is bring forgiveness into the legal system
Speaker 6: by looking at what has happened to those who perpetrate
Speaker 6: grave crime onto others, because a lot of their hatred
Speaker 6: spills over to others. We then did an intervention with
Speaker 6: some of these men. One of the guys with whom
Speaker 6: we worked was in there for life because he was
Speaker 6: accused and convicted of thirty murders and suspected of one hundred.
Speaker 6: He was so filled with hatred that he was killing others.
Speaker 6: We helped him to forgive those who abused him in childhood,
Speaker 6: and he quieted down. He was safer in prisoners, making
Speaker 6: it safer for others because his rage wasn't coming out anymore.
Speaker 6: Do you see how we really have to start?
Speaker 5: It feels as you're saying it. I can hear the response.
Speaker 5: It's so contradictory, so contradictory to why help this guy?
Speaker 5: He's killed people, he's a killer. Forget him, Let's throw
Speaker 5: away the key and turn. But you're saying, if we
Speaker 5: learn from this and understand why this stuff happens and
Speaker 5: what society dos to people, you can alleviate the next
Speaker 5: guy yer also and understand that these like Arno said,
Speaker 5: these are broken people. They're all broken people.
Speaker 6: They're broad and we don't see it in society. We
Speaker 6: don't see it and we have to start acknowledging it
Speaker 6: and seeing it.
Speaker 4: Can you walk us through in some sort of, you know,
Speaker 4: relatively easy and understandable way. What what are what do
Speaker 4: you teach? What are the steps that you offer people
Speaker 4: to reach forgiveness?
Speaker 6: We call it the process model of forgiveness because forgiveness
Speaker 6: takes time.
Speaker 5: It's a journey.
Speaker 6: It's not like you just sit in a chair and
Speaker 6: say I forgive you man, and that's the end of it.
Speaker 6: It takes this kind of issue. First of all, you
Speaker 6: have to be aware of the effects on you of
Speaker 6: the injustice and name the injustice or the injustices, and
Speaker 6: see some of the effects like excessive anger, rumination that
Speaker 6: we've already talked about. That's highly motivating to do something
Speaker 6: about the effects. So then we go to what we
Speaker 6: call the decision phase, and we ask people do you
Speaker 6: want to try to forgive? And the person usually says no.
Speaker 6: We say, well, here's what it is. You're good to
Speaker 6: those who aren't good to you. You will not get
Speaker 6: rid of the idea that what happened to you is okay.
Speaker 6: You will not tolerate it, you will not forget, you
Speaker 6: remember in new ways. You may or may not reconcile,
Speaker 6: and you won't throw justice under the bus. You will
Speaker 6: try to be good to the one who was not
Speaker 6: good to you. Do you want to try it? Most
Speaker 6: everyone at that point says yes, because the effects have
Speaker 6: been with them and are so deep, and they've tried
Speaker 6: everything under the sun to heal and it has it work.
Speaker 6: Ye'll try it. We go to what we call the
Speaker 6: work phase, the workfhase starts with thinking, because it's easier
Speaker 6: to think about the other than to feel good feelings.
Speaker 6: And we first of all do what we call a
Speaker 6: personal perspective. And most people know the one who's hurt them.
Speaker 6: The vast majority are hurt by those who shouldn't never
Speaker 6: have hurt them because they're closed. And so we ask
Speaker 6: about the woundedness in the heart of the one who
Speaker 6: hurts you. What was life like for this person growing up?
Speaker 6: Most people can answer that, what was life like for
Speaker 6: the person emerging into adulthood and coming up to when
Speaker 6: this person hurts you? What are some of the wounds
Speaker 6: the confusions? And people are usually quite surprised to see
Speaker 6: there's a lot of woundedness in the other's heart that
Speaker 6: dumped the truck under me. And so then we ask
Speaker 6: does this person have built in or inherent worth? Is
Speaker 6: this person fully human? If that person cuts, well the
Speaker 6: person and bleed? How about if you get cut, will
Speaker 6: you bleed? Do you need good nutrition? Does that person
Speaker 6: need good nutrition? Has there ever been another human being
Speaker 6: on the planet like this person? Ever? Has there ever
Speaker 6: been anyone on the planet like you? You're both specially
Speaker 6: unique and irreplaceable. You both have inherent worth, and that
Speaker 6: takes time to settle in because when people see that,
Speaker 6: they say, oh, boy, I wish I didn't hear that.
Speaker 6: And then, depending on whether the person has a transcendent
Speaker 6: perspective or not. Let's say we're dealing with a Jewish person. Okay,
Speaker 6: we then go to what we call the cosmic perspective,
Speaker 6: and we might ask the Jewish person, this is it
Speaker 6: true in your scriptures that all people are made in
Speaker 6: the image and likeness of God? In a Jewish person
Speaker 6: say yes, It's in Genesis one and it's repeated in there. Okay,
Speaker 6: are you made in the image and likeness of God?
Speaker 6: Yet drum roll please? Is the one who hurt you
Speaker 6: made in the imagion likeness of God? And again at
Speaker 6: that point people say, oh, I wish I didn't know that.
Speaker 6: But again it takes time. But when you put all
Speaker 6: of this together, seeing the woundedness, you both share humanity
Speaker 6: and you both if again, depending on your religious or
Speaker 6: faith based belief, if you think everyone has made in
Speaker 6: the image enlightness of God, you put that together and
Speaker 6: you see a human being in front of you, and
Speaker 6: you might be seeing a human being for the first
Speaker 6: time and you know what that happened. What happens then
Speaker 6: compassion starts building in your heart for the stumblings and
Speaker 6: bumblings and pain that that person has gone through in life.
Speaker 6: And the compassion is a little bit of softening of
Speaker 6: that hardened heart that's starting to help you get rid
Speaker 6: of the power that person had over you. And so
Speaker 6: at that point, we ask the person to bear the pain,
Speaker 6: stand in the pain, and don't throw it back to
Speaker 6: that person, and don't throw the pain back to anyone else,
Speaker 6: because you know what, a lot of wounded people do
Speaker 6: throw their pain back to others who never have hurt them,
Speaker 6: like the guy with whom we worked to kill thirty
Speaker 6: people and they never hurt him, but he was so
Speaker 6: enraged he wasn't bearing the pain. So when you bear
Speaker 6: the pain, it's a gift to the one who hurts you, because,
Speaker 6: as Gandhi said, if we keep taking an eye for
Speaker 6: an eye, the whole world will be blind. And once
Speaker 6: a little compassion occurs, you bear the pain and you
Speaker 6: stand up to the pain, and you realize you're stronger
Speaker 6: than you thought you were because you can stand in
Speaker 6: the pain and it doesn't crush you. Then we ask
Speaker 6: for the punchline, can you be good to this person
Speaker 6: who hasn't been good to you? Maybe a smile, a
Speaker 6: returned email. If the person's deceased, how about contributing a
Speaker 6: little money to charity in the person's name. And that
Speaker 6: is when we begin to see the person start getting
Speaker 6: new meaning and purpose in life. You know, people say,
Speaker 6: I've learned a lot more about suffer and looking at
Speaker 6: the other suffering in my own suffering, and I have
Speaker 6: a new purpose in life which to help people overcome
Speaker 6: their own difficulties. Another gentleman with whom I worked in
Speaker 6: a medium security prison never getting out, said to me,
Speaker 6: now that I've learned to forgive, my new purpose in
Speaker 6: life is to help my cellmates to overcome the power
Speaker 6: others have over them and to heal their hearts. That's
Speaker 6: my new purpose in life, even though I'm never getting
Speaker 6: out of here. And the big paradox of all of this,
Speaker 6: the mystery is, once you have done all of this
Speaker 6: for the other, winding the angle of your lens, standing
Speaker 6: in the pain, feeling the compassion, and doing something good,
Speaker 6: you are the one who is healed. Your anger goes
Speaker 6: down from clinical levels to normal levels. That's what happened
Speaker 6: to our men in the maximum security. They were clinically
Speaker 6: angry and they went to normal levels. They were anxious
Speaker 6: that they went to normal levels. They were clinically depressed
Speaker 6: and they went to normal levels. And you know what
Speaker 6: also happens when people walk this path of giving to others,
Speaker 6: they end up liking themselves. Because when people are beaten
Speaker 6: down by life, they tend to believe the lie and
Speaker 6: they tend to disparage themselves. When they see they can
Speaker 6: stand in the pain, when they see that they too
Speaker 6: are people of worth, they recapture an image of themselves
Speaker 6: that's more true, realistic and good.
Speaker 4: You know, don't you feel like you owe an apology
Speaker 4: to the people outside? Everybody you kntgated? No, you were
Speaker 4: you were so No, No, that's not when I arrived here.
Speaker 4: Producer Laurie said, Peter is about to go off a ledge.
Speaker 5: He apotic.
Speaker 4: If he had a weapon in his hand, he would
Speaker 4: be they would be mayhem. He would be with the
Speaker 4: guy who thirty you would have done thirty.
Speaker 5: Oh wait, so let's recap this and take our photograph. Right,
Speaker 5: Larie's protecting because I got here before she did, right,
Speaker 5: and we had to go around to get here. With
Speaker 5: all the guys in the room there, I said, you
Speaker 5: know what, this sucks and what and then I went,
Speaker 5: but let's make it work. You came in and went,
Speaker 5: we can't make it. That's right, I got.
Speaker 4: So I quit, which unforgiving.
Speaker 5: Oh no, you had, you had.
Speaker 4: I was gonna go. I was just I was changing
Speaker 4: my locale of hate.
Speaker 5: So you listen to this and you go, it makes
Speaker 5: It makes all the sense in the world to get
Speaker 5: rid of your baggage and to just make a world.
Speaker 5: I know it's the feely, touchy come by of thing,
Speaker 5: and people are probably thrown up and getting insulin shots
Speaker 5: right now, but this is it's such a no.
Speaker 4: I don't think I don't think they got it.
Speaker 5: They got it.
Speaker 4: I don't think there was anything sackering of what was
Speaker 4: being the topic the issue feel what it does. If anything,
Speaker 4: I think it feels and ambitious and it feels aspirational,
Speaker 4: and I think some people will think about someone that
Speaker 4: they are in conflict with and think about how hard
Speaker 4: the first steps would be. But I think anybody listening
Speaker 4: to that starts to go, well, that that well and
Speaker 4: something to rise to bingo, you got it.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right.
Speaker 6: In fact, if you keep hating the person, who are
Speaker 6: you abusing yourself? Because if that person is far away
Speaker 6: from you, you may no longer have any contact with
Speaker 6: that person. That hatred has no influence on that person whatsoever,
Speaker 6: but it does on you, because living with hatred in
Speaker 6: your heart can be very, very costly to you.
Speaker 5: Boy.
Speaker 4: I am so I am so happy Peter that you
Speaker 4: found this man. I am so happy you you. I
Speaker 4: got to tell you. We've been chatting with you for
Speaker 4: thirty minutes, and you are in my heart. The things
Speaker 4: you have said, the things you have discovered, and the
Speaker 4: way you express them. I am so touched. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of what you're talking about that I've been thinking
Speaker 4: about and working on, and you know, in my own
Speaker 4: therapy and in my own life, and you you express
Speaker 4: it in such a beautiful and succinct way. I am
Speaker 4: just so grateful to have had this time with you.
Speaker 4: I'm so thankful for you, to you for coming on
Speaker 4: and chatting with us.
Speaker 5: Thank you, and check out the International Forgiveness Institute too.
Speaker 5: Look it up. There's a lot of resources on there,
Speaker 5: a lot of information there that so thank you. It's
Speaker 5: a really important topic. We just scratched the surface. So
Speaker 5: thanks for coming on. You're amazing.
Speaker 6: Thank you Peter and Jason for having me have spend
Speaker 6: my honor.
Speaker 4: Thank you, sir that I wasn't kidding. That was one
Speaker 4: of the most beautiful conversations we've had.
Speaker 5: I did some research here. I don't want to waste that.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: So do you know why we blame people? There's a
Speaker 5: scientific reason for what you've blame. And I found this
Speaker 5: to be fascinated. I told David already google him and
Speaker 5: he went wow. So the brain, our brains were designed
Speaker 5: to predict are The ancient man had to predict and
Speaker 5: guess where they find food so they don't deplete their energy,
Speaker 5: so they can they could find food. When you make
Speaker 5: a prediction correctly. When that happens, you get a hit
Speaker 5: of dopamine, which feels good, which makes sense. A monkey
Speaker 5: come's a treat to get to the food. On every
Speaker 5: step they get a little dopamine. When they get it.
Speaker 5: It's I predicted correctly, it's here. So you get a
Speaker 5: hit when you guess incorrectly, or even one of the
Speaker 5: examples of us when you're reading something a document and
Speaker 5: there's an error in it. It releases cortisol, which is
Speaker 5: a negative feeling, a negative emotion, and you want to
Speaker 5: correct it right away. Blaming immediately corrects the cortisol. It
Speaker 5: it wipes out the cortisol because you're now blaming it
Speaker 5: on somebody else and taking it off you, so that
Speaker 5: feeling goes away. The more often you do that to
Speaker 5: stop the cortisol for being released, and you blame you,
Speaker 5: blame limb. You're not learning any new behaviors, you're not
Speaker 5: getting dopamine, but you're getting really good. It's stopping cortoisol
Speaker 5: from being released to your body and making you feel bad.
Speaker 5: So there is a scientific and a brain chemistry reason
Speaker 5: that we blame. It actually relieves that negative feeling you
Speaker 5: got from the cortisol. And I thought that that was really.
Speaker 4: That happens to not be the reason. I'll tell you why.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you why. In my personal life any blaming happens.
Speaker 4: My mother told me I was the Messiah, so I
Speaker 4: cannot be wrong, I cannot be flawed, and therefore blame
Speaker 4: is the only.
Speaker 5: And by the way, you're just reinforced of course, the.
Speaker 4: I will tell you.
Speaker 5: I will tell you too.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you one of the great stories about forgiveness,
Speaker 4: and it may be anecdotal. I'm not sure. I've been
Speaker 4: told by a couple of people that this is a
Speaker 4: true story. It's one of my favorite stories of forgiveness.
Speaker 4: And it was during the negotiations between Monoch Comebag and
Speaker 4: unwatched to Dot for the what became the Egyptian rallied
Speaker 4: piece of cord. And you know it was it was
Speaker 4: a very difficult thing to get to and Golda Meyer
Speaker 4: who was no longer the Prime Minister, but she was
Speaker 4: called in to attend and at one point when it
Speaker 4: was going badly, the story goes Sadat said to her,
Speaker 4: can you really look me in the eye and tell
Speaker 4: me you will forgive us for killing your children? And
Speaker 4: she is rumored to have said, I will forgive you
Speaker 4: for killing my children, but I will never forgive you
Speaker 4: for making my children kill yours. And supposedly, if that
Speaker 4: is true, that was the beginning of his resolution to
Speaker 4: make this accord. That gesture of forget with exactly what
Speaker 4: the doctor was talking about. It was loaded with forgiveness,
Speaker 4: but it's still demanded justice well.
Speaker 5: And it also our world leaders have to have insight
Speaker 5: and balance and like Like I said when we were
Speaker 5: talking to him, justice and paying for crimes is one thing,
Speaker 5: but then also making get a vindictive payment is a
Speaker 5: different There's a whole different story.
Speaker 4: There are some great feuds. Do you want to know
Speaker 4: about some of the great histories.
Speaker 5: Why not?
Speaker 4: Well, everybody knows about the hat Fields and the McCoys.
Speaker 4: Do you know what that was about a hat? It
Speaker 4: was a dispute over a hog. Oh well, that makes
Speaker 4: sense then apparently, Yeah, it was about a hog. It
Speaker 4: was a New Year's Dear ambush that left members of
Speaker 4: the McCoy family dead, and it went on for years
Speaker 4: and years and years. They were feuding over a hog
Speaker 4: in eighteen That makes sense.
Speaker 5: But remember the value of a hog. That's that's seventeenth
Speaker 5: Today it's worth two billion bucks. Yeah. What's interesting having
Speaker 5: you here is when we talk about grudges and negative Yeah, Seinfeld,
Speaker 5: every guest star you had on that show was assigned
Speaker 5: a negative connotation name that would imply you had low talker,
Speaker 5: anti dentite, John Lovetz was cancer pretender, Yeah, close talker,
Speaker 5: James Spader, non apologizer, Raquel Welsh. I laughed out loud,
Speaker 5: so did David. When we remembered what Raka Wash was
Speaker 5: on for it. He was a walker who didn't swing
Speaker 5: her arms when she moved that that made them crazy
Speaker 5: that she didn't move her arm. I mean, you guys
Speaker 5: found stuff they hate people for and hold on, you
Speaker 5: got yeah, but you did it. You didn't stop and
Speaker 5: say no, these are despicable people. Poppy had poor HII
Speaker 5: before Poppy had for hygiene, and Uncle Leo was a thief. Everybody,
Speaker 5: everybody was there, nobody, everybody's a problem. The whole culture
Speaker 5: of scient.
Speaker 4: Folg was And by the way, we forgave nobody. We
Speaker 4: forget for Dave nobody in that show. And here we
Speaker 4: get in checks in the year to things exactly.
Speaker 5: And by the way, the other thing we didn't ask
Speaker 5: the head of the institute about. The one thing I
Speaker 5: didn't ask about, and I know that's a whole other
Speaker 5: world is people who became immensely, wildly successful because their
Speaker 5: whole premise was I'm going to build a business bigger
Speaker 5: than his in point them out of business. Everybody in
Speaker 5: my family was in business, whereas I'm going to put
Speaker 5: that schmark out of business and show him that's how
Speaker 5: they built well.
Speaker 4: They seriously, do you think competition is no competition always
Speaker 4: no out of I've been hurt by you.
Speaker 5: No no, no, no no, but but a bunch of
Speaker 5: it has been. My ex partner ripped me off, and
Speaker 5: I'm going to show him. I'm going to get back
Speaker 5: at him. I'm gonna and I'm going to build something.
Speaker 5: So it motivated something. Sure, No, I get that that's
Speaker 5: like grudging.
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't think that's what he's talking.
Speaker 5: I know he's not talking about, but I'm curious if
Speaker 5: there's anything positive the holding a grudge?
Speaker 4: Do you hold that?
Speaker 5: You know what?
Speaker 1: I can?
Speaker 4: I have one grudge story that ended very beautifully. I
Speaker 4: had an incident Lari's.
Speaker 5: By the way, Laurie, who we know. I love it.
Speaker 5: Laurie holds grudges? Is she getting on Mike? You getting
Speaker 5: a mic? I love this Becauseilian, I'm Sicilian?
Speaker 4: So sure?
Speaker 5: How many? How many are you stacking up right now?
Speaker 5: I just have a few?
Speaker 3: You really have to.
Speaker 5: It's not if you do anything to me, I don't care.
Speaker 3: But if you do it to my husband or my daughter,
Speaker 3: sure then forget it.
Speaker 5: And we're joking about is it painful? As you listen
Speaker 5: to that, did it make you think about how painful
Speaker 5: it is and what it does to you? The answer
Speaker 5: are you gonna let go of any of that?
Speaker 4: But you know it's it's so interesting because my wife
Speaker 4: and I learned this when we had when we had
Speaker 4: therapy that it almost became funny. But when we when
Speaker 4: we said things in anger because we had been hurt,
Speaker 4: and then you know, I hurt, so I speak in anger.
Speaker 4: She gets hurt from what I say, so she speaks
Speaker 4: in anger, and it goes back and forth until we
Speaker 4: learned that the first time you hear something that hurts
Speaker 4: your feelings, instead of snapping, you go ow that hurt
Speaker 4: ow well, and then immediately the other person goes, all right,
Speaker 4: sorry I didn't I didn't mean it.
Speaker 5: It's also easier to say to somebody, this is how
Speaker 5: it made me feel because they can't negate your feelings.
Speaker 5: Let's go to google hind before we completely get blubbery.
Speaker 4: And David, I forget preemptively have any grudges. I don't know, David.
Speaker 5: No, please, family for Laurie and David, which is great.
Speaker 5: We'll work on that. We know we're getting them for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to the institute.
Speaker 7: I was actually today, I have a list of Laurie's
Speaker 7: Top ten naps.
Speaker 5: When we we go after people for you that's great, Okay,
Speaker 5: we'll do that. Gosh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: So well today we learned all about, of course, forgiveness
Speaker 7: and what is the saying to forgive and forget to forget?
Speaker 7: So why do we forget? I wanted to look into
Speaker 7: the brain science of why we forget? What is the
Speaker 7: purpose of forgetting? And I just want to throw a
Speaker 7: disclaimer out there.
Speaker 1: This has absolutely.
Speaker 7: Nothing to do with the fact that I watched The
Speaker 7: Adventures of Rocky and Bullwickle the other day.
Speaker 4: Oh I'm sorry, I forgive you, by the way, by
Speaker 4: the way, will you forgive me?
Speaker 5: And by the way, I'm laughing in people at home
Speaker 5: are making fun. How many of you have worked with
Speaker 5: Robert de Niro?
Speaker 4: Okay, so that is the movie when my friends would go, hey,
Speaker 4: you're in a de Niro movie, and I'd say, kind of.
Speaker 5: I was on set, by the way, with all of
Speaker 5: that makeup, you weren't sure that you're in.
Speaker 6: A mo.
Speaker 7: So it's actually quite interesting, I'll uld tell. Very recently,
Speaker 7: like maybe ten years or so, researchers felt that forgetting
Speaker 7: things was a glitch in the system.
Speaker 1: Of the brain. But what they've come to.
Speaker 7: Understand that if forgetting is as much of a mechanism
Speaker 7: as memory itself.
Speaker 3: So why do we forget?
Speaker 7: Forgetting is basically discarding information from the brain that is
Speaker 7: not essential or survival. Our brain's memory basically exists to
Speaker 7: help us in making good decisions. So is this animal
Speaker 7: that is approaching me, is it going to eat me
Speaker 7: or not?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 7: If your brain is too cluttered with extraneous information, you
Speaker 7: can't figure it out.
Speaker 1: That animal leaps on you, You're dead and blah blah blah.
Speaker 7: So the brain has evolved to properly forget.
Speaker 3: Now what is the mechanism of forgetting?
Speaker 7: Well, basically it is so important to forget that your
Speaker 7: brain uses about eight hours a day to work on forgetting.
Speaker 3: That is sleep, sleep and the dream process.
Speaker 7: And that's why if you have a severe lack of sleep,
Speaker 7: it causes distorted, deranged perceptions, eventually causing us to hallucinate.
Speaker 4: So that's why we forget, Ladies and.
Speaker 5: Jay and I wonder if it for you?
Speaker 4: Do I remember half the original star dates from the
Speaker 4: episode of the original Structure star date two point seven
Speaker 4: mark five.
Speaker 5: You know why do I know?
Speaker 4: Brain happens to be the city on the end.
Speaker 5: How was that going to help me not get eaten
Speaker 5: by the animal mine? Let's go with things like did
Speaker 5: I see the green milin? No, I don't. I kind
Speaker 5: of remember, I don't remember the middle though, I don't
Speaker 5: remember that it's that that kind of stuff, So I
Speaker 5: guess she just decides to clear out stuff. Well, thank
Speaker 5: you for that, Google, and thank everybody for helping us
Speaker 5: with this episode. Now we know why she's busy. Sometimes
Speaker 5: she's busy with grudges and we don't we don't, don't
Speaker 5: step in on that. You don't want to be playing.
Speaker 5: Are we on that list, by the way, Laurie, anybody
Speaker 5: here on that list?
Speaker 4: No, No, we're good yet. Yeah, And thank you for
Speaker 4: listening and listen seriously, you know one of I'm gonna
Speaker 4: I'm gonna end with this thought at the end of
Speaker 4: the quality of your stuff. You're very like a little girl.
Speaker 4: And I don't moisturize or anything amazing, you know, you
Speaker 4: and I we we do not. We try very much
Speaker 4: not to talk about divisive things on the show. We
Speaker 4: make a point of it. This is an entertainment show.
Speaker 4: It's an information show. We want to have a good time.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of divisive stuff out there. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of people that have some pretty heavy feelings about
Speaker 4: the other half of us. I thought, with the dog
Speaker 4: I had to say today was was really important. It
Speaker 4: is important. They've had their own life experiences, they have
Speaker 4: their own reasons forgetting to where they are. And what
Speaker 4: I find in all my conversations with the people that
Speaker 4: I initially go, oh my god, we have nothing in common.
Speaker 4: We have everything in common. We have everything in common,
Speaker 4: and when we really talk about stuff, we find that
Speaker 4: we kind of want the same results. We disagree on
Speaker 4: how to get there. They weren't health, they weren't happiness
Speaker 4: for their family. They want health insurance and they want
Speaker 4: that might be better than.
Speaker 5: For their family, and they all want large If we
Speaker 5: can just let go, let go a little bit and
Speaker 5: talk to each other. If we don't man, if we
Speaker 5: don't forgive the other side, whoever the other side of,
Speaker 5: whether it's in politics and life, in your marriage, and
Speaker 5: whatever it is, it's you, you can't get to a
Speaker 5: place of of moving forward. So thank you. Hopefully, hopefully
Speaker 5: we weren't divisive and have a good whatever we're.
Speaker 4: Going to do now, announce no.
Speaker 1: Now, really, really.
Speaker 5: Now Really.
Speaker 2: As another episode of really No Really comes to a close,
Speaker 2: you're probably wondering what it's called when a group of
Speaker 2: people get together to decide.
Speaker 3: Who to blame for something.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you in just a moment, but first
Speaker 2: let's thank our guests, doctor Robert Enright. You can find
Speaker 2: information about him and forgiveness at Internationalforgiveness dot com.
Speaker 3: If you have a really you'd like to pitch us.
Speaker 2: Find us online at reallynoreally dot com and if we
Speaker 2: don't use it, please forgive us. We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok,
Speaker 2: and threads it really no Really podcasts. Check out our
Speaker 2: full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and tick
Speaker 2: that bell so you're updated when new episodes drop. Follow
Speaker 2: us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And now, what is it called when a.
Speaker 2: Group gets together to decide who they want to blame
Speaker 2: for something? Well, it's a relatively new term called blame storming,
Speaker 2: or as we hear it, really no.
Speaker 3: Really like to call it?
Speaker 2: Sure m hm, really it really is a production of
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio and Blaise Entertainment.
Speaker 6: H