“Carrying a grudge against someone or against life can bring on the old age stoop, just as much as carrying a heavy weight on your shoulders would. People with emotional scars, grudges, and the like are living in the past, which is characteristic of old people.” Maxwell Maltz: Psycho-Cybernetics
When bad things happen, bad feelings can be created. Very often, one of the greatest challenges to dealing with adversity is finding forgiveness. In many respects, the quality of our lives will be determined by the extent to which we are able to forgive – forgive ourselves, our parents, other people, and even God.
One time I’d been fired from a job in such a way as to create a lot of bad feelings and painful emotions. (A friend of mine says that if you haven’t been fired at least three times, you’re not trying hard enough; at least on that score, I was an overachiever!) My anger was so toxic that it was driving out every positive emotion, and bubbled so close to the surface that it was making it almost impossible for me to effectively search for another job. I was living out the classic definition of a grudge: drinking poison in the hopes of hurting someone else.
While this was going on, I happened to visit my good friend Vern Herschberger (an incredibly talented artist and cartoonist). I told Vern that even though I knew this hateful grudge was darkening every corner of my life, its hold was too strong and I simply could not let go. I couldn’t fight it, and I couldn’t run away from it. Even as I recognized my lesser self of ego suffocating my better self of soul, I could not chew off the paw and move on.
“The solution is simple,” Vern told me. “You’ve got to pray for the success of the person who fired you.”
I thought about that for a moment, then replied, “I can do that.” I closed my eyes, folded my hands, took a deep breath, then said, “Dear God, please make that man be very successful... at stepping in front of a speeding dump truck.”
“No, no, no!” Vern exclaimed. “You’ve got to pray for him to be successful according to his definition of success, according to God’s definition of success. What you just said sounds more like the devil’s definition.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do it, Vern. It’s not in my heart to pray that prayer.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he replied. “You just say the words. Say them every day, as if you mean them. Saying that prayer will break the ice. Keep at it, and eventually the ice will melt.”
Vern was right. It didn’t happen overnight, but gradually the grudge released its hold on me. In The Spirituality of Imperfection, Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketchum wrote that forgiveness is a miracle, because it’s not something you can will upon yourself. It certainly felt like a miracle to me the day I realized that my prayer had been granted. I had no idea whether the man who’d fired me was successful. What I did know was that I genuinely hoped he was successful. I had forgiven him. He might not have cared a whit whether or not I’d forgiven him, but that didn’t matter. For me, the peace I’d gained meant everything.
This miracle of forgiveness brought in its wake the blessing of clarity. As I began to see through the anger and hostility, several other things became clear to me. First, I not only needed to forgive, I also needed to ask for forgiveness. I’d been fired for a valid reason (I wasn’t really cut out for that job), and for my part had not handled the separation in a particularly graceful manner.
Equally important, with forgiveness came the realization that being fired really was the proverbial best thing that ever could have happened. The reason I’d been fired was that I was trying to pound the squiggly peg of me into the square hole of a career for which I was unsuited, and which I was pursuing for all the wrong reasons. Being fired liberated me from the treadmill; forgiveness (including forgiveness for myself) freed me to find a new path in life, a path with heart (to borrow the memorable phrase of Carlos Castaneda).
- Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down
- Introduction
- The Laws of Adversity
- The Great Divide – defining moments in adversity
- Carve the statue of you
- The four ways to handle brick walls
- Embrace the 4 personal freedoms
- Get clear about your values
- Align your goals with your values
- Have the courage to pursue your highest goal
- Thank God Ahead of Time (TGAoT) for whatever happens
- Use adversity as a platform for change
- Fear of failure is really fear of humiliation
- Congratulate yourself on being rejected and on failing
- You must overcome your fear of success
- Leadership is most important when the world is upside down
- The flip side of love is loss
- In grief seek comfort - and give comfort
- Imagine your organization as a support group
- Grieve – then move on
- There’s no such thing as false hope
- Practice a healthy humility
- Go off alone somewhere
- In the trials of adversity work on character strength
- Identify the problem behind the problem
- Change your questions
- Make the most of midlife crisis
- Stop doing what isn’t working and try something new
- When you put the pieces back together make the vessel stronger
- Stop thinking about yourself
- Stop ruminating
- Train your doubt
- When one door closes, push open another
- Ignore the nattering nabobs of negativity
- Utilize your gifts
- Hang tough!
- Don’t give in to apparent failure in the middle
- Rescue your failures
- There is no free lunch
- Raise your expectations
- Live into your potential
- You don’t need OPA
- Use DDQs to redirect your actions
- Use EDQs to redirect your moods
- Do good for others
- Practice Rafe’s Law
- Work until your mission is finished
- Bigger problems = better life
- The difference between courageous and crazy is often
- Escape prisons you’ve made yourself
- It’s not personal, permanent or pervasive
- Develop emotional power
- Get real by integrating ego and soul
- Do something!
- Get more sleep and practice Neuro-Attitudinal
- Practice strategic laziness
- Break your addiction to negative thinking
- Transform negative self-talk into positive affirmation
- Erase the graffiti of negative self-talk
- Pay attention to the metaphors by which you create your perception of reality
- Direct your dreams in a positive way
- Interpret dreams to your benefit
- Distinguish between problems and predicaments
- Create rituals
- Playing it safe can be a dangerous game
- Use the 6-A Formula to Create Memories of the Future
- Face the granddaddy of all fears
- Ignore the chatter of the world
- Stop whining
- The Pickle Pledge – a simple promise that will change your life
- Take The Pickle Challenge
- Build up your stamina
- Don’t pick fights you don’t need
- The steepest hills are in your mind
- Turn off the tragi-tainment
- Build upon The Pyramid of Self-Belief
- Act confident to earn confidence
- Stop waiting for someone else to “empower” you
- Take to heart The Self-Empowerment Pledge
- Monday’s Promise: Responsibility
- Tuesday’s Promise: Accountability
- Wednesday’s Promise: Determination
- Thursday’s Promise: Contribution
- Friday’s Promise: Resilience
- Saturday’s Promise: Perspective
- Sunday’s Promise: Faith
- Keep a personal journal
- Pay attention to the patterns in your life
- Overcome your own laziness
- Transform despair into determination
- Enthusiasm is the master value
- Stop awfulizing
- Adopt the Nedlog Rule
- Practice mutuality
- Say Yes to what matters by saying No to what doesn’t
- Write a poem
- Train your brain
- Replace anguish with hope
- Combine ignorant bliss with unearned confidence
- You can be a victim or a visionary but not both
- Work fast
- Caring is the root of courage
- See the world as it really is
- Fear can make you stupid
- Maintain your momentum
- The most important choice you ever make
- Illuminate the darkness
- Get out of stuck
- You cannot change the past but you can rewrite your memory of it
- Turn bad news into the best thing ever
- Write your own horoscope – a Youroscope
- Don’t hit the brakes when you hit the gravel
- Dealing with the energy vampires
- Be productive
- Your trajectory is more important than where you are at any point in time
- Forgive
- Even when the last thing you want to do is to forgive
- Forgive 360
- Stop abusing your imagination with delusions of grandeur and delusions of disaster
- Stop procrastinating
- Create something knowing there are no guarantees
- Get started
- Lost causes are only really lost when you stop fighting for them
- What doesn’t kill you…
- Expect a miracle