If You Can't Forgive Yourself, Do This One Thing | Stephan Speaks

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1:18Is it harder to forgive someone that did something horrible to you? or is it harder to forgive yourself? It depends on what they did. I think, you know, that's going to vary from situation to situation. But I will say if I had to lean towards one, I would say forgiving ourselves is harder. Why is it harder? Because we live with ourselves. Because we live with ourselves. Yes. You see, like, that person can do that one thing and it can be very hurtful. But we may not see them again. we may not face a circumstance like that again. There may be buffers in our life that allows us to detach from what happened.

2:02But when we make our mistake we have to live with that. We have to face ourselves in the mirror and then there may be other mistakes we make that pile on to that. See, that person may have one offense that we have to forgive them for but we can end up having several offenses against ourselves. And now it becomes a harder journey for a lot of people to just accept that we're all flawed and we're all going to fall short. I'll keep saying that we, none of us get it perfect, none of us has never made a mistake and you know how they say even in business everyone who's successful has failed and so in life it's the same thing anyone who's successful at life has made mistakes.

2:41You're either going to learn from them or you're going to dwell on them and too many people are dwelling in their mistakes. Is there anything in your life you haven't healed yet?

2:53Um... You already feel me on this part today? You know? So, I'm not going to get too deep into it, but I will say, I will say that I've done a letter before, all right? So, I've done this whole process. Sometimes you need to write multiple letters to the same person. No, so the person I did it for, I did all the big ones, so to speak, but there was a small one with a family member that I didn't realize was a problem till years after. Because to me at the time I kind of brushed under the rug, it's whatever, no big deal. Now, I will say this, now I'm not trying to make excuses. The issue I don't believe has any detrimental impact on my relationships, all right.

3:42Because I do believe there... Don't do that, don't do that. You're right, you're right, you're right. I'm not... Listen, I'm going to handle it. If the letter's going to be written. When? By when? By next week. By next week. One day. Give me till... Why not write it on your flight home? Write it on your flight home. You know what? I'll do it today. Let's go, baby. I like that. I'll do it today. I got time in the hotel room. So you'll write the letter you need to write. Yes. And then is this a letter you send to this person? Yeah, that one will be sent. Absolutely. Interesting. Now, do you do a two-step process there where you write, or a two-draft process where you write?

4:22Yeah, I would still do it. And then... I truly believe in all those steps, and I believe that we should not skip any of them because skipping them can really throw things off, all right? Because again, you don't want to say, well, I'm not really that mad, so I don't need draft one, right? But then for all you know, you've been suppressing more anger than you realize. Just say, I hate you because... Exactly. Started with that. Yes. and let it rip. Yes. And if nothing really comes, great, but allow yourself to go as crazy as you want. Exactly. So, I would not skip a step and I would encourage everyone, if you do this process, do not skip steps, don't remix steps.

5:00I've seen some people say, well, I didn't do a letter, I sent a text. No. It doesn't work. Exactly, it's not the same thing. You can't send a text, you can't do one draft, you can't skip things, do the whole thing as a line. Why does writing a letter, why is that more powerful than typing or texting or voice messaging a letter? So, because voice message, text, typing is not bad, all right. So, you can type a letter. Type or writing is fine, yes. But text and voice message is bad because inherently and subconsciously those are quick hitting ways of expressing ourselves, all right. We don't do a voice message to leave a 10, 15 minute message, all right.

5:42We typically do it for a quick one minute, two minute, three. it can be longer at times but there's this thing in us that doesn't allow us to really draw it all the way out. Because if what you're feeling needs to be a 30 page long letter you're not going to do a 30 page worth voice memo chances are unless you wrote it first and then you expressed it through a voice recording. Or what you can do is you could record yourself, all right. Let it all out in recording and then re-record the second draft. So, you can do it by voice recording but when it's a text voice memo and all that kind of stuff or text messages because again, texts are condensed ways of expressing ourselves.

6:26They're not made for long expressions. So, even if you say well, I can... No, it's just not going to work the same. And it's very easy for you to feel like well, typing all of that and if you got to go back to type more and it's going to spread over to like 10, 20 texts most people aren't going to do that. they're going to try to make it shorter. So no, do the letter but the alternative voice recording is an acceptable method. Wow.

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