{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthe-foreseeable-now.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fforgiving-for-good-with-fred-luskin-1TpCekkQ","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Letting Go of Grudges, Freeing Our Hearts, and Forgiving for Good with Fred Luskin","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/656eb7c9-0635-41ed-bbee-e6d836add118/3be5ae86-5cc2-447c-88bb-dd3feefa5ca9/fl.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"We’ve all heard the phrase \"forgive and forget.\" We might negatively associate forgiveness with 'letting someone off the hook'. No wonder so many of us can feel so resistant to forgiveness. The truth is, the hook is in us. Not the other. \n\nDr. Luskin is the world's foremost authority on forgiveness. Which means he's a global expert on grudges, grievances, and gridlock. What's fueling our grievance stories and resentments? What's beneath the bitterness that turns our hearts, minds and bodies sour to life, to another, to the possibility of something better? \n\nDr. Luskin says that a grudge is an \"objection to the past.\" And holding onto grudges is a defense against our own vulnerability.\n\nIn today's episode, he explains that one of the negative effects of holding onto grudges, to our grievance stories, to our hooks, is that we're then \"constantly paying this pain forward\" in our lives, toward others, spilling over into every situation. Because we perceive that everything becomes related to our pain. \n\nSince we all have nervous systems so tuned to our built-in negativity bias, he says staying vigilant to threat means that \"our very basic perceptual mechanisms are constantly misperceiving things.\" \n\nIn that state, we perceive threat everywhere. And when we're stuck in that place, in that story, he says, we lose gratitude. Our capacity to even notice goodness and kindness around us. Our capacity to feel loving, to feel loved. And to love in return.\n\nDr. Luskin explains that, when we begin to realize that forgiving is not about letting go of who and what hurt us in the past, we realize we have \"infinite choice\" to free ourselves NOW, in the moment, from the pain and suffering caused by that hook inside us that keep re-wounding us as we try to move forward and can’t. \n\nIn this deep, direct, and paradigm-shifting conversation, we talk about the purpose and power of forgiveness, why we get stuck in our stories, and why grudge-holding is dehumanizing. We talk about the difference between grief and grievance, between forgiveness and reconciliation — how the impact of a very painful experience can be a rupturing of “something that we use in order to feel safe in the world.\" And why holding and harbor our grudges and resentments which become hazardous to our health. \n\nUltimately, forgiveness is a kind of resilience. Grieving and forgiving help return us to the very essence of what makes us feel human, alive, and capable of living healthy lives. \n\n*********\n"}