You need to forgive yourself

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast. My name is Chris Albert. And if you haven't been here before, this podcast is for US military veterans. I do it to deliver tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help The US military veteran community to live their absolute best lives.

And obviously, if you're not a veteran, you could stick around because anything I talk about here is gonna apply to you too. What I wanna talk to you about today is a subject that has been very near and dear to my heart as of late, and that is self forgiveness. I can't tell you how important this is. And and you might say to yourself, well, hey. You know, I don't need this crap.

This sounds like a bunch of hippie dippie stuff. But I run into a I I talk to a lot of veterans every day. I talk to, a lot of people every day. And one of the biggest problems I see people run into is the idea of regret. Things they wish they'd done differently.

You know, things they wish they would have been better at. Things they wish they took advantage of when they were younger. And these things tend to haunt people. They carry them around like luggage or baggage or or some rock that they gotta carry around in their pack. I remember we used to do that as punishment.

Right? Carry carry around a rock. Right? But it's it's a big deal because you carry this stuff around with you. And essentially what happens is when good things start to happen in your life, you start to think back and you start to think about all the potential ways you're gonna screw it up just like you screwed it up the last time.

You do it in relationships, you do it in jobs, You do it with your family, with your friends, with your kids, and it is something that can be a serious detriment to you and your happiness as you move forward in life. And I'm gonna talk about the the one thing that is keeping you from that happiness, which is your inability to forgive yourself. Right? And in a lot of ways, you are the hardest person in your life to forgive. Now, let's play a little thought exercise here.

I bet no matter who you are listening to this show, at some point in your life, you forgave somebody. You might have forgiven your partner. You might have forgiven your parents. You might have forgiven a friend for doing something wrong. You might have forgiven, you know, somebody that you you an acquaintance.

Right? We are apt to forgive. And in a lot of ways, we have to be able to forgive other people to get forward in life. Otherwise, we're sitting there, we're plotting revenge, we're we're being vindictive, and we're not focusing on our own lives. But at some point, I'm willing to bet that that you caved in and and you forgave somebody, and that's a good thing.

You need to be able to forgive other people. But it's a lot more difficult to forgive yourself. Because when you get in a new situations, when you're you're dealing with difficulties, when you're running into things, you start saying things to yourself like, oh, I always screw this type of stuff up, or oh, I'm such an idiot, or oh, I'm such a loser. And you gotta remember something about your brain. Your brain transforms itself every day, every interaction you have with another person.

Right? This podcast you're listening to, every time you listen to it, there's something going on your brain where it's changing your chemical makeup. It's changing how you see the world. The people you surround yourself with, right, they say that you're the average of the five people you hang around with the most. They have a significant change on your brain.

Right? The amount of time you spend with your significant other. Right? That can have a huge impact on your brain. And the way you would talk to yourself can have a huge impact on your brain too.

If you're going around talking about yourself in your own head, talk talking about what a loser you are, talking about how you screw everything up all the time, talking about how you you you can't you just can't get ahead, you're going to continue to shoot yourself in the foot all the time. I had on Gary John Bishop, the author of a few great books, one of which was the book Unfuck Yourself. And in that book, he talks about how this negative self talk can absolutely destroy you. And, you know, you don't realize it. You don't realize the torture you're you're doing to yourself, how you're becoming your own worst enemy, and how you're changing your brain to stop seeing the possibilities in your life and to start focusing on everything that's bad.

So one of the things and and I think there's a really vital first step to changing things around in your life. One of the things you need to do right now is you need to forgive yourself. Right? You need to forgive yourself for your failings. You need to forgive yourself for the things you screwed up in your past.

And the reason you need to forgive yourself is because that's what's gonna lead to you being able to do better things in the future. Right? You gotta give yourself a clean slate. Now a lot of things are hard to get over if you seriously screwed up a relationship. Right?

If you seriously screwed up your career in some way, if you screwed up, you know, it a lot of people don't don't they won't forgive themselves for getting injured. I know people who served in the military, they got forced out in medical retirement and they had a hard time forgiving themselves just for being injured on the job. Right? No matter no matter what no matter what it that first step and you gotta forgive yourself because once you do that, you clear the slate for possibilities. And it's possibilities that move you forward.

Being able to see possibilities, being able to see what you can do better, being able to to commit to the process to work on yourself. You know what? Everything might not be good right now. You might not be be perfect right now at what you're trying to do in life. You might not have the skills necessary.

Right? You might not have the experience necessary. Right? You you the the key there is that you gotta realize that it's stuff that you have to work on. You have to go in with a white belt mentality.

And that's one of the things that really taught me about this was jiu-jitsu. Right? In jiu-jitsu, for the first couple years, you're getting your ass kicked by people who are a lot more experienced than you. Right? For at least the first six months.

Maybe you're some some whiz. But for me, I mean, it's it's years constantly getting tapped, constantly getting my ass kicked until, you know, I finally submitted to the process and I said, hey. You know what? I'm new here. I'm a white belt.

I'm here to learn. That's my job. So I don't care about getting tapped. I don't care about getting my face grounded in the mat. I don't care about losing during practice because every practice is gonna make me better.

And for you, everything you're doing out there in life, every experience you have, every time you try something new, that's you working on yourself to get better. And the more you do it, the better you're gonna get. The more you have experiences, the more experienced you're gonna get, and the more you're gonna allow yourself to move forward. But you can't do that until you submit to that and you say, you know what? I screwed up in the past.

Alright? Maybe I I fell short of my own ideals. But it's time for me to step up and to be a better human being, and I'm gonna do the work necessary in order to do that. You know, doing things like reading every day, doing things like learning vital skills, learning things like finance and accounting. Right?

Learning how to be a better leader. Right? Going out there and taking care of your body. Maybe you've got a weight loss problem. Right?

You're maybe you're too heavy right now. You know, whatever happened in the past, you've been eating fast food, change it today. Forgive yourself for what you did, and then change it today, and then say, you know what? I love myself to commit to making myself better. There is a lot of us who just constantly torture ourselves.

We've got this drill instructor going in our brain. Right? I know a lot of marines carry that around with them. The experiences they had in boot camp. They think that if they talk to themselves like that, they're going to they're going to to, you know, push themselves.

But the reality is you talk to yourself more than you talk to anybody else. That language you create in your brain, that's gonna affect you. And if you change that language for I'm such a loser and oh, I I never get anything done, or oh, everything bad happens to me, and you change it to, you know what? This is an opportunity to improve myself to get better, then there's gonna be a world that opens up for you. And I hope that you guys take that to heart.

I hope you implement it right here and right now. And I hope that you are putting everything you can into living your best life because this is the only life we got or at least the only life we know about. Right? So let's get after it, guys. I wanna thank all of you who've been sticking by this show for the past few years.

We are doing some amazing things. We've spoken to some amazing people, and my favorite part of it is the people whose lives that we change. So the only thing I ask from you for listening to this show, because I do it completely free, I don't get any revenue from this podcast. The only thing I ask is that you share this episode out. And the best ways of doing that, you know, sharing it over with a friend who you think could use this information, but also getting on iTunes and writing us a written rating and review.

It doesn't cost you anything. You're helping the show out. You're helping other people out. And, you know, I really really appreciate that. So with that guys, I wanna thank you so much for listening.

We'll be back at you next week with some more awesome content. And also, I forgot to say this because right now it's June 30 and I am recording it. But by the time you're listening to this, it's going to be the July 3. And I wanna wish you a very happy July 4. Alright?

There's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now. A lot of people questioning the value of America. And and one thing I wanna say is this, this country is special. It is a shining city on the hill just like Woodrow Wilson saw it, just like Ronald Reagan saw it. And I know a lot of people don't think that right now.

And I understand that The United States has made a lot of mistakes in the past, but there is no other country in the world that has made changes like The United States has. And, yes, there's a lot more that have to happen. But I don't look at us as different races. I don't look at us and maybe this is just my background from being in the Marine Corps. I look at us as a group of brothers.

Maybe we don't share the same opinions. Maybe we don't share the same same mentality about life. Maybe we don't come from the same backgrounds. But no matter what skin color you are, no matter what race you are, what religion you are, you've served this country. You are my brother and my sister.

Now don't forget about the ladies out there who've served this country. Alright? No matter what you've got going on in your life, this podcast is here for you, and this country is here for you. So, you know, I think that the more we work on ourselves, the better off this country's gonna be. And I have a a a big feeling that this community is the sleeping giant in this country and the the the force by which this country is going to maintain and achieve further greatness.

So thank you, guys. That's just a rant. I hope that made sense. I hate going on rants because sometimes I go off the rails, but, you know, whatever. I'm gonna stop talking now.

Happy fourth of July, everybody. I'll be talking to you again soon. This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul podcast, and I am out.