S10E9: WHY SHOULD WE FORGIVE?

0:00 Hello, beautiful survivors, how are you? This is Karina, the host and creator behind this Top five podcast. The show is all about moving forward past the events of this joke. It's about you reclaiming your life and your identity. Gain that normality that you've been craving for for the last little while. Well, 27 years ago, I personally survived a brain stem dissection that led me to coma Interlochen syndrome. So here in the podcast, I share everything that I have learned throughout these 27 years that helped me survive the world as a survivor and realize my life isn't over. Life has only begun.

0:47 Grab yourself a drink, a pen and paper because today we're going to be talking about forgiveness. But before we officially commence the show, I would like to remind you of a couple of things. First of all, you can download the episode. That way you can sit back and relax and listen, or you can go back to it when you're in your own rehabilitation. I also want to remind you to share the podcast, share with the world.

1:17 The more people that know it, the more the algorithm puts it in the forefront and the more we help people all around the world, and that is the mission of the show. The best way that I personally found to help myself is by helping others. Now at season 10, I realize how much good you guys have done to me, so it's only normal that I want to pay it forward. The other night I was on a platform and I was talking with some people and the subject came up that we talked forgiveness. Some were all for it and some were like no way Jose. And it got me to thinking why do we forgive and why do we not forgive?

2:13 Well, in today's episode, I am not going to be giving you the pros and the cons because ironically, the cons is what is going to make you want to start forgiving people and forgetting forgiving things, events, things that hurt you. You know when we don't forgive. Let's start with that guys. When we do not forgive, what happens is that you stay stuck to the other person. You stay stuck to the other event, you stay stuck to that bitterness.

2:59 So when we don't forgive, we stay stuck. And it's basically when you decide to forgive, you are saying, hey, this particular thing is no longer getting to run my nervous system. A lot of people that have stroke also have a heavy baggage, either a baggage of generational trauma, things that happen in life back-to-back.

3:38 The nervous system is shot already after stroke, everything is dishuffled. So you don't need to carry that burden of anger, of bitterness, of not forgiving. I don't know about you, but I've had a lot of forgiving to do myself, and had I not done it, I would still be where I was 10 years ago. I'm also going to give you an idea. You know, when we have a scab on top of a wound, that scab is a form of protection for that wound, and underneath it, the skin is rebuilding itself.

4:34 It's healing now. If you keep reopening, you keep scratching that scab, the wound is never going to heal. So basically, when you do not forgive, you are constantly reopening that wound and you're never going to heal. And I want to tell you something, you know that I graduated NLP, which is neurolinguistic programming.

5:11 And a part of the course was to understand how the mind works. Well, in regards to what I just said, reopening the wound, the mind has no notion of time. It doesn't know if something happened 5 minutes ago or 20 years ago. So what happens is that every time you go back in your mind and you reopen that wound, you don't forgive and you relive the event or the person or all that stuff, all that good stuff, you relive it. When you relive it, because the mind doesn't know when it happened, your body, your nervous system reacts in such a way that is exactly the same as back then. I don't know about you, but it's not a very good feeling. You know, when it's time to heal. It also helps with acceptance.

6:28 And I talked to a lot of people in the community of stroke survivors, and I will say in the top 2 is acceptance. People, survivors everywhere in the world have a very hard time accepting. Accepting of what is, never mind not liking it. But accepting means that you realize that's how it is right now, not forever, right now.

7:04 So when you don't forgive, it means that you don't accept other people's immaturity and imperfections. I get a summer diabolical. I know I'm not. I'm not going to tell you my story because today is not about that. But I know about diabolical, but I also know that when I started forgiving, I started understanding that it's their problem, it is a their problem, it is not a me problem. And I realized that maturity has nothing to do with age. Maturity has to do with understanding, having compassion.

8:01 Forgiveness is also maturity. So when you stop reopening that wound and you start accepting what happened in life in the past or the stroke happened, you can bitch, cry and complain all you want, but the fact is you're not going to not have a stroke, right? The stroke happened. I know I'm going to get a lot of heat for this.

8:36 I know a lot of people are going to be really upset that I say that. Please don't realize that when I say this, it comes from a place of compassion, empathy, understanding and love. I've been there guys, I'm still there. I'm entering after 27 years. I'm entering a whole new phase of woo boos 'cause I was 25 when I had my stroke and now I'm 52. My body is not the same.

9:10 It's almost as if I have the stroke all over again because it took me a while to accept and roll with the punches like you say, and move forward. But once I started moving forward, Oh my gosh, there was no stopping. And the same is going to happen to you when you decide, when you decide that things are no longer going to run you.

9:46 You are running your life. You are running your mind. You are running. You are deciding who is in your life and who is not, who's the actors and who are the people in the background. You decide that you have that power again. I know that when we have a stroke, we and we, we, we survive it. Rather we start wondering, can I say that can I do this?

10:23 We, we, we have this lack of self-confidence and everything seems to be can I, should I? And I'm here telling you that yes, you can, absolutely. When you decide to forgive, you never forget. Never. But when you decide to forgive, you do it for your own peace, your own Peace of Mind, your own sanity, and at the end, your own safety, your emotional safety. You remember at the beginning of this, I talked about your nervous system and then I talked about how the mind has no notion of time.

11:15 And every time you reopen that wound that you go back in, in the past, you relive the same, the exact same in your nervous system, in your body. But when you decide to forgive, you never forget and you can start talking about stuff, but you also notice that you're going to have freedom. You are going to have the freedom of how you feel.

11:45 And when we don't forgive, it's because we don't want to relinquish control. I don't know about you, but I choose freedom over control anytime. And on another point, I'm going to go over this one. I know that we all pretty much know at least one person in the world that has become the hurt. They have so much to forgive and so much pain inside and so much hurt.

12:26 They have become that hurt and they have become addicted to XY and Z things when people don't deal with their shit. I tried to put my stuff behind. It came back to bite me in the ass guys. So I said OK, either that or I deal with it and I move on. That's what I personally chose. So if you don't want to become that hurt, if you don't want to become that toxic person that perhaps you don't want around you anymore, if you don't want to become that, maybe just consider forgiveness. Guys, this is what I have for you. I hope that you enjoyed.

13:24 I hope that you took a few, a few bites of what I mentioned and maybe you're gonna implement it into your life. Know that I love you immensely. I'll ask you again to download the episode and to share, to like, follow and love yourself. That being said, I will see you very soon. Bye.