Forgiveness is more than just letting go of the past it’s a vital step toward healing and personal growth. Holding onto negative emotions like guilt, shame, and anger can have lasting effects on both mental and physical health. By learning to forgive not only those who have wronged us but also ourselves, we free ourselves from the weight of resentment and self-blame. Understanding the lessons from past experiences, rather than simply forgetting them, allows us to move forward with clarity and strength.

Developing self-forgiveness is often the hardest part, as people tend to hold onto their own mistakes longer than they do the wrongs of others. Without a structured approach to addressing past pain, the cycle of stress and self-doubt continues. Seeking guidance from a coach or therapist can help uncover blind spots, reshape perspectives, and create strategies to prevent repeating harmful patterns. True healing comes from both emotional release and actionable change, leading to a healthier, more fulfilling life.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – Introduction & Sermon Reflection

01:50 – The Power of Forgiveness & Letting Go

03:22 – The Importance of Self-Forgiveness

05:06 – Breaking the Cycle of Negative Emotions

06:37 – Therapy & Coaching for Forgiveness

08:15 – Why People Struggle with Forgiving Themselves

11:49 – Unforgiveness & Its Impact on Health

12:42 – Final Advice & Call to Action

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. One of the reasons I love going to the St. Andrews is because Arthur always throws out some really great things to think about, um, so the, the, so Arthur was preaching about forgiveness, uh, on Sunday yesterday and, uh they made a lot of great points, the idea of forgiving those around you, forgiving, you know, uh the people, we went back to the talents, there was a, there's a parable about how, um a guy for that this King forgives this guy's debt. And then that guy didn't forgive somebody else's debt. And so it turns in this big, huge deal, even though the King, you know, allowed it allowed that his debt, which was massive to go, and the guy didn' allow the small debt to go. And so I created a problem. And we kind of go back to the idea of, you're forgiving those who have wronged us and stuff like that, which is great. And this is one of those big things that we really need to work on. When we hold these, all the emotions that around forgiveness. are negative. So you're talking about guilt. You're talking about shame. You talk about anger. You talking about, you know, all they're all negative and holding those things on is really, really damaging to the body long term. Um, and so this is one of those things that we have to start to have learned how to forgive. This is a big deal in NLP is one of the reasons I love NLP, is it teaches you ways to actually relieve, get rid of these negative emotions, fear, hate, anger, guilt, sadness, you know, those are the things or you release them. And it's really, really cool, like really fast way. You can it's called a gestalt. You can forgive yourself and forgive everything all the way very back to what's up, Jeff, all the way back to the very beginning of when you were two or three. And it is fantastic.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:50] Forgiving the people who have done you wrong is really great. That doesn't mean you have to forgive the lesson. Forget the lesson if you realize, hey, I can't trust this person. Um, so. I'm not going to, in the future, trust this person, but I'm going to forgive what has happened so I can move on. Super important. You don't want to ever tie yourself back to position. Um, and so a hundred percent, you know, there's a whole list of people that we need to make sure we forgive for all the transgressions that happen, you X wives and husbands and parents and brothers and sisters and all of those people, bosses, you know, maybe people in the government. No, you got to learn how to forgive everything and everybody. But the number one thing, and he didn't really get into this, the number one, the thing that I would say is the most important is we have to learn to forgive ourselves. Um, and this is one of the biggest things that people don't really go into, like they'll talk about, you know, the damage that happened from your, your parents and your parents did this thing, or they said this thing and it really hurts you and you should forgive them because you know their people and all these jazz and you shut like there's as a parent, I know I've, I've said things to my kids and walked out and been like damage. Um, or I looked back at it later and been like, man, I wish I would have known this now and how wouldn't have done that then. Um, but again, you know, you're human, which I think, I think personally being a parent has allowed me to forgive my parents for all of the stuff they did really easily. Cause I'm like, Oh man, like they didn't have the information. They didn't know the education and they did a great job. There were still some things and I forgive them for this. Um,.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:22] I don't want to have to wait for my kids or 30 something before they realized that, uh, we were doing the best job we could. but... learning to forgive yourself is going to be probably the biggest thing that you're going to have to learn to do because you know all the ins and the outs of the reasons why you did the things you did, but you still, you know, hold on to that. You know, you still hold on to the guilt. You still hold onto the anger. You still hold under the hurt of the things that have happened. And this is a big deal. Like we, this is one of the major things because people forgive horrible things that other people have done to them. And they're like, I get it. You know, there are human beings and this and that. For instance, a great example of this, and we see this a lot because they deal with this more than I want to. Um, I will always help people with it. It's just something that's terrible that I have to deal with a lot. Um, rape. It's amazing to me how quickly women will forgive their attacker and how long it takes for them to forgive themselves. And that's, you know, you might be like, Oh no, that's crazy. No, that that's that's where it is. Like they will, they harbor this, this internal, they did something wrong. This wouldn't have happened had I not. drank this thing or worn that thing or gone to this place or put myself in this position, you know, like, and you can argue, okay, yeah, you share some responsibility, but you weren't the one who attacked you until the forgive that person, because every works on that forgive you have to forgive the person. And again, not arguing the need to forgive that person to move on, which you've really got to forgive yourself. The biggest thing that you got to do is be able to move from the things that you've done to yourself because you don't get to live with anyone but yourself. And so that's one of those big things when we work on within LP. One of the things you do is you go back and you start breaking all of these negative emotions. It's called the five negative emotion release.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:06] And as you're doing that, you're starting to recognize that the people who hurt you the most are you and the people who are continually hurting you the, most memories of the stuff you've not forgiven yourself for. So, you know, this is one of the those things that if you haven't started to think of all the things that cause you problems, you know, cause when, when people start running out of money, like They start blaming other people, but they also blame themselves at the end of the day, like when you really break it down, they're mad at themselves for doing all these things. Well, you can forgive the other people pretty easily, but you got to forgive yourself when a relationship falls apart, you know, at the, end of day, people are like, well, I can't be loved. I'm not good enough for this or that or whatever it is. Like when you're really boil it down and you really, you know, break everything apart. People recognize that they, they share where they hold a burden of a problem and sometimes it's hyperinflated. Like I said, with the rape thing. What we should be focusing on doing is yes, we need to forgive the people who have wronged us. We need to learn the lesson. We need make sure we can move on from that. We need, make sure that we don't replicate that same thing by, you know, dating the same type of people or doing business deals with the same type of guys or, you know, maybe learn to do more due diligence. There's lots of lessons to be learned in that, but appreciate the lesson and forgive the person. But the number one thing we've got to learn to do is forgive yourself. And there's lots of different ways that we can go through doing this, you know, psychotherapy or talk therapy works. I just think it takes a long time. Um, now psychotherapy and coaching, I think it's phenomenal for your everyday stuff, because things are going to come up on your daily life that you either need to bounce off somebody else or, you know, work with.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:37] And that's one of the greatest things about having a coach or having a therapist or something that who you can trust and kind of understands what's going on is you can be like, here's the issue. Here's something about doing, what do you see the upsides and downsides on that? Um, because obviously those people are, they understand you. They understand the way that you think. And most importantly is that they understand your blind spots. And so they can be like, have you thought of this? Have you thought about this? And have you though of this and a lot of times people are like, Nope. Didn't think about that. And what's funny is that like lots of times when people bring those to you, it's the same stuff they keep missing because our filters are built in a specific way where we create blind spots a lot at a time, or we have a limiting belief that doesn't allow us to see certain things. And so this is all deep in the site. But that's why it's important to have somebody on a regular basis that you can talk to and bounce ideas off of. Doing that's really important, but if you don't forgive yourself for the things that you have done, if you don't start forgiving the people who have wronged you, you're going to get yourself into this perpetual cycle of just anger and animosity and hate. Um, you know, this comes back to the whole vengeance, you know? Quote the, uh, you, he, who, uh you know I can't remember the whole quote, but it's something like, you now, he who deems, you to do wrong to others, you know, or to get revenge needs to dig two graves, one for his opponent and one for himself. You know, or, you know, holding animosities, like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. Um, that's a hundred percent true. So being able to decide I'm going to forgive these people is great. And you should a hundred per cent strive to do that. And that's very, very important. But the other thing is that we need to start to recognize, we need to start forgiving ourselves through a lot of this stuff as well. Um,.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:15] That's probably the biggest issue that I have seen people have a hardest issue with because I don't know, like, I know we talk about, I know I've seen people talk about it. That's one of those things that I would, that we didn't talk about, you know, Arthur didn't really mention in the sermon, but I would tell you is probably the biggest thing that I see people have the hardest time with, uh, because they, they, they see themselves, they see the faults. And I think a lot of times what happens in your body is that you have this issue and it hurts you. And the reason you won't forgive yourself is because you have not built a structure, a support system or a program or a plan to not have that same hurt happen again. And so what are the, one of the most important things is that again, not just forgiving, but learning the lesson of the issue so that you don't get hurt again, is one of those things you need to do to make sure that you can properly move on. And so again, this is why with the therapist or with a coach or something like that, you can sit down and you can be like, okay, this is really what happened. This is really the core of the. This is what hurt me and why it hurt me. How do we formulate a new program, a new plan, a new programming? depending on your terminology, your lexicon, so that this doesn't happen again. How can I safeguard myself from this happening again? Once you kind of get a really good plan in place, then you can move on. Like when you do deals and some of these screws, you're like, okay, what's your vetting process? Well, you know, I know you need to create a vetting process. Like we have one with the doctor group and the athlete group where we vet companies very specifically on the group. And then we don't look at what you're selling. We look at the group that's doing it. And we look at the structure of the company to make sure that everything's square there. And so a lot of people who usually do these deals and get screwed. They can, we can find red flags ahead of time. When you're starting to date somebody, where you're starting to move through something and you keep getting struck on these things, it's like, okay, what is your process? Where can we find the possible flaws in your process and where can we create new processes so that we avoid the flaws in your past, you know, this is one of those things that it was really, really important.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:21] And then once you've kind of developed this, this new guide, this new program, this way of running, it's a lot easier to forgive yourself because you're like, okay, I had a problem. I assess the problem, whether you do it by yourself or you do it with a coach, I'd highly recommend you do with the coach. You cannot see your blind spots. That's why they're called blind spots, so do it with the coach, do with a therapist, you know, figure out your blind spots, figure what's going on and then create new plans, new goals, new structures, new strategies to attack this same thing. Otherwise you're going to go into the same problem. With the same scope, the same program, you're going to get the same results. He's time, you know, this goes back to Einstein's quote about how, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's it. And so if you have a pattern of, you can't forgive yourself for the deals you're doing or the relationships you're getting in or the way you treat people or this or that, well, you need to go back and find and create new process and figure out what in the process, what your programming is not working, right? Reset it, do something different. And then go through and program that through and be like, okay, it was 20% better. Great. Where's the fault now? Oh, it's over here. Fix that. Now it's 60% better, great. Now you can start finding the people that you need to be in a relationship with, whether it's business, whether it was personal, whether it romantic, doesn't matter. You can start doing those things a little bit better. And then you can understand the strengths and weaknesses you have and start to fix those things. That's when you can actually forgive yourself. So a lot of this stuff is...

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:49] You can look at it as a self-defense mechanism of why you don't forgive yourself, but we still need to do it. You still need forgive yourself. You cannot move on. You're gonna have, again, this poison that eats away at you. And this is when we start talking about emotional trauma that is linked to cancer and links to heart attacks and strokes. This is the stuff we're talking about. Like I did a bunch of radio interviews about stress and how sometimes stress can be good for you. And they were talking about intermittent fasting and cold bludges and exercise and HIIT training, like those short bursts of the that type of stuff that that stress is good for you. And they're like, well, what stress is bad? And I was like, the stress that's killing you is the stuff that you worry about every day, the things that are bothering you all the time. You know, the thing's like, I can't get in a good relationship. I keep getting into business deals, I get sideways. You know? I keep doing these things that are problematic or the things you worry about all the times, those are the things you got to go back through and figure out. OK, and you got work with a coach on this.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:42] It's just you can do it by yourself. It's possible. It's highly unlikely. work with somebody who can see your blind spots and be like, have you thought about X, have you though about Y? Like go through and kind of break these things down. Otherwise you're gonna get yourself in a cycle where you cannot get out of it. You're gonna keep having these things happen and you're not gonna be able to forgive yourself because inside in your subconscious, you know you've done nothing to protect yourself. So find a therapist, find a coach, find somebody who does this stuff on a regular basis. It's a highly recommend that but work on forgiving yourself. You'll live a lot longer. Your quality of life will be higher. You know, it's just gonna be a much, much, much better option. So. If you guys have any questions, ask questions@ChalmersWellness.com or drop us in the DMs. Thanks for your time.

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Dr. Matt Chalmers

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