The Power of Forgiveness: A Journey to Growth & Empowerment | Part One

What if the person you refuse to forgive doesn't even think about you?

Most of us carry grudges like they're protecting us from something. Like holding onto anger is a form of justice. But here's the truth nobody wants to hear: The only person you're punishing is yourself.

What This Episode Explores

George and Liz dig into what forgiveness actually is, who it's really for, and why refusing to forgive others might be costing you more than you realize. This is Part 1 of a two-part series on forgiveness. Next week: forgiving yourself.

The Lessons That Matter

Forgiveness Isn't About Letting Them Off the Hook

George has talked to a lot of people about forgiveness over the years. The reaction is almost always the same.

"I've talked to people who feel like forgiveness is about the other person," he says. "They feel like it's a weakness. That you're letting someone off the hook. Why would I let them off the hook? They did me wrong."

But here's what George wants everyone to understand: The person you're refusing to forgive doesn't think about the thing you think about. They haven't drank the poison you've drank. They don't carry the weight you carry.

"You are not doing anything bad to them by not forgiving them," George says. "You're only doing bad to yourself."

He describes two mental images that capture what unforgiveness does to us. First: a heart locked inside a metal box. Bulletproof. Impenetrable. The core of who you are, trapped away where nothing can reach it.

Second: a person trying to carry four or five suitcases and two or three briefcases. Hunched over. Barely able to take a step. Refusing to set any of it down.

"You are becoming your own jailer," George says. "You are putting your heart in a metal box, and you're locking it away."

For you: Who are you refusing to forgive right now? And how much is that costing you?

From Wanting to Punch Him to Wanting to Thank Him

George tells a story that captures how dramatically forgiveness can change you.

For years, he hated his math teacher. This was the teacher who told him in front of the entire class that he would never amount to anything. George became a high school dropout because of those words. He let them burrow into places they never should have gone.

"There was a good 10 year period that if somebody asked me if I could go back and talk to my math teacher, what would I say to him? My answer would have been, I wouldn't say a word to him. I'd just punch him in his face."

The shift started at Faith Ranch when a ranch hand named Arden asked George if he was looking for the perfect church. George said yes. Arden said, "Well, when you find it, don't go there because you'll ruin it. Because you're a human."

That story cracked something open.

"I was like, oh, we're all human," George recalls. "We all do wrong things. We all probably say things out of haste. And so I started to think, well, wait a minute. If I want other people to forgive me, if I want other humans to realize I'm just a human, then I should probably treat these other humans like they're humans too."

Over a couple of years, George went from wanting to punch his math teacher to wanting to thank him.

"There's a dramatic chasm, a very wide canyon between you wanna punch somebody in the face and you would thank them," he says. "And what's funny is the only thing that changed was my heart. The only thing that changed was my perspective. The only thing that changed is the way that I looked at how my hatred, my unforgiveness was affecting me."

For you: Is there someone you've been carrying hatred for who doesn't even know they're living rent-free in your head?

The Science Says Forgiveness Zeroes Out Stress

Liz shares research from the American Psychological Association that stopped her cold.

Scientists measured lifetime stress and mental health outcomes between people who scored high on forgiveness and those who didn't. As expected, people with greater levels of accumulated stress showed worse mental health outcomes.

But here's what they didn't expect: Among the subset of volunteers who scored high on measures of forgiveness, high lifetime stress didn't predict poor mental health at all.

"We thought forgiveness would knock something off the relationship between stress and psychological distress," one of the scientists said. "But we didn't expect it to zero it out."

George connects this to his own life. The research also showed that forgiveness is linked to reduced anxiety, depression, fewer physical health symptoms, and lower mortality rates.

"I wanna lengthen my life," George says. "Life is getting pretty good. I'd like to live a little bit longer. So does that mean I need to forgive a little bit more?"

Then he gets real. About five years ago, George was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune deficiency. Reading this research, he started to wonder.

"Did the 10, 12, 15, 20 years of combined unforgiveness, frustration actually cause things inside of me that I would have never connected together unless I read this research? I don't know, but this is where my brain went."

For you: What might unforgiveness be costing you physically? What would you do differently if you knew holding grudges was shortening your life?

Forgiveness Doesn't Mean Reconciliation

Liz adds a critical distinction that often gets lost in this conversation.

"Forgiveness does not require us to provide absolution," she says. "It is not the same as justice, nor does it require reconciliation."

She shares her own experience. Growing up in an abusive household, she had to work through a lot of trauma. And she's learned that you can come to a place of empathy and understanding without letting someone back into your life.

"A former victim of abuse shouldn't reconcile with an abuser who remains potentially dangerous," she reads from the research. "But the victim can still come to a place of empathy and understanding. Whether I forgive or don't forgive isn't going to affect whether justice is done. Forgiveness happens inside my skin."

This matters because some people avoid forgiveness thinking it means they have to become best friends with someone who hurt them. It doesn't.

"You can forgive as a solitary act," Liz says. "You can do that on your own. You do not have to make a big show of it. It can just be something that you do for you so that you can move on."

For you: Is there someone you need to forgive but have avoided because you thought it meant letting them back in? What if forgiveness was just for you?

The Forgive But Don't Forget Myth

George has something to say about a phrase people love to use.

"I can forgive, but I don't have to forget." He pauses. "I gotta call bullshit. Like, I just gotta call it bullshit."

Here's why.

"That's the whole point of forgiving is kind of wiping the slate clean. Forgetting about historical injustice. Loving them for the human that they are. Being able to show up as your best self for them."

The problem with keeping even a small flame burning is that it can fuel up in seconds.

"The next time you've let that little 0.1 percent sit in your brain and they do the smallest of things that shouldn't make you feel or do any certain sort of way, all of a sudden there's a damn forest fire in your brain again. And it's because that spark took fire because you didn't extinguish it completely."

Now, this doesn't mean putting yourself in the same circumstances that caused the initial harm. You learn the lesson. But the lesson has nothing to do with the forgiveness of the thing that taught you.

For you: Are you holding onto a small flame for someone you claim to have forgiven? What would it take to extinguish it completely?

Quotable Moments

"You are not doing anything bad to them by not forgiving them. You're only doing bad to yourself."

"The only thing that changed was my heart. The only thing that changed was my perspective."

"If I want others to forgive me, but I'm not willing to forgive others, if I wanna live a life tenderhearted and forgiving, but I'm the dam, the stopgap... this is where a lot of people sit."

Your Next Move

George offers a set of questions to ask yourself when you're struggling to forgive. These aren't theoretical. These are tested.

Was it really all that I thought it was? Replay what happened. Look at it from the outside instead of just your internal reaction.

What had happened earlier in that day? What set you up to have the mental reaction you had? Were you already running on empty?

What part did I play? This is the hardest one. But it's where the growth lives.

How could I have responded? Play out scenarios of how you want to respond in the future. This is where you reprogram your knee-jerk reactions.

And if you want to sum it all up in one question: How did we get here?

The discomfort of answering honestly is temporary. The freedom on the other side is permanent.

Ready to hear the full conversation? Press play above. George shares the complete math teacher story, the research that made him question whether unforgiveness contributed to his autoimmune condition, and the moment that cracked open his ability to let go.