Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life (9 page)

Sometimes crappy things happen to us, and we don’t have the knowhow or the resources to prevent them. Sometimes we really
are
victims. The mistake is to internalize the situation and make it our fault:
I wasn’t good enough, smart enough
, whatever
enough, to make this person love me, to make that person stop hurting me, to make that person stop hurting themselves
. Sound familiar? And in many cases issues of self-loathing continue to haunt us in our adulthood, manifesting in the repetition compulsion we talked about in
Chapter 4
.

Fortunately, as you evolve through this self-exploration, you will be able to change these patterns by recognizing them and refusing to let them repeat in perpetuity. Instead you will take responsibility for your life
now
and make different, conscious choices that propel you in positive directions. You
can
free yourself
from the shackles of self-loathing, grow from your past hardships, and progress. But nothing can happen until you learn to forgive.

You MUST find a way to forgive the people who have wronged you. You may be thinking,
Sure, this all sounds very enlightened
. But you’re pissed, and you’re holding on to that anger because whatever asshole hurt or betrayed you doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Maybe you think forgiveness means condoning their behavior. Maybe you think your anger at the offender is their punishment, especially if no other punishment is forthcoming; forgiving the person would mean letting them get away with it. You may go so far as to seek retribution—“an eye for an eye” can certainly seem viscerally satisfying. But if you aren’t able to actually harm the other person, harboring anger at them can feel like the next best option. Holding a grudge can give you a strange historical sense of justice.

Here’s the thing, though: forgiving the asshole isn’t for their well-being, it’s for yours. If you can’t forgive the things that have been done to you—as a kid, as an adult, whenever—then you won’t be able to move on with your life. Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. Nor does it have to mean letting the person back into your life to hurt you again. It simply means healing the hurt that’s been done to you and continuing to pursue a prosperous, meaning-filled life.

The psychological, spiritual landscape of forgiveness is tough to navigate, but it’s a journey that yields powerful, permanent results. It will enable you to stop taking on other people’s issues and stop allowing their shortcomings to define who you are. You will understand that what happened to you wasn’t because of
your
limitations but because of the other person’s. For this reason, forgiveness comes when you are truly able to gain understanding and empathy for the person who hurt you.

Additionally, learning to let go will free you from the negativity that festers when you hold on to grudges and wounds from the past. Here’s a great analogy: soft tissue inflammation is helpful only in the first few days after an injury occurs. After that, if it’s
allowed to become chronic, it often causes even more damage than the original injury. In the same way, anger is an emotional defense mechanism designed to mitigate pain after a tragedy. It confers a sense of purpose and a motivation, and if there is one thing devastated people need, it is motivation. But anger is insidious, and if it’s allowed to boil without being processed and released, it can cause far more harm than the initial offense. Studies have shown that holding on to a grudge can result in depression, insomnia, fatigue, and even high blood pressure. Being angry, fighting with people, hating people, or otherwise feeling wronged drains our energy both physically and emotionally. When we can’t let go of anger, we are destined to relive the pains over and over again, allowing the hurts to wreak havoc on our lives. Holding on to a grudge can damage or strain your relationships, distract you personally and professionally from work and family, and inhibit your ability to open up to new things and new people. It basically robs you of experiencing the beauty of life as it unfolds.

GOT A GRUDGE?

When you open yourself up and embrace forgiveness, you release yourself from victimhood. You then can find psychological healing from past wounds, and your life can take on new, positive meaning. If you put old hurts in a context that helps you grow, rather than holds you back, you become unstoppable.

I’ve touched on this a little already, and if you have read any of my previous books, you already know it, but as a kid I had a
lot
of anger toward my dad. It took me years to forgive him; hell, it took me years to figure out I even needed to. Until I was in my early thirties, I figured he was a total bastard who deserved the anger and hostility I felt for him, end of story. I used my hatred of him to propel me toward success. I was going to become wealthier and more powerful than he was. I would show him. I would have the last word. But this anger was messing me up in many other areas
of my life, and ironically it sabotaged the very thing I had set out to achieve—professional success.

My anger really hurt me in my career. For years, I simply couldn’t tolerate a man telling me what to do, which proved to be kind of a problem. At work, I was replaying the dynamic with my father by fighting with my male bosses—constantly. Anytime I felt I was being treated unfairly or in a domineering manner, I acted out. It’s not okay to be treated poorly, but there are ways to handle things so that they turn out in your favor. I wasn’t following that rational course of action, and being a “charged” person in general, I pretty much told them all where to stick it. I got fired from two jobs because of it, and I’m convinced it’s the reason I wasn’t able to reach a deal with the producers at
Biggest Loser
for the third season.

So one day I was at my therapy session feeling particularly aggravated about the drama in my professional life, feeling sick and tired of constantly hitting the same wall. My shrink tried to tell me that until I could work through my issues with my father and forgive him, the pattern of self-sabotage that had me in its grip would continue. Naturally, because I was also playing out my father dynamic with my shrink, I argued with him. I told him he was crazy, that my father had nothing to do with my work, and anyway, how on earth was I supposed to forgive someone who had done so many awful things to my siblings and me? The things he told me, after I calmed down, literally changed my life.

He explained to me that the key to forgiveness lies in understanding that those old offenses that my father committed were
not
intended against me personally. Whatever was done to you wasn’t done because you deserved it, or because you were inadequate, but because the other person had limitations. My contestant’s dad was distant, not because of anything the contestant had or hadn’t done—not because of anything he was or wasn’t—but because his dad had grown up with distant parents himself and never really learned how to give or receive affection. He did the best he could with the tools
his
life experience had given him.

The same goes for my dad. He grew up in an environment that
didn’t equip him with the tools to help himself, let alone anyone else. Because of the way his parents raised him, he grew up feeling impotent and hating the side of him that was vulnerable and sensitive. As a result, when he had kids, he projected these insecurities onto us. “This is textbook stuff, all over the pages of psychoanalytic literature. The traumas of our parents that don’t get owned and worked out by them get unconsciously passed on to us, their children,” says Dr. Jo Ann McKarus, aka my mom.

It was worse for my brother, because he was a boy, and so my dad more closely identified with him. He was constantly berating him, telling him he would never amount to anything, that he was Peter Pan and would never grow up to become a man. The toll it has taken on my brother’s self-worth is devastating. But slowly I’m helping him understand that the things our dad did to him weren’t really about him at all—they were reflections of how our dad felt about himself.

We’re all mirrors that way, projecting and seeing the things we don’t like in ourselves onto other people, then blaming them or attacking them for it. If you don’t like feeling needy, you will particularly hate neediness in other people because it triggers
your
feelings of vulnerability.

Now you might think,
I am not needy, and that’s why I dislike it in others. I never cry. I’m John F’ing Wayne. I take care of myself and so should everyone else
. But if you pay attention, you will see that what you defend against so vehemently is the issue you are struggling with personally. You are so afraid of your own feelings of neediness that you bury them, repress them, and silence them—and then they creep out as projections onto other people. If you weren’t uncomfortable with feelings of neediness, you wouldn’t care when they express themselves in other people.

As I hope you realize, the pattern isn’t about being needy only. It’s about any issue that triggers your insecurity and that you defend against. It’s because you identify with a feeling on some level, and seeing it in other people triggers your negative reaction. This rule applies to everyone! I guarantee it. And the only way you
can stop the cycle is to become aware of your issues so you don’t project them onto other people.

Conversely, understanding that the same pattern applies to the people who have hurt you can bring peace. Whatever happened to you was really about their issues, insecurities, life experiences, or lack thereof, not your shortcomings or deficiencies. If you don’t come to terms with your issues, then you are doomed to repeat them. As my mom says, the issues get handed down from generation to generation.

My father was the youngest of three sons. He claims to have been nonexistent in his family, feeling that his parents negated and neglected him. They thought he was a “throwaway,” he told me, and they focused all their attention on their older sons and their daughter, the baby of the family. My dad was determined to prove his parents wrong and ultimately became a very rich man. His inner feelings of insecurity and worthlessness, however, never went away, because he never worked on them. Then when my brother was born, my father projected all those unresolved issues onto him. If my brother doesn’t come to terms with these feelings and resolve them within himself, he will most likely repeat this pattern with his son, and so on and so on.

It’s up to you to break the cycle, for your sake and that of your loved ones.

In some cases, we have to come to terms with the fact that we may be more evolved than our parents. I know, it feels slightly unnatural—they’re supposed to be the adults, they’re supposed to have all the answers, know all the pitfalls, be beyond all the mistakes. But most often they aren’t. Think of it like this. Imagine we are all computer operating systems. Sometimes your parents are Windows 95, and their parents were Commodore 64, but you’re OS X. And your kids will likely be something even newer, even better, something nanotechnological. Every generation builds upon the knowledge of the last, so it’s actually natural for us to end up more evolved than our parents, as painful as it might be to realize it.

There are, of course, exceptions—my mom is one of them. But
a lot of people I know end up as the adults in their relationships with their parents; although this scenario can be tough to take, once you accept it, it can also bring healing.

Most of our issues stem from childhood, but if you are holding on to feelings of being wronged by something that happened more recently, you must open your heart and chart the territory that needs to be covered for forgiveness to occur at a transformational level. When you are truly able to gain an understanding of the person or people who wronged you, then you will stop internalizing their demons and letting their issues destroy your self-esteem and self-worth. Know that a life filled with compassion is a life filled with peace and power, and that will benefit both your physical and your physiological health.

So this all sounds very Zen, right?
Understand, forgive, be compassionate, blah blah …
But how? Where to start? Forgiving can be so difficult, especially if the hurtful events you endured were ongoing and traumatic. For this reason, forgiveness will probably not come overnight. It will take time and patience.

COMMIT TO HEALING

Begin the process by making a commitment to heal; that is key. You do it by recognizing how pain and anger are sabotaging your happiness. Do your emotions keep you from being open with your loved ones? Do they drain you of valuable energy you need to focus at work? Do they create havoc for your physical health? Do they distract you from being productive?

Now stop for a moment and think about all the benefits that would come from forgiveness. Imagine how it would free you energetically and emotionally to pursue your dreams. Imagine how your relationships would improve. Imagine how your performance would be elevated at work. And so on.

Next, move on to understanding: not yourself this time, but the people who have wronged you.

Whether it’s a parent, a significant other, a nasty professor, a jerk boss, or whoever, start by trying to comprehend who they are. Then investigate and inquire as to why they are that way. For example, my dad was angry, bitter, and critical. When I looked back into his past, and examined the dynamic he had with his own parents, I was able to see where these patterns came from.

A contestant of mine was struggling with critical, judgmental parents. For years she believed that she was a “curse” and a disappointment to her family. When we took the time to look back at her parents’ lives and their childhoods, she was able to recognize that her parents came up in a very traditional, strict Chinese household. Her parents had never experienced much warmth or physical affection when they were growing up, so they had no point of reference or inclination of how to be affectionate and loving with their kids. By leaving China to come to the States, they had angered and disappointed their parents (my contestant’s grandparents). Her parents felt guilty for not living up to expectations. Then when they had children of their own, they projected those feelings of disappointment onto my sweet contestant; they would constantly berate her for not being “good enough,” because inside they didn’t feel good enough themselves.