Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
How to Forgive
Forgiveness is a liberating experience when done right.
But what is the right way to forgive someone? Listen to this episode to find out.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/free
self coaching tool PDF as promised.
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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Aftar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today, we're going to be talking about the topic of forgiveness Cool, isn't it? Well, for some of you, it might be described as a cool experience. For others not so much. For others it might be heavy, but I promise you, with the concepts you will learn in today's podcast, you will find them totally awesome, even life-changing, inshallah. So, according to Google, forgiveness is defined as a verb.
Speaker 1:Means to stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offense, flaw or mistake. Ha, right off the bat, we know that our feelings are in our control through our thoughts, so this should be super easy. All we have to do is to stop feeling angry and resentful towards someone in order to be able to forgive them. Sounds easy enough. Well, in theory and conceptually it might sound easy, when in reality, it's not that easy to do with actions. When you're feeling angry or bitter towards someone, you are the one experiencing these difficult emotions but, at the same time, hoping that the other person is being punished for what they did. A very common way this is described is that you're drinking the poison and hoping someone else gets hurt Again, a very good and dandy explanation when described in words. But how to actually practically apply it. When described in words, but how to actually practically apply it.
Speaker 1:I have told you guys that stress hormones and neurotransmitters cause the difficult emotions that are felt as sensations in our body, like resentment and bitterness. Like in the case that you would experience these emotions where you're unable to forgive somebody over the long run. These stress hormones and neurotransmitters are actually unhealthy for you. Most stress hormones are categorized under something called catecholamines and they're cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine. So just remember, while you're feeling extremely justified in your anger, feeling your anger, offense, insult only hurts you. The other person does not feel the effects of your negative emotion, no matter how strongly you feel it towards them. If you continue in this state over the long term, the neurochemicals responsible for these emotions are causing your body actual harm. We know catecholamines are associated with increased risk for hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, weight gain, and the list goes on with all of the non-healthy stuff. So maybe one thought you can borrow when you're trying to forgive someone is that you're not doing it for them, you're doing it for yourself. The longer you let these emotions linger, the longer your internal neurochemical state remains to be unhealthy, causing you measurable damage, not to mention taking a toll on your psyche, social and emotional life. Mention taking a toll on your psyche, social and emotional life.
Speaker 1:So why is it that some people can forgive easily and not others? And why is it that for us, as human beings, it's easy to forgive one person compared to another? Why is it that we're unable to forgive somebody, despite knowing that holding these grudges is unhealthy for us? And it is very well described in the tradition of Islam that forgiveness is the preferred way to deal with someone who has caused you harm. So why is it that we can't do it? But first I want to clarify that I'm not saying that you must forgive someone. I'm saying you can forgive them if you choose to do so, and these are the methods you can apply in your journey of forgiveness. I personally don't know what you should and should not be doing, and this podcast is not about how you must forgive someone and everyone in your life. This podcast is on how to forgive someone if you choose to do so, even with our mind intellectually understanding why we should forgive.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's difficult to do so, and no matter what your reason is. It could be that you want your psychological, emotional and physical health back. It could be that you want your social life back. No matter what your reason behind choosing to forgive someone is one universal reason. Why forgiveness becomes difficult is because we attempt to do it by negating and undermining our own experience.
Speaker 1:While you try to forgive someone while obliterating and erasing your own feelings, you will simply not be able to do it. Not only that, if you continue to forcefully insist on forgiving in the name of teachings of Islam, then you will turn it into a toxic trait, meaning it will actually become a detriment to your physical health. And that, unfortunately, is the reality for so many of my clients that come to me and tell me they are told they should be forgiving, but they just can't get themselves to do it. In the meanwhile, they're getting buried under the avalanche of their own experience that's going unnoticed and unacknowledged. My shame coach once said you cannot forgive from a place of erasing your own experience. You have to grieve your damage first.
Speaker 1:If forgiveness feels forceful, even if your reasoning is on the basis of teachings of Islam. If it feels like you're pushing it, then just understand. Somewhere along the way you've smothered your own feelings and that you're fighting them. In the meanwhile, your own feelings are trying to get some air, some acknowledgement. You might be doing all of this, thinking that you're doing yourself a favor by not acknowledging your difficult experience. You might tell yourself I'm trying to forgive, so why dig up old wounds? Your brain will justify not recognizing your emotions in all sorts of creative ways. But you're not doing yourself a favor. You're actually doing quite the opposite. You're making these negative emotions really big by suppressing them. That is the natural course of any physical sensation. The more you try and avoid and ignore it, the bigger and more intense it gets. The more you resist it, the more pressure it will create. But when you move into it, when you allow it, when you acknowledge your experience of hurt, anger, isolation, the more room it will have to vibrate through and it will create less pressure. Surprise, surprise.
Speaker 1:The secret to forgiving others is in the acknowledgement of your own self to the fullest and maximum capacity. Every person, before they can build a pure relationship with Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, they have to face the truth about themselves. You can't get to where you need to be if you don't face the truth about where you are now. So do not attempt forgiveness at the expense of your own inner truth, and that truth might be that you're not ready to forgive yet, that you're angry or that you're grieving Now. This comes with a warning. When I say face your inner truth, I'm not asking you to linger in negative emotions. I'm asking you to process them. I'm asking you to face the truth, not become the victim of the truth. There's a big difference.
Speaker 1:Forgiveness is often overused as a scapegoat to justify erasing your own experience, and if you use it for that reason, it will become toxic. It will wound you and you will use it to hurt other people. When you try to bury it, it will inevitably come out sideways on your children, on your elderly parents, on your colleagues or your spouse. And a lot of times, people suggesting forgiveness have a vested interest. Culturally, especially, women suggest that other women be more forgiving because the crime they're trying other women to forgive is still happening. Maybe it's misogyny, maybe it's the wage gap, maybe it's inability for a woman to be in the masjid board or, even worse, the inability for a woman to even access the masjid because there's no area for her to pray. If whatever injustice you're trying to forgive is still happening, people will have a tendency to tell you to forgive and forget it only because they don't know how to fix the underlying problem, and it will feel forceful because it is a problem and you feel strongly against all of these injustices.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're an ambitious woman, then the work of forgiveness you have to do will be more. When the social messaging is that women are made to bear children, keep a clean home, stay home and cook, this will create a lot of work of forgiveness for you because you are naturally inquisitive, adventurous and ambitious person. Adventurous and ambitious person versus if you have a long-term desire to be a homemaker. In this case, any societal messaging of being a stay-at-home mom and enjoy motherhood will be congruent with your values, in which case you have nothing to forgive. But in this case, if you have a desire to be a stay-at-home mom and the society tells you, or your husband or your parent or somebody close to you tells you, that women should be going out and financially contributing to the household income and proving their worth by providing and proving themselves in the workplace, your work of forgiveness will increase Either way. In any case scenario, the work will still be yours, not anyone else's, and in either case, your work will be different, especially if any type of incongruent messaging is coming from your husband or somebody that you're close to, versus your neighbor's cousin telling you that I mean the closer you are to a person, the higher the work of forgiveness. It will be more time and energy consuming in some cases than others, and that is the challenge of being in this life.
Speaker 1:Forgiveness is not hard because there is something wrong with you or that you're just built to forgive. With the right amount of mental work, you can forgive if you choose to. Like we just described, your work of forgiveness will be more in some cases and less in others. It will be more in the cases of trauma with a big T, with harm to the body, and might be less in the cases of trauma with a little T, although if you don't deal with the trauma with a little t, although if you don't deal with the trauma with a little t long enough, it will turn into a trauma with a big t.
Speaker 1:When I'm working with people to refine their process of self-coaching, I help them notice that initially clients will have a tendency to answer from their prefrontal cortex and give more refined answers, while in reality the problems they're coming to coaching with are being created by their lower brain. That are some deep-seated thoughts. At that point we make room for everything that comes up and eventually we get to more painful parts of the story. But sometimes it takes some time to get there. So a lot of times when my clients do self-coaching they don't understand why they can't see the problem, and it's because the brain keeps deflecting the reality of the painful story in the name of self-protection.
Speaker 1:When it comes to the work of forgiveness, you have to write the painful parts of the story so that when the full picture has revealed itself, you can actually work to change it. My recommendation to anyone who engages in the practice of self-coaching is, whenever you sit down to do it, just notice when the brain is playing the deflection game. If you find it hard to write the difficult parts, just hold yourself in compassion and let the ugliness of the thoughts come out Because, like I said, if you're forcing yourself to forgive without acknowledging the ugliness, without recognizing your own pain, it will be toxic and a source of great stress for you, Not to mention you will not be able to forgive, and this happens to me in live group coaching all the time, where clients will start with a problem, but in the initial stages it will be all about how nothing is actually a problem, how they're grateful that they have money, but the coaching is actually about a husband who gives them $100 a month in allowance. Brain deflects the pain of feeling like they have to beg him for money. It deflects the pain of feeling like they have to beg him for money. It deflects the pain of this dependence that's created for them, Because they always start out by saying my husband is really good to me, he is a really good father, as if they told me about their pain, I will tell them to leave their marriage. That is not my call, that is your call as a client. But because of this deflection that the brain creates, it takes so much longer to get to the problem. I don't mind, I take the time to peel the layers, but I mention this because this deflection bit is probably what's happening if you tried self-coaching and it doesn't work, especially when it comes to your work of forgiveness.
Speaker 1:So, just as a review, self-coaching is a process where we use our higher observational part of the brain to reflect on our lives. What results are we creating and what thinking are we engaging in? This is a written exercise because self-reflection done in the mind is difficult to observe. You are thinking in the mind and you're trying to observe your thoughts in the mind. This is very hard to do, especially as a beginner, because the brain will present everything as a fact and you will feel you're just observing the facts. My method of self-coaching is in the free pdf on my website, which I will link in the show notes. I highly, highly recommend that you do this process because it is truly life-changing. So in the self-coaching, write things down, observe them on paper.
Speaker 1:Don't avoid the painful parts. Acknowledging your hurt doesn't actually hurt you, but keep burying it and ignoring it will hurt you. At least come to this work with this basic understanding. If you feel the process of healing is unsafe and it feels scary, the process of keeping it in is more unsafe. A basic test of if you have forgiven someone or not is, for me personally, it becomes very clear if I've completely forgiven someone by the extent of du'as I'm able to make for them. This is a great litmus test for me to see if I'm holding any resentment or grudges. When I sit down to make heartfelt Dara and I see that I'm unable to do it for a certain person, then I know I have some forgiveness work to do. And again, making heartfelt Dara for other people does not have to be forceful because, like anything else, if you don't believe what you're saying, it will turn into toxicity.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I'm able to seek abundance and riches for the other person. Sometimes all I can muster up is may Allah guide them, and not like in a teeth-clenching way, but in a genuine, meaningful way. Notice, if you're making dua with resignation Alright, I made dua, now, leave me alone. Or if you're doing it from fortitude I'm not quite able to forgive them now, but I'm trying my best. I'm trying to get there. May Allah give me guidance, courage and the means to be able to make genuine and heartful dua for this person in the future, this person who has hurt me.
Speaker 1:You know very well at the somatic level what is true to you. Whatever level of Dua you are able to make, just keep checking in with your body when you feel open and spacious at the visceral level. That is the Dua you want to keep making. It doesn't matter if, at the intellectual level, you think your Dua is inconsequential, if it has the energy of your heart behind it, it will be more powerful than if you're making a dua that you don't quite believe and do not under any circumstance forgive someone at the expense of your own feelings. That way, you will have to deal with two levels of injury One that is caused by the person you're trying to forgive and the other one that is caused by you.
Speaker 1:Be creative in your thinking along your journey of forgiveness. Things like I'm trying to find ways to forgive I acknowledge that I have not forgiven yet. I am thinking I'm unable to forgive, with emphasis on the understanding that forgiveness and non-forgiveness are thoughts that you're having, rather than identifying too closely as a person who cannot forgive. Also, thoughts like I believe I will be a better person, liberated from my own bitterness, when I'm able to find forgiveness. I firmly believe Allah SWT will make this path of forgiveness easy for me.
Speaker 1:On a personal level, I truly believe anyone we're trying to forgive was sent as a curriculum so that we could discover our personal method of forgiveness, because our evolution through that journey makes us the person that we are today. Through this curriculum, we can learn to be successful at anything, because it is a meta skill that we learn. And don't think there's something wrong if your sole intention behind forgiveness is to improve your own emotional state. That is not selfish. That is actually a very advanced goal. That does not make you selfish. That actually makes you selfless, because when you're feeling better, then you can contribute to other people around you. With that. I pray that may Allah SWT purify our intentions behind our forgiveness. May Allah make this journey easy for all of us and make us firm believers because of this curriculum, because of the people he has strategically placed in our lives. May Allah SWT reward all of you many fold for this work. Please keep me in your adhraas. I will talk to you guys next time.