305 Joanna Hennon + Holly: How to Forgive, Even When You Don't Want To

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

Joanna Hennon and I are back with another co-hosted episode! Today, we talk about forgiveness: why it’s important and how it can help us in our lives. This is a topic that one of us was a bit resistant to explore, but it came out great in the end, and I think you’ll find it very useful.

More About Joanna Hennon

Joanna is a #SoulSmart Success Mentor – she helps people to easily create more success by using the wisdom and power we all have access to at soul level. Living life from a place of soul power, in tune with your higher self and your Guides, and using the Law of Attraction with intention will literally change your life! To get started, grab one of these free resources.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

What is forgiveness
Is forgiveness important? Or is it BS?
Why we sometimes have trouble doing the soft, emotional work
What’s the purpose of forgiving?
Does forgiveness actually help us move on?
Who/what we can forgive: ourselves, other people, situations, etc.
Examples of things/people we might need/want to forgive
How to know when/who to forgive – what are the signs?
Why forgiveness work can be helpful to release old patterns
How you can reframe the concept of forgiveness using other language
How to do forgiveness when you have resistance
How to forgive when you really don’t want to
Do we always need to do “forgiveness work?” – how to know when it’s needed and when it’s not
How to journal to get clarity on what/who you might need to forgive – and what questions to ask
Why you need to make space for the work
Why this is all about choosing a different reality for yourself
Forgiving doesn’t mean condoning bad behavior
Forgiveness is for us, not for the other person
Why the other person doesn’t even need to know you forgive them
Don’t use it as an excuse not to feel human emotion – bypassing

Things We Discussed

PSYCH-K®
Ho’oponopono

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 305. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Joanna Hennon. Today we are going to talk about forgiveness. Now this is a topic we had come up with at the end of our last episode together and when we started kind of fleshing out the bullet points for today’s episode, Joanna had a lot of resistance to it. And if you are one of those people who also has resistance to doing forgiveness work, I invite you to stay on and listen to this episode. It is really useful I think to consider why we might have resistance to something and how these things can actually really help us move forward in life.

So, what are you going to learn on this week’s episode? We are going to talk about what is forgiveness? What does it mean? Is it important? And if so, why is it important? We talk about why we sometimes have trouble or resistance to doing this type of work. We talk about what is the purpose of forgiving? How does it help us in life? Why might we need to do it or want to do it? We talk about the different types of people and things that we might want to forgive and we give you specific examples. We also share how to know when and who to forgive; what are the signs that you need to this work? We also talk about do we always need to do forgiveness work? Is it always needed? And how to know when it is needed and when it is not and when you can just get by now that you have the awareness of the situation. We also talk about how to journal on getting clarity on who or what you might want to forgive; what specific questions you might want to ask yourself. We also talk about why forgiveness does not mean condoning bad behaviour; forgiveness is for us and not for the other person and that’s a really, really, important thing. We also talk about how it is important not to use this forgiveness work as an excuse to not feel emotion and to just bypass by doing the work and letting go, it can be very important to feel the emotion, the injustice, the anger, the hurt, the whatever the situation caused and then do the forgiveness work. We talk about all kinds of things and as I said there was some resistance to doing this episode, so I hope you find this interesting and useful. We also share very specific ways, structures, rituals that you can use to do forgiveness work. So, without further ado I will hand you over to the episode and I hope you find this interesting and useful.

Holly: Hey Joanna!

Joanna: Hi Holly!

Holly: I am super-excited about today’s episode.

Joanna: I am a little less excited, but that’s okay!

Holly: So today we are going to somewhat reluctantly talk about forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, forgiving other people; should we forgive; why is it important; why might you want to do this and how? This is a topic that we came up with while we were doing our last episode. I don’t even remember why we decided we needed to talk about this but I made a note of it, so we have been going back and forth about whether to this topic and Joanna is a bit reluctant, so, would you like to share why?

Joanna: It is actually interesting to notice why because it is a topic like any other, but I am a very “type a” personality, in terms of being driven forward and ambitious and all these things, so talking about forgiveness I am like ugh, can we talk about something more interesting with more excitement to it and more kind of sparkly-ness. Forgiveness seems very…

Holly: Soft?

Joanna: Yes and I am not great at soft, it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do it, but it is not my natural state and so like pretty much my whole life has been a journey to soften. {Holly: laughing} So when this was proposed as a topic I know that it is important, I tell people that it is important, for sure, I recognise that I need to forgive and yet talking about it seems…there is definite resistance there and wondering whether anyone would want to listen to this, so if you are listening to this and you think this is a good topic can you PM me and let me know. {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} And if you enjoyed this episode when it is over, please let Joanna know, because she needs to know that you care. {laughing}

Joanna: I need to know! On this particular topic I need to know that this is something that is helpful to talk about, because I tend to talk about stuff that is very results-orientated, rather than process-orientated. Yeah, PM me and let me know.

Holly: What I think is interesting though, is that you do a lot of the inner work, you do the PSYCH-K, you do mindset work. I know that is very kind of logical work, rather than the soft-forgiveness work, but you are doing inner work, you do a lot of that stuff so I think it is very interesting that this particular flavour of inner work…

Joanna: I find it much, much, easier to do things that we collectively group under mindset, than to do the things that are more emotion based. This is one of the reason that I love PSYCH-K, because it is beliefs-based, so it is very rational. But I am very aware, Holly, and I may not have mentioned this to you, but I am very aware that sometimes I choose to do PSYCH-K because I don’t want to do the emotional stuff, I am very aware of this. Even someone like me who is really committed to this process and teaches this stuff, even I have to be very conscious of where I am avoiding going a little bit deeper, or avoiding feeling emotions that I don’t want to feel, or bringing up stuff from the past that I don’t want to think about, or the stuff that has past that was painful, I don’t particularly like to rehash.

Holly: Okay, so I am with you on that, I don’t really like the emotional stuff either. And, I am doing this plant-spirit-initiation apprenticeship and, yes, I have cried on it but I feel like lots of other people are doing so much more crying and I am like: I feel like I should be crying more! Is there something wrong with me that I am not having such a an emotional time of it? Or whether that is an Aspie thing, because a I know sometimes we have trouble with emotions, or identifying emotions but I haven’t been having as rough a time as some other people are and again I am comparing myself, I shouldn’t be, but I do still.

Joanna: I don’t think it is about the crying either, because I cry all the time and it doesn’t mean deep emotional healing, I cry at commercials! Any time…I cry at any graduation, even if it is like Lisa Simpson. It is a family joke! I will cry at anything and so that’s not the same thing and I do think that maybe our being less good with the emotional stuff is an Aspie thing.

Holly: Yeah, because I feel like when I do the plant-spirit healings I shift deep emotional stuff but without actually feeling the emotions, I don’t know.

Joanna: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, and I think that is an Aspergers thing.

Holly: All right.

Joanna: I also have that detachment, almost, so maybe Holly on this podcast about forgiveness, we have identified something that we need to forgive ourselves for, for not being able or whatever word you want to use, to feel that deep emotion.

Holly: Yes!

Joanna: If it is an Aspergers thing, and I think it is, then it explains a lot about my own misunderstanding with emotion, I don’t really know… we had to look up forgiveness to see how it is defined in a dictionary. And I have the same thing when I started hiring coaches, I would hire these coaches and they would be like: What are you feeling? And I would be like: I don’t know! I don’t know how to use that language. I can’t identify things and name them in those terms and that of course is an Aspie thing, so that is separate.

Holly: Right, so that means that 99% of the people will not have the problem we are having probably. {laughing}

Joanna: Exactly! So, let’s move into forgiveness itself.

Holly: Yes, what is it?

Joanna: We mentioned that we looked up the definition, so forgiveness means, according to the definition:

“to stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offence, flaw or mistake”.

So, we are going to start our discussion with this idea of stopping to feel angry or resentful.

Holly: Yeah and that could be feeling angry or resentful towards someone else or towards yourself.

Joanna: Or towards a situation, or towards a country. There are a lot of things that you can be angry or resentful towards. So first of all, why would you want to forgive? I know a lot of people who hang onto stuff because they think it is better to not forgive, because they don’t want forget what has happened to them. I think it is that, they don’t want to forget, they don’t want to make the same mistake; and so they hang onto that thing, because that anger reminds them that this is something they shouldn’t do, or this is the type of person they shouldn’t date. That emotion, yeah, helps them, they think the emotion helps them. So why is it important to forgive, or are they right?

Holly: I don’t think they are necessarily right but I understand that mindset because there is also a sense of justice there: this thing that they did to me was wrong, and it was not fair, it was not just, and so therefore I am going to hold onto this resentment as punishment.

Joanna: Also, because I am right, a lot of the time it is true: the person did something crappy and it wasn’t fair, so I am justified in feeling this way, and hanging onto that is my justification that I am right. But of course it is not helpful because at the end of the day the only thing that happens is that you feel angry.

Holly: You feel angry and you feel terrible.

Joanna: I think the most important thing about forgiveness is to understand that it is not about the other person, it is about you. So, when you choose to forgive so that you are lighter, so that you can feel better, so that you can move forward in a different energy and experience something else instead of the thing that you were angry at before. It doesn’t go against you thinking that it was unfair or that the other person did something wrong.

Holly: Yeah exactly, and by forgiving the other person you are not condoning their behaviour, you are just letting go of the crap that you have inside yourself, so that you can move forward. I think that is the biggest thing, is that if you are holding onto this resentment because you don’t want to repeat it, you are probably going to repeat it because you are focussing on that thing, but when you let go of it and you move forward that I think is what helps you to release the pattern and not go back to that same situation.

Joanna: For sure, I completely agree, which is why I think it is important to forgive and not hang onto stuff, so when you notice you are angry for a certain thing, that’s your sign that there is something there to work; on and maybe a better word/phrase than forgiveness would be: to make peace with. We are not negating that something happened, even that something awful happened, but you want to choose to move forward in an energy of peace, rather than conflict.

Holly: It is like you are detaching from it. The thing happened, it was shitty, but you are kind of detaching emotionally from it so that you can make peace with it and move forward.

Joanna: Yeah, it is the only way to move forward, in peace. Otherwise you are constantly in battle mode almost.

Holly: Yeah…

Joanna: I think that is the danger of not being aware of forgiveness and that importance to let go and we know many people are like this, people who live in the past and every time you talk to them they are bringing up stuff from five years ago, and eight years ago, and whatever. And it happens, some people actually live in the past, and that is all they live by are those things that happened to them. For some of us, it just comes up once in a while. When you see something come up, I had an argument with my husband recently where I said something and then I said some other things, and then I said some other things that happened five, ten, years ago and he was like: you are rehashing all the old stuff now aren’t you!?

Holly: You are digging deep! {laughing}

Joanna: {Joking} It is still relevant! I realised that I still hadn’t forgiven him for those things because they may be small things, they are a part of something bigger, but in themselves they were small and the fact that my mind went to those things is proof that…

Holly: Yeah you haven’t let go of them.

Joanna: ..just shows that I haven’t forgiven him for those things and I could address that because it became conscious.

Holly: So, did you do anything to address that? Did you do the forgiveness work?

Joanna: Thinking about that now, do we always need to do “forgiveness work”? I almost feel like bringing it to the surface and laughing about it with him was enough. I didn’t feel the need to sit down and do a ritual around it. We have talked about this before, Holly, with mindset work and inner work in general, sometimes it is enough to be conscious of something and sometimes it needs something deeper. How do you know? Because it keeps showing up.

Holly: Yeah, so if in your next argument with Joe, you bring up the thing from five-ten years ago then you are going to be: okay, clearly, it needs to be addressed.

Joanna: I have a very, very, vivid memory about a month ago, over another argument that was very big, actually sitting down, I forgot about this, I keep saying I don’t do it, but I did sit down and actually forgive him for very specific things and I used PSYCH-K to do it.

Holly: Oh tell me how? Oh I guess we can’t…sorry guys you need to do the training! We are not supposed to talk about this publicly…

Joanna: I used belief statements, because when I tap into those energies and I was able to feel what the things were that I needed to forgive him for and I didn’t know…

Holly: Right of course, so you would just create a belief statement and balance for it. I like that!

Joanna: And so it wasn’t like my writing a big emotional letter, but I was able, through that process, to identify the very specific things that I hadn’t forgiven him for that I didn’t really think needed forgiveness in the first place and it was very, very, eye opening. So yeah at this particular time I didn’t feel the need for that, so I guess what I am saying, in a very long-winded way, is like with any mindset work or any energy work, you have to just follow what feels right. If you are super miserable and crying for days because of an argument, or something they said or something someone did or whatever then there is something deep going on that you need to sit down and be like: okay, what is going on, why am I really mad? I think that’s where I started with, just journaling it out, what am I really mad about? Why do I hate him right now? Why do I hate all of this? What is going on here?

Holly: That makes absolute sense, because I think asking those questions, and doing the journaling, helps us to put into words the shit that we are feeling inside ourselves.

Joanna: Yeah, and you think that argument is about one thing… it is so funny that I told you I don’t do any forgiveness work, and this is a very recent, very deep, example that completely escaped me, I didn’t remember it at all, [until] right now, in the live recording. It was very interesting to me that what came out of an answer to that question to: what am I actually mad about? Was something from many, many, years ago. I wasn’t actually mad about what he said in this particular situation, I was mad about, I was still mad about something that had happened a long time ago and I couldn’t have identified that if I hadn’t sat down with my journal and asked that question.

Holly: Yeah, I think that is a really good point, because it really helps us to get clarity, especially for those of use that aren’t good at emotions.

Joanna: Yeah, people might not be good at emotions for a whole load of reasons, right? So if you are listening to this you might not have to be Aspie to not be able to do emotions so well, there might be other reasons. So the point we are making here is to follow what you feel is needed and in fact what your experience is showing you is needed, if it goes away then great, if it keeps coming back — the pattern or the same sort of situation — then you need to get to the root.

Holly: So, how else might you know that you need to this work? What are some signs?

Joanna: Well anger is a good one… {Both: laughing} I tend to notice for other people I think it is anger, for me that is usually the sign, I don’t feel anger towards that person, but when I feel anger, I usually trace it to something and then forgiveness is usually part of it. But when I need to forgive myself then it is not anger that is my sign, it is more a belief or thought pattern that I don’t want.

Holly: Or negative mind chatter, always beating yourself up over something: oh I am never good with this, or I suck at this.

Joanna: Actually it is those words, “always” and “never”.

Holly: Yeah: I can never get this right… I am never going to make this happen.

Joanna: That is the easiest sign to notice that there is something, probably in your past, that created that belief in the first place, that you suck at this, or that, and then you need to… just like Holly and I at the beginning of this episode, we started off with a lot of negative self-talk (public!) {laughing} about how we are really bad about emotional stuff and we identified it as something that probably needs some forgiveness.

Holly: Yes, absolutely. So, what are some other examples of things we might need to forgive.

Joanna: Let’s see, so we can forgive ourselves, we can forgive others.

Holly: People from our past, if people who were bullied as children, that might still be kind of having ripple effects, teachers or other authority figures that said shitty things to us.

Joanna: Politicians…even like countries. I had to make peace with the concept of Belgium, I had to make peace with the concept of Poland. It is not entirely forgiveness but that energy of making peace with something so that you are not constantly angry or resentful towards it.

Holly: That’s interesting.

Joanna: And any concept really. In PSYCH-K® you have a concept called relationship balance, and so you can actually balance a relationship not only between people but between different concepts. So you could forgive money, or balance your relationship with money, if you feel that money has mistreated you. And in fact a lot of money work, including what I do in the soulspace with money, there is a whole module on money, it includes things like: writing a letter to money; writing a letter from money to you; that energy level, if you feel money was unfair to you? That is often the thing, money comes to other people, that is another example of not example, of not being chosen or rejected. I have had to do forgiveness or relationship balance or making peace with, or whatever, with concepts. I was mad at the concept of manifesting, I was like: this sucks, if you work for other people you are not working for me! Right? I was mad at me business.

Holly: Yeah, yeah, I have done relationship balances with my business for many years {laughing}

Joanna: It is whatever it is that you are angry at and sometimes it is not a person, sometimes it is your spirit guides because you think that they are not doing the job, because you are not getting what you want.

Holly: So, for people who haven’t trained in something like PSYCH-K®, how else can people do forgiveness work or forgive? I think for me at least, I can’t just be like: oh I forgive so and so, I forgive myself for this. I need to do more than that.

Joanna: I think we all need ritual. I am someone who always said I don’t like ritual because that concept, I just immediately my mind goes to really, really, hippy…I don’t like that sort of thing with loads of candles and you have to be quiet and concentrate, I don’t like being quiet and concentrating {laughing} it is not my thing. But I have learned that in fact I have lot of rituals and how you can use rituals in different ways and of course all it does is focus your energy. So, any sort of ritual that you create or take on, that will help you to focus your energy, focus your mind, on a certain thing, on a certain outcome, on releasing energy, will work. So, I mean, you can write, I have done this before, I have written a letter, I wrote a letter to an abusive ex-boyfriend about a very specific thing, so a very specific moment in time that for some reason kept coming back to me, and I can’t tell you what it is because I don’t remember, which just shows you {Holly: wow!} that it worked. I kind of remember, but not really, so it definitely worked. So you can write a letter to get it all out and then burn it with intention of releasing the energy – that’s a really easy way of forgiving and it is the same kind of process as clearing beliefs and all that, it is the power of your intention that does it.

Holly: I think it has got a few parts: it is getting really clear on what you want to release, by writing the letter, or writing the belief statements, and then releasing, setting the intention to release.

Joanna: And sometimes you don’t know what it is that you want to release until you write the letter, sometimes it is difficult, there is something that is coming back to you, but you don’t really know, so just block off the time and write. Over the years I have kind of dabbled with a lot of different techniques, with a lot of fancy stuff, and it all really boils down to the same thing and that is making space, actually put it in the calendar, show the universe and yourself that this is important. Block off two hours and call it “forgiveness” or “energy” or “write letter to x”. So it is clear that it is a thing and not done in-between other stuff, you are setting aside time and space in your life and your world for this and then some kind of way to signify, to symbolise the thing leaving your energy system and that can be done in lots if ways. Do you want to talk about your favourite way, Holly?

Holly: Yeah, I don’t have a favourite way, because I don’t do this work often enough to have a favourite way {laughing} but I have in the past used Ho’oponopono which we will link to in the Show Notes, a Hawaiian prayer that basically goes: I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you and you can just repeat it however. I have really enjoyed doing it in the past by sitting in the whole brain posture, something you learn in PSYCH-K®, we can’t teach it to you, but you can Google it and see something online.

Joanna: Just to clarify it is not a PSYCH-K® concept, it pre-dates PSYCH-K®, so you can completely google it and use it.

Holly: Yeah so by sitting in that position and doing the four statements: identifying a specific person and repeating: I am sorry, over and over and over again until I felt it shift and then saying: please forgive me, please forgive me, please forgive me until it shifted. Thank you, thank you, thank and again waiting for the shift and then I love you. And that really only takes five minutes or so, but that felt really powerful to me because it uses a technique that I know works for me in other circumstances and it gives me a really easy ritual to do the forgiveness. So that has worked for me in the past.

Joanna: I like having something physical, so I have never done that, but when I have used Ho’oponopono, all I have done is written things down on a piece of paper like bullet points like either a situation or my father for saying this, my brother for doing this. Or my brother did this, I can’t remember how I phrased it, it doesn’t really matter as long as you capture the essence of what it is that is bothering you or what you want to release the energy of. Just focus your attention on each one of those things and focus your attention on your brother doing that thing and say the word, say the Hawaiian prayer and then cross it out (I like to be physical) on a piece of paper and that can be your symbolic way of saying: just let go.

Holly: Yes, I like that. So lots of people have resistance to doing this work, a lot of people are kind of: I should be doing this, but I really don’t want to. What would you say to people who really don’t want to do this?

Joanna: Well, what I always say when you ask me these sorts of questions Holly, everybody has a choice right? It is your choice, if you don’t want to forgive, don’t forgive that’s your conscious choice that you are carrying that energy with you and it is probably, definitely, effecting your behaviours right? So the reason you would do forgiveness is to help yourself move forward in an easier, smoother way and have a different result. Because if you ask yourself: if I forgave myself…I am going to give my example of what we were talking about before, because I think it is very clear. So, I used to be super, super, super, irresponsible with money, I have a very, very, long history {laughing} of doing really terrible money things and this has been following me around. Obviously I picked up a belief or created a belief that I was irresponsible with money and until I could forgive myself, not only for choosing to be responsible now but until I made peace with the choices I made in the past I found that what was happening is that I would keep repeating the pattern. So I would keep, somehow, always falling back into the experience of being irresponsible, I wanted to make responsible choices then something would happen, and I would be like: oh man, that actually was a really irresponsible thing to do, it is like more proof that I am irresponsible with money. By making peace, it is not a judgement thing, I had to go in and be like: it is okay {laughing} younger me! You did the best you could, it was okay that you weren’t responsible, nothing happened, you turned out okay, it is all good. It was only then that the pattern changed so I could make my decisions and my choices not from a place of trying to be responsible and trying to counteract something, my subconscious always wanting to find proof of being irresponsible but from a place of peace with the past and from there you can really make a different choice for the future. I have certainly found this to be true and I do not consider myself irresponsible with money anymore, I have taken charge and it has allowed me to do a lot of things that I never thought I would capable of doing like learning how the stock market works and investing in stuff and I know what I am doing, I understand what I am doing and yesterday I offered to explain it to a friend who was an economist and she was a bit resistant and I was like: well, come over, and I will show you. I have it sussed I know what to do, this was impossible if you had asked me 15-20 years ago this would have been like: you have got to be kidding there is no way in hell, I am so bad with money! So, I forgot what the question was but that was the answer.

Holly: Excellent! Yeah and I think that is a really good example and a lot of us have money stuff that requires forgiveness, because as you were telling that story I was thinking of the whole ten years that I was in business with my ex-business partner and he was making really shitty decisions with money and I didn’t have the guts to stand up to him a lot of the time, so I went along with a lot of stuff that I am not happy with and I need to forgive, I need to do more forgiveness with him, but also forgiveness to myself for not standing up or getting out of that situation earlier and going along with stuff that was not ethical to me. I still, I have done so much work on this and I know that I have still got remnants of it, because it keeps coming back to me.

Joanna: But eventually it goes…

Holly: Yes it does.

Joanna: My clients get discouraged all the time, this is one of the things that I hear probably most: I have done all this, and I can’t believe that this is happening again, I thought this was done. It is never done, there are always layers of something but that particular thing eventually it will go away, eventually you will be able to feel different if you make certain choices.

Holly: And if you do the work and if you are willing to let go of it, I am totally willing to let go of stuff, it has been ten plus years since I left that situation and I am still healing stuff but I have come a long, long way so it is just getting to the deeper layers.

Joanna: And choosing, I feel like I find that this is a helpful way of looking at it that you are choosing a different reality for yourself, right? So in that concept of various parallel realities existing alongside each other, where you can focus in on any ones of your choices, focus in on one where you are at peace. So maybe it is easier to be there rather than to keep digging, you know? So what would that look like? Part of my problem with forgiveness work and all that work is that it is really easy to get stuck in it and you could spend your whole life doing inner work and forgiveness work and writing letters and converting stuff and crossing things out on a piece of paper and nothing would change because…

Holly: You have to take the action.

Joanna: …right! You have to be the person for whom this thing that you want, this emotional state that you want, is true. So, perhaps for some of you it would be a better starting point to think of that first, to think of that first, to be the person who is free of that stuff that you want to leave behind, whatever that is, who is free of that anger and what does that actually look like? So you can do the inner stuff but what does that actually look like? Now the person who has forgiven themselves for being irresponsible with money, what kinds of choices do they make? They make choices where they are where they charge of their financial reality, though I know what’s in my bank account, I know how much I am spending, I know how much is coming, I know all these things because I am a responsible person and a good manager of my money. So there are certain things that go along with being this version of yourself.

Holly: Yes, I think that helps to reframe it in that way. And as you were saying before we got on the call, I don’t do forgiveness work all the time, I don’t do gratitude work all the time, because I do other stuff. If we were to do all the inner work all the time, it would be a full time job.

Joanna: And a great procrastination technique.

Holly: Yes, yes.

Joanna: Honestly, I find a lot of people get stuck in this and they make it the most important thing and it is not, it only works when it is done in combination with making those different choices in the present moment. That is the only thing that is going to create a new reality for you, is what you choose to focus on today, that is the only way. However, doing forgiveness work will help you to focus on the “right things”, the things that you want rather than what you don’t want, so you spend your day in a place of peace rather than anger at your friend who stood you up.

Holly: And it will help you take different actions, new actions and break those patterns from the past. So one thing that we wanted to mention, I know we talked about emotion and how we are not necessarily good with it, but to not use forgiveness work as an excuse to not feel the human emotions. So if you are feeling anger, if you are feeling like crap, and you want to bypass that by just being light and lovely and doing forgiveness work, that is not necessarily a good thing either.

Joanna: No certainly not. And I think a lot of new-age-y things can be accused of bypassing the processes we need to go through, you need to feel the anger, you need to feel whatever else you are feeling and that is just a useful signpost for what needs to be addressed. You should let yourself feel it, and this is something I have also learned over the years, I actually do now, I don’t resist emotions, I almost sink into the emotion now rather than being: I don’t want to be angry; I don’t want to be sad. I sink into it and it goes really quickly because what you want to do is move through.

Holly: Yeah exactly.

Joanna: The reason that you get stuck in emotion is that you resist it, you stop the movement through and in fact if you allow yourself to move through and feel it you come out the other side in a very, very, smooth way with no upheaval.

Holly: All right so forgiveness, let’s do it! {laughing}

Joanna: Let’s do it! And remember to let me know if you liked this episode.

Holly: Joanna needs to know!

Joanna: I need to know!

Holly: All right! So if you have any questions whether about forgiveness or anything else you can email me: [email protected] or

Joanna: [email protected] or PM me on any of the social media I am Joanna Hennon throughout.

Holly: Excellent, have a great day, happy forgiveness!

I hope you enjoyed this episode please drop me a line and let me know what you thought you can email me at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. I would love to hear from you, I love getting feedback from listeners.

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I would also appreciate, and I feel like I have a ton of asks at the end of this episode, but I would also really appreciate knowing what you would like to hear from me, what would you like me to talk about, that’s really useful because I don’t want to just blab on and on about whatever I feel like at the end of the week, I want to know what you want. And always find that the interesting episodes to record are the ones that people specifically ask me about. So if you head to: http://HollyWorton.com/survey you will be taken to a survey, it has got seven questions none of them are obligatory, and it shouldn’t take more than five minutes to complete and it is basically asking how you want to hear from me and what you want to hear from me about.

So that is all for this week, thank you for listening. I will be back next week with another solo episode and that’s all for now, thanks and have a great week.

305 Joanna Hennon + Holly: How to Forgive, Even When You Don’t Want To