Quick Read on Intelivate – Forgiving and forgetting. Understanding the difference of each is critical to your personal and professional happiness – and success.
Doing a simple search on ‘forgiveness quotes,’ you will find over 2,200,000 results. Most of them offer the advice to forgive and forget, but the information is only half right.
Here is a quick twist on the traditional ‘forgive and forget’ advice. As you read this, keep a critical part in the back of your mind: both components of this forgiveness quote are 100% for YOU.
My twists on forgiveness are not for the person you are seeking to forgive and forget. This life hack is all about you – your happiness that leads to your success in life and work.
This is a quote I often use when I talk about a person’s history and their ‘battles’ in life and career. It is one of those ‘forgiveness quotes’ I must remind myself of often, as the part of ‘forgive and forget’ that most people get wrong are the ‘forgetting’ component.
Many are looking to figure out how to forget about someone. As you’ll quickly learn, the ‘how to forget someone’ is destructive to YOU in many ways.
Here is your new quote to add to the arsenal of forgiveness quotes out there:
Forgive Your History, but NEVER Forget It.
After this quick breakdown of the forgive and the forget components, my hope is that you put one at the top of your arsenal of forgiveness quotes and in the forefront of your day. We are all faced with either the forgiving or forgetting process daily.
A word of warning – this is NOT a quick fix. I don’t believe in those. However, if you stick with this, both forgiving and NEVER forgetting will happen much sooner than later. I promise.
Forgive and Forget Must Be Independent.
Forgiveness is completely separate from forgetting. They must always remain independent.
Forgiveness allows you to move forward wholly, but forgetting will keep you in a cycle of now and never enable you to evolve. Never forgetting keeps you from making bad investments in the future. Both give you sustainable life and job happiness, which leads to sustainable success.
Neither forgiveness nor forgetting is easy, but both should be simple. The process primarily starts with one component and then feeds into the second component.
My experience is that the ‘forgiveness’ component of ‘forgive and NEVER forget’ takes the longest and is the biggest challenge for me. Every person and every situation are different, though. How you start the process is based on you and the situation.
Forgiveness Component of ‘Forgive but Never Forget’
The forgiveness component is the hardest for me. For many years I refused to do it.
Why? I had it in my mind that it was waiving the accountability of the person I desperately needed to forgive. I also thought it was benefiting the other person. I got both of these parts wrong.
Forgiving is ONLY for YOU – not the person you need to forgive.
If success starts with happiness and happiness builds through love and passion, then it’s clear it starts with your heart. The pieces of your heart you give are timeless gifts whose recipients should be chosen very carefully.
You only have so much to give.
Forgiveness allows your heart to repair.
Forgiveness is not a declaration of ‘I agree with what you did.’ It is a feeling deep down inside of you that gives you a sense of peace – and empowerment – knowing that you are no longer wasting your energy and heart on someone that is not good for you.
Forgive yourself.
For me, forgiveness usually happens during the process of not forgetting.
Why?
The NOT forgetting part of ‘forgive and forget’ gives me confidence that I am not going to repeat history in the same way.
In all ways, the forgive component of ‘forgive and forget’ is ALL about you and many times it is really YOU that needs to be forgiven.
How many times have you beaten yourself up inside for something? We all have. Many of us do it daily.
Forgiveness allows you to move forward from that cycle of potential self-destruction.
Forgetting Component of ‘Forgive but Never Forget’
THIS is the one that is very wrong and destructive of the ‘forgive and forget’ when you read quotes about forgiveness. What I want you to do is to FORGET everything you might have learned around this part of the forgive and forget lessons.
Avoid the cycle of repeating ‘bad’ history by NOT forgetting.
If you forget something bad from your history, you are not learning from your history.
Guess what will happen?
You will repeat the history that you desperately need to avoid.
Never forgetting – and I mean from a place of empowerment and growth, not from a place of anger or resentment – gives you the knowledge and power to avoid making the same mistakes again.
The most important part of NOT forgetting for me is to understand my role in the bad parts of my history. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying here.
In most cases, I am not declaring that it is my ‘fault.’ Don’t get into that pattern if it is truly not your fault overall. My goal in NOT forgetting is to identify my part in the outcome – even if it the smallest part.
Why is this so important? It is the only way that I can do what is in MY control to avoid the impacts of the situation again. You will learn from this component of ‘forgive and forget’ that NOT forgetting is also incredibly empowering.
It gives a piece of control to you in a situation that you might feel has absolute control over you.
