The Secret To Living A Good Life - How To Heal Trauma, Overwhelm & Declutter Your Life | Fred Luskin

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 I think, Fred, that the work you do covers one of the most important, yet undervalued aspects of health. So right at the start of this conversation, why should people care about this idea of letting go?

Dr. Fred Luskin 0:21 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:21 Not holding onto the past.

Dr. Fred Luskin 0:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:23 Why should they care about that in the present, especially when it comes to their physical health?

Dr. Fred Luskin 0:30 Well, I mean, when I look at you or I look at anyone, what, what I see or we all see is the result of habits, practices, preferences, and experiences. So they're all embedded in your body. You wanna have as many positive experiences and good habits as you can, and release some of the negative experiences and bad habits as you can, so that when you show up every day in your life, you're as, uh, good-natured and healthy as you can be. When you hold on to negative experiences, it's stored. You know? It's like a, it creates a kind of brain groove, but the way you hold your life influences whether there's shoulder raises or what your blood pressure is. And letting it go, not, not needing that wound, relaxes stuff. And so you show up to me as a healthier, more present person.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38 A lot of religious practices, spiritual practices for many years have spoken about the importance of forgiveness-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46 ... the importance of letting go, the importance of not allowing the past to determine and dictate-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:51 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51 ... your present day. What I find fascinating about your work, though, is that, yes, you have the practical aspects of how you can do that-

Dr. Fred Luskin 2:02 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02 ... but you've also done research onto the power of letting go-

Dr. Fred Luskin 2:06 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:06 ... and forgiving others-

Dr. Fred Luskin 2:08 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:08 ... on our physical health, blood pressure-

Dr. Fred Luskin 2:11 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:11 ... anxiety, depression, all kinds of things. So yes, letting go of past experiences helps us to feel better today, but it has implications for your physical health as well, doesn't it?

Dr. Fred Luskin 2:24 You know, letting go is a, I'm gonna say, a simplification of a somewhat complex process. It's reevaluating and re-explaining it to yourself rather than letting go. So if I came in to talk to you about, let's say a, a bad marriage or a, a harsh parent, it's not like I, I let go that that never happened or I just banish it to the past. What I do is I have an entirely different way of processing that experience so that who I am when I present it to you is different. So I could start with before letting go, so to speak, "Boy, did I have the shittiest parents," and then forgiveness or whatever, and then you say, "You know, but these poor people, they had no idea how to parent, and what a mess they made, and it took me years to get over it, but now I'm clean." That's what letting go is. It's processing it in a way where it's no longer a wound or an experience dragging you down now. So that transformation, um, affects all of you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:45 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 3:45 You know, not just your mental, emotional status, but your physical status, so your muscles are less tight from guarding against stuff, your blood pressure is more normalized, your nervous system is more stabilized because the very way you're processing the world has changed.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:04 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 4:05 Um, some of the research that we've done or some of the research that's been done has shown, yes, it does reduce blood pressure in, in angry people. It, it seems to serve as a mediator between, um, some heart disease and further heart disease, those who forgive and don't forgive. It reduces the experience of pain, that if you're unforgiving you experience pain a little more. Um, it has pretty significant influences on depression and anxiety, but its, its gift is in relationship. I mean, that's the gift. Because if I'm hurt, then I walk into an experience with you somewhat frightened. If I still identify myself as a wounded victim, then I'm less open, less trusting, less available to you. I have, I have a mental way of holding it that says, "Hey Fred, be careful." Relationships are the most important thing we do for our health. You know? That, that's our, that's our juice, that's our... You know, the, the research is what? It's, like, 50% of-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:25 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 5:25 ... your happiness. So when you look at the impact that has of impaired relationship and frightened relating, then you can see both in- like, individually and culturally, the lack of forgiveness, the implications of it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:46 Yeah. We know that stress, in some way or form, is responsible for maybe up to 80 or 90% of what medical doctors see in any-

Dr. Fred Luskin 5:59 I know

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:59 ... given day.

Dr. Fred Luskin 5:59 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:01 And I think that relates to what you're talking about, relationships.

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:06 It's relationship.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:07 Because- Relationships, when they are not going well, can be a huge source of stress for us as individuals. At the same time-

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:17 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:18 ... they can be a source of calm-

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:23 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:23 ... and comfort and safety-

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:24 That's right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:25 ... if they are going well.

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:26 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:26 So I think when we look at it through that lens, we can understand how your ability to let go, move on, and forgive-

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:35 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:36 ... will improve your relationships, which then will have a knock-on effect into your stress levels and how you feel in your lifestyle choices, et cetera, et cetera. But I think it's also interesting what you said, that you've done research to show that in angry people-

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:50 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:52 ... learning to forgive helps your blood pressure go down.

Dr. Fred Luskin 6:56 It does.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:58 That is news for so many people. When we're talking about health and blood pressure, most people are talking about medication.

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:05 I know.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:06 If they are broadening their scope beyond medication, they're talking about lifestyle choices-

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:14 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:14 ... you know, diet-

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:16 Diet

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:16 ... movement, sleep. All these things are great.

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:19 Losing weight.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:20 Yeah. And all these things can help, but actually, a lot of people, most people are not talking about forgiveness, letting go of anger and how that can have an impact on something like blood pressure as well.

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:33 I- I've been thinking about this a lot. Forgiveness, in many ways, you can't measure it with a blood test, and therefore, sometimes I think because you can't measure it with a simple blood test, maybe my profession doesn't take it seriously, whereas you can measure your weight-

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:52 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:52 ... your waist circumference.

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:53 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:54 Do you see what I mean? I, I don't know, what's your take on that?

Dr. Fred Luskin 7:56 Well, missing in most of the discussions, like, we have a kind of neutral space, and then you have stress and anger or self-pity or whatever. They create a negative space, but there's so much importance not placed on happiness and joy and exuberance and love and connection. Well, whatever small amount of research there is suggests that it has positive effects on our physiology in the same way that the negative emotions have negative effects on our physiology. So, like, when, when we teach resilience, like in, in my world, the, the easiest way to promote resilience is just to stop people for a moment and say, "Hey, you know, take a breath, relax, and just remember a time that you were loved. I mean, just stop for a minute, quiet down into yourself, and just picture a time when you absolutely knew you were loved. Absolutely, you can feel it, you can see it." And besides the fact that your whole body calms down and you, you know, everything slows down, if you can remember that or even remember the experience, the next time you feel stressed, you have a little more resilience 'cause you're not as alone, you're not as scared. So when you forgive, when you overcome negativity, when you move past it, it's, it's, it's in there as a memory source. So when I haven't forgiven, like, and I meet you, and maybe you remind me of somebody who hurt me, that, that memory triggers physiologic changes right now. You know, I have adrenaline or I have things. So I'm sitting down next to you, but because of my memory traces, I'm already aroused in a certain way. If I have forgiven somebody who looked like you or sounded like you, then I sit down with confidence 'cause I've been able to handle myself. And so not only do I not have the negative memory, but I sit down with you with some degree of resilience of, oh, if this happens again, I've shown myself I can do this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 10:38 So it's not just, it's, it's, it's not just markers. It's an ongoing relationship to life that impacts the physical and the mental bodies.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:51 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 10:52 Did that make sense?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:53 Yeah. I, I really like that. I'm just thinking if you were to pick anyone off the street and ask them would they like to be living in the present moment-

Dr. Fred Luskin 11:09 [laughs] Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:11 ... would they like to not have their negative past experiences impact the way they interact? Let's take a relationship-

Dr. Fred Luskin 11:19 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:20 ... either with a loved one or a work colleague or, or whoever. So much of the time we sabotage the present because of what has happened in the past.

Dr. Fred Luskin 11:33 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:35 And so given that we can say that, and if people think about it, if they step outside their life and reflect, I think most people would get that and go, "Yeah, okay." The question then for me is, why do we hold onto grudges in the first place?

Dr. Fred Luskin 11:54 Mm-hmm. Well, immediately, um, I believe that we require time to adjust. So if, if you get a, a phone call that something happened to somebody in your family, I mean, you know the amount of stress your body's gonna be under. I mean, you're gonna be flooded and, um, let's say some driver was drunk and, and hurt somebody in your family. It takes a while for the nervous system, the mental apparatus to adapt to the, both the horror at first and then the changes. So that period of time, to me, the healthy part of it, is called grief. Like, you need a period of time to adapt to life-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:53 Mm-hmm

Dr. Fred Luskin 12:54 ... to any wounding. You come home and your partner's in bed with somebody else, or, you know, you find out that somebody robbed your store.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:02 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 13:02 It doesn't matter. It's a massive adjustment. So we are appropriately destabilized and appropriately needing to work through this-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:15 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 13:15 ... because the world we woke up to changed. And I believe that's grief, like, that that's a healthy expression of human experience. And so you go through some anger and sadness and bargaining and all the, the stages of grief. Um, the, the crucial question is what happens after that? And, and how are you processing as you're going through it? So resilient people, they go through all this upheaval, but they have some mental place that observes it and says, "This'll pass. You've helped dealt with things before. You'll, you know, just ride it out." Less resilient people or people who have deep grudges or all sorts of things, they feed the flame.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:11 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 14:12 You know? Like, "This hurts now, but remember when mom was this way," or, "You can't trust people," or, "Life sucks." So again, it's always in process. The, the key question is not... Like, it's gonna hurt. It's gonna disrupt. It's gonna be painful. That's, that's part of our basic humanity. It's how do we resolve these things.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:43 It's a bit like stress, isn't it? A little bit of stress is good for us. It helps us-

Dr. Fred Luskin 14:47 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:48 ... be our best.

Dr. Fred Luskin 14:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:49 Right? So that negative event, the fact that we feel bad, I like the way that you describe that as a form of grief.

Dr. Fred Luskin 14:57 Yeah. It is grief.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:58 That's absolutely okay for a period of time.

Dr. Fred Luskin 15:03 That's the key thing. That's the key issue.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:07 But if, if 10 years after-

Dr. Fred Luskin 15:09 Ah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:09 ... that event, if you're still thinking about it-

Dr. Fred Luskin 15:13 Even, not even 10 years after. There's some research that six months after a painful event, if anger is still your predominant emotion, that doesn't augur well.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 15:30 It's, it's the necessity to develop a kind of coping where we are capable of handling what life throws at us without excess bitterness that we bring from past inabilities to handle what life throws at us.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:54 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 15:54 That's the desperate need for forgiveness, both as an individual and as a culture.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:02 I- is some of this about control? And, and, and what I mean by that, Fred, is something bad happens, we feel bad for a period of time.

Dr. Fred Luskin 16:12 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:13 But by not letting go of it-

Dr. Fred Luskin 16:17 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:19 ... is it in some way our way of trying to control the future?

Dr. Fred Luskin 16:23 Yes. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:24 We are holding on. We're controlling.

Dr. Fred Luskin 16:26 No question.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:26 And, and I guess in many ways, and we are, we prefer the familiarity of the pain that we know-

Dr. Fred Luskin 16:37 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:37 ... rather than the feeling of freedom that we don't.

Dr. Fred Luskin 16:44 Um, I think the essential challenge is how do we deal with our vulnerability? That's the essential challenge. Um, so when you're hurt or when something happens that you didn't want or when an uninvited suffering comes in, the hardest thing to recognize is as a human being, how vulnerable you are. Like, we can't protect our families, and we're gonna die, and people are gonna mistreat us, and people who love us today aren't guaranteed to love us tomorrow. So we exist in a, in a, like, kind of liminal space of the good we have now may not last. And so one of the ways that we adapt to that is armoring. You know? Like, I'm not gonna let it get so deep. But another way that we adapt to that is by getting furious when it's taken away or lost, which is part of what you're talking about. But for many of us, continuing that anger or that self-pity, like, I've had such a terrible life and nothing's gone well for me, that's exactly what you were saying. It's a form of control 'cause we don't know what to do with the vulnerability.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:10 Right.

Dr. Fred Luskin 18:11 We have no idea what to do with the fact that as human beings, we can't fully protect anything. So we develop these coping styles to, to put, to stop us from seeing that every now and then sometimes we're, we're naked in life. You know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:32 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 18:32 We can't, we can't do it. And, and to be okay with that vulnerability because when you can do that, you see other people's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:42 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 18:42 ... vulnerability and you're able to use that to be more forgiving. Okay, so that guy was a jerk. Well, of course he's a jerk. We're all scared. You know? We're all confused. We're all this. But when we can't touch our own vulnerability, then we use these harsher copings and then we confuse them with reality. You know? It's like... And, and so it is easier for people to have the pseudo power of anger than it is to just sit for a while and say, "Man, I got slammed by that and I just don't know what to do." But if you sit with that, if you allow that weakness f- for the moment to come through, it passes and then you prove to yourself, "Wow, I can handle it. I'm capable of being like weak in this-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:44 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 19:44 ... 'cause this really hurt. I didn't stay there and now I don't have to be as f- afraid. I don't have to armor up quite as much."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:54 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 19:54 "And I can be a better person in relationship"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:58 Yeah. You say that forgiveness is a skill-

Dr. Fred Luskin 20:08 Uh-huh

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:08 ... that anybody can learn.

Dr. Fred Luskin 20:10 [laughs] Well, I had to learn it and let me tell you, it did not come easy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:15 Yeah. So this is interesting, right? It's a skill that anybody can learn. There will be people right now who just heard me say that who are pushing back-

Dr. Fred Luskin 20:26 Of course

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:26 ... who, who are thinking, "Hey, that may work for some people, but you don't know my life." Okay?

Dr. Fred Luskin 20:31 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:32 Right. So, so we'll get to that.

Dr. Fred Luskin 20:33 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:34 But, but-

Dr. Fred Luskin 20:34 Can I interrupt you for-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:35 Please, please

Dr. Fred Luskin 20:36 ... No, the, the most humorous explanation of things that we have in our little world is we'll go in and give a talk to somebody, to a group, and people will come out and say almost that, "That's a great talk. However, you never met my ex-husband," or, "You never met my mother."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:00 That is the s- biggest pushback that we have gotten, what, that you just said.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:05 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:05 "That's great, but you don't get my life"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:08 So let's then talk about, you know, forgiveness. What exactly is it? Because I, I kind of feel... Well I, first of all, I agree with you. I believe it is a skill that anybody can learn.

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:21 But in order to learn that, you first have to understand, well, what exactly is forgiveness-

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:26 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:27 ... and what is it not?

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:28 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:29 So could you outline that for us?

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:31 Sure. I mean, that's a very tough question at some level because before you mention that, that the world struggles with things it can't measure, it struggles to define things it can't measure.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:46 And so like how do you define love or how do you define beauty or how do you define forgiveness? It's not so easy, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:56 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 21:56 So I struggle, as everybody does, with defining these absolutely beautiful aspects of, of humanity. Right now, the, the best place that we've gotten to is two separate simple definitions. One is making peace with the word no. Like, no, life will not give you what you want. No, it won't work out. No, you can't get this. And giving up all hope for a better past. Those are the two forgiveness things that are as, that's as close as I can get some combination of both.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:38 Mm-hmm. I like that. Giving up all hope for better past.

Dr. Fred Luskin 22:45 For a better past. Simple. Lovely. Do you know where that came from? A, uh, a woman in the Bay Area in New York... uh, not New York, in California. Her daughter was killed-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:58 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 22:59 ... and she struggled for years and she came up with that definition of forgiveness that helped her cope and then she made bumper stickers around it. But, um, that was her way of digging herself out of the pain, was forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past. It's a very powerful statement.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:27 Yeah. Very powerful.

Dr. Fred Luskin 23:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:28 At, at the start of your book, which I couldn't believe you said it was over 20 years ago when it came out-

Dr. Fred Luskin 23:33 Yeah. It's 20 years

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:34 ... it still feels very, very relevant today.

Dr. Fred Luskin 23:36 [laughs] Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:37 Um, it's called Forgive for Good and right at the start, I kind of love this list that you put there, you know, a- and it- I appreciate it was written over 20 years ago, so your, your views and thoughts may have evolved since then, but this is what you put back then. What is forgiveness? "Forgiveness is the peace you learn to feel when you allow these circling planes-

Dr. Fred Luskin 23:59 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:00 ... to land"

Dr. Fred Luskin 24:01 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:01 What, what are those circling planes?

Dr. Fred Luskin 24:04 So we g- we brought some, um, people from Northern Ireland to Stanford a couple of times, each of whom had people killed in their violence. The, we brought Catholics and Protestants- And they had each either had children killed or other family members killed. And we tried to work with them to forgive and w- we were tasked with coming up with some- a simple metaphor for that because many of these people were... They had eighth grade educations. They hadn't been to college. And up until that point, we, we were teaching at Stanford, so, like, everybody had a PhD and, you know, it was, like, a very artificial world. So I, I tried to come up with a metaphor to explain what forgiveness was. And I thought of this. You know, like, when you go to an airport and the air traffic system has planes floating overhead and they land one by one, and if you have a grievance, and that was a pretty serious grievance, your plane doesn't land. You know? It still circles because you're not done. And forgiveness is letting go of the grievance so the plane can land. The plane of, "This hurt me" or, "This is terrible" or, "What a t- what an awful thing." Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:40 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 25:40 The plane comes down, lets, lets out its passengers, lets out its grievance, and you're done.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:47 So whilst the plane is up in the air, then, can we extend that metaphor so that we think, "Okay, whilst that plane hasn't landed, it's going around my body, it's going around my mind, it's causing conflict, it's causing-

Dr. Fred Luskin 25:59 That's it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:59 ... stress-

Dr. Fred Luskin 26:00 That's it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:00 ... until you land the plane?"

Dr. Fred Luskin 26:02 Until you land the plane. And when you don't land a plane on time, like anything else, when you don't grieve a wound and let it go, it disrupts everything. Like, it, it gets in the way. It's like, this plane should've landed two days ago and it's still up here. This problem with your brother-in-law or this problem with your neighbor should have been resolved.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:29 And did that metaphor work?

Dr. Fred Luskin 26:31 It did.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:32 They got that?

Dr. Fred Luskin 26:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:34 Okay. So we'll come back to that-

Dr. Fred Luskin 26:34 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:35 ... 'cause the Northern Ireland's, um, situation of forgiveness is really, really fascinating. But in that list, as you say, you talked about landing the planes. You said that forgiveness is for you and not the offender.

Dr. Fred Luskin 26:48 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:49 Forgiveness is taking back your power. It's taking responsibility for how you feel. It's about your healing and not about the people who hurt you, which I think is really important. You say it's a trainable skill, just like learning to throw a baseball.

Dr. Fred Luskin 27:07 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:07 I think that's really empowering for people.

Dr. Fred Luskin 27:09 Wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:10 Um, it's not that you can either forgive or you can't. Maybe you haven't learnt how to do it, and we're definitely gonna cover how you do that later on. It gives you control over your feelings, can improve your mental and physical health. Forgiveness is a choice.

Dr. Fred Luskin 27:25 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:26 These things are really powerful. Do you still stand by all those things today?

Dr. Fred Luskin 27:29 They s- [laughs] Let me tell you, forgiveness is thousands of years old. It hasn't changed in 20 years.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:37 Okay. So I really like that list, and then you say what forgiveness is not.

Dr. Fred Luskin 27:42 Let me, let me, let me give you the central piece to that thought.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:45 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 27:47 Let's say you had an abusive parent, and you're, you said you're in your 40s, and you realize it's time to heal, right? The parent could be dead. So you can't, you can't wait for them to apologize, to grow, to change. So with that as such an obvious exemplar, the only place forgiveness can be is in us, that we can have been harmed by people who are dead, who have no interest in us.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:24 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 28:24 We can be harmed by people who don't even know they hurt us. So that essential separation of offender and offende is one of the central tenets of this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:38 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 28:39 That I control my experience to what they did, and they may no longer even be available for me to have a talk or a conversation with.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:52 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 28:52 Since that's true, you can't have the forgiveness dependent on them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:58 That's a key point, isn't it?

Dr. Fred Luskin 29:00 Yes. It's so challenging for people to let go of a sense that this thing in the past caused me to be unhappy today. That link is called blame. Blame has a good degree of research on how debilitating it is for your physical wellbeing. It's a position of helplessness. Helplessness is not good for your physical wellbeing. But when I say, you know, let's say we went to high school together and you stole my girlfriend or something. If I'm, if I'm still, 20 years later, like, talking to you as if you're the person who stole my girlfriend, it's not your fault that I've wasted 20 years like that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:54 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 29:55 That's me. That's the crucial thing that is very hard to get across to people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:02 Yeah. That's why I think people are so resistant to forgiveness a lot of the time. I was watching some talks of yours last night, Fred, and-

Dr. Fred Luskin 30:11 [laughs] Thank you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:13 ... I think, I think in one of them- You were saying that forgiveness is the prescription that people often don't want to hear about

Dr. Fred Luskin 30:19 Ain't that the truth?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:20 To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free breathing guide that's gonna help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below. And I think it's because of

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:51 a fundamental misunderstanding, right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 30:54 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:54 And, and I think your, your list of what forgiveness is not really speaks to that. Forgiveness is not condoning unkindness. It is not forgetting that something painful happened. It is not excusing poor behavior.

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:08 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:08 I think people often think that if I forgive that person-

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:12 No question

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:13 ... my ex-girlfriend-

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:14 No question

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:14 ... my ex-husband, that I'm-

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:16 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:17 ... I am excusing their behavior.

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:19 And, you know, throughout the book you make it very, very clear that is not the case. You also say forgiveness does not have to be an otherworldly or religious experience-

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:30 No, not at all

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:30 ... which is a great thing to make it more accessible. It is not denying or minimizing your hurt.

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:37 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:37 It does not even mean reconciling with the offender, and it does not mean you give up having feelings.

Dr. Fred Luskin 31:45 No. In fact, it's none of those things. One of the things [laughs] that we recognized over the years, and it was somewhat humbling, is that a large part of what we do is exactly what you're saying. I, I started to realize after a while that the most important thing that we were doing was explaining what forgiveness is and isn't, and giving people permission to do it, that once you understand what it is and isn't, and somebody says to you, "Hey, buddy, this is good for you," that's a good deal of what we actually do. The techniques and the processes are less important than that positioning and permission.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:35 And does that mean that the techniques are, are great, they can be useful, but are you saying that the key thing is to decide that you are a person who is capable of forgiving-

Dr. Fred Luskin 32:47 And deserving

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:48 ... and deserving-

Dr. Fred Luskin 32:49 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:50 ... of forgiving?

Dr. Fred Luskin 32:51 Yes. And I mean, so you're here and I'm here for a happiness conference, and one of the challenges of teaching people to be happier is a good number of them have not either made up their minds or had life experiences where they know they deserve to be happier. Where, uh, like, they- that they're capable of right now, right here, right at this moment, "I'm worthy." And that is the switch. There's some challenging switch of how it is that people become... make the decision that they wanna be a little happier. With forgiveness, the, the difficult decision is, "Do I wanna free myself from suffering that started with an offense, but has been continued by how I am living my life?" The challenge is, one, to let go of that past, but two, to recognize that I'm the one who has been doing, like, thinking certain thoughts, telling myself certain stories, relating to the world in a certain way that contribute to my suffering, that I took an event, I incompletely grieved it, and then now I have been relating to that event in a way that causes me pain.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:37 Ongoing pain.

Dr. Fred Luskin 34:38 Ongoing pain. And every now and then, like, I'll talk to somebody individually. Like, more, I more do group stuff. Every now and then, like just the other day I was on a Zoom with somebody, I think from Italy, and he l- he was talking to me. And the reason he contacted me was, "You know, Fred, I just... I got to a point where I got... I just got tired of my own mind. Like, I keep on playing this over."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:08 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 35:08 And what we would tell people, or I still tell people, let's say you had literally the worst something. How is it their fault that you can't get them out of your head? How is that their fault? It's your head. And, and that stops that, that question-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:34 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 35:34 ... cuts through a lot of the drama that people bring around their wounds.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:41 Yeah. It's that understanding, that deep understanding that the feelings I feel, the thoughts I have are being generated inside of me.

Dr. Fred Luskin 35:56 Now.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:57 Right now.

Dr. Fred Luskin 35:58 And I'm practicing how I relate to my own life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:05 We've mentioned the word control a few times in this conversation, and that sometimes holding onto a grudge is our way of trying to control the future, which of course is uncontrollable.

Dr. Fred Luskin 36:18 And the present So that I don't have to feel vulnerable, scared, small, or lost in the present

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:29 But I guess that word control, if we take it one step further, many of us know that we should try and control the controllables and not control the uncontrollables. Well, one of the ultimate uncontrollables is other people's actions, their words, their behaviors.

Dr. Fred Luskin 36:51 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:51 We can't control that.

Dr. Fred Luskin 36:52 Not at all.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:53 So if we say that we are going to be affected for the next 10 years when someone does something I don't like-

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:02 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:02 ... you're basically saying that I am gonna be a passive victim to life.

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:10 That's exactly it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:11 And I s- I, I, I just, I say that with an open heart.

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:14 But that's it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:15 I'm not blaming anyone.

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:16 But it's not-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:16 I'm not calling that... There are, of course, there are really nasty and horrible things that happen in the world.

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:21 That's, that's an accurate reporting of reality.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:24 Yeah. Once you get that, that actually your feelings are your responsibility, you change the trajectory of your life. You understand that the fire that's being lit lives inside of you.

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:39 You know, they may have done something one time-

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:41 Or 10 times even. It doesn't matter

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:44 ... but how you're interpreting that is down to you. So let's-

Dr. Fred Luskin 37:48 And it's in the present.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:52 So let's take an example. I mean, the book is full of, you know, wonderful examples, but in relationships, in intimate relationships, someone cheating on the other person is pretty common, right? And it's clearly very, very hurtful.

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:06 Well, I think they suggest that between 25 and 40% of marriages will have an infidelity.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:14 Wow.

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:16 So you must have come across this a lot.

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:18 [laughs] Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:19 People don't wanna forgive their partner, their husband, their wife, their ex-partner for cheating on them.

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:27 And of course, it's very, very hurtful. But I mean, how... If someone came to you and said, "Listen, I get what you're saying, but my wife lied to me for 12 months-

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:40 Mm-hmm. Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:40 ... and was having an affair-

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:43 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:44 ... I have every right to feel upset-

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:47 Yep

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:47 ... to be annoyed-

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:49 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:49 ... and I'm not gonna forgive her."

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:53 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:54 What would you say to that person?

Dr. Fred Luskin 38:55 It depends when in the process they come to me. So if they come to me nine months after they discover the affair, I tell them that's not bad thinking. If they come to me 18 months after the affair, I start saying, "Well, uh, you're creating habit patterns that are probably not gonna be in your best interest." And that distinction is enormous.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:23 Okay. Hold on. This is really, really interesting. So you're saying that from the amount of people you've seen over time, and for that kind of offense, for want of a better term-

Dr. Fred Luskin 39:32 That's a huge offense

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:33 ... that's a huge offense.

Dr. Fred Luskin 39:34 Huge offense.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:35 You're saying nine months, it's still reasonable to be hurt and upset.

Dr. Fred Luskin 39:41 Yeah. It's not just reasonable. It can be even healthy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:45 Okay. But at 18 months, not so. So is that because you have a ballpark in your head from your experience that-

Dr. Fred Luskin 39:53 I, I do, that there's some research somewhere that I read that most people move through an affair with healthy grieving between six months and two years of when it happens.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:07 Okay.

Dr. Fred Luskin 40:07 That, that there's... You know, I, I do try to keep some research, like, available. So that's the patterning of-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:16 Okay

Dr. Fred Luskin 40:16 ... healthy adaption. So nine months is what... I, I mean, I can bring my own experience. I had a, an awful relationship at one point in my life, and knowing enough about this stuff, I gave myself six months to complain as much as I wanted to anybody about how badly I was treated, and [laughs] I was such a pain in the butt, and everybody who met me was, "Hi, Fred. I had a lousy... I'm Fred. I had a lousy experience." And I, I didn't put any limits or governors on my pain or my confusion or my hurt-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:01 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 41:01 ... or even my blame. I did that for six months knowing what was going on, and then, one, inside of me, I started to recognize I don't need this anymore. I've, I've, I've, I've complained, I've, I've had pity parties, I've gotten angry, I've, I've had that whole gamut in there. It's not really doing me much good anymore. If I'm not careful-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:25 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 41:25 ... this is gonna just be a habit. That was part of it was inside. The other part was in my head that said, "Fred, well, you know enough. You've, you've dealt with enough people. You got this out of your system. Now, now you start talking about the coping narrative. Like, you change the story. Nothing changed on the past, but you gave yourself a period of time to actively grieve, actively blame, and just be a mess. Like, that was fine. But don't make it your life story." So I shifted to, "Well, that was awful. Now what do I do about it?" Or, "I better figure out what's next for me," or, "I have to learn how to let this go," or, "Now I need to find out her good qualities." You know, whatever. But I deliberately shifted the focus of the narrative because I know that grieving has anger and despair, but it needs to find acceptance. And so I didn't do it before inside I was ready. You know, you can feel-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:41 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 42:41 ... I've bitched about this enough, and now it's either a habit or I don't know what else to do. That's what hits people. I don't know what else to do with this. I only know how to complain or tell-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:56 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 42:57 ... everybody how bad it is. I don't know how to shift to... I don't know how to land those planes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:04 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 43:04 So that's what people need massive help with. How do you shift that narrative, and how do you f- shift that focus from helplessness to coping? That's, that's the intervention point.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:23 It's hard, isn't it, for people, because, A, they may have been hurt before-

Dr. Fred Luskin 43:29 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:30 ... in similar ways-

Dr. Fred Luskin 43:31 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:31 ... so this can reinforce existing patterns that we have.

Dr. Fred Luskin 43:36 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:36 You mentioned the word habit, which is really interesting. It's this idea, isn't it, that we get good at what we practice.

Dr. Fred Luskin 43:44 Ain't that the truth?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:45 So if you practice this kind of I'm-a-victim-to-the-world narrative because of this incident that happened... And I get it, nine months, 12 months, 15 months, however long it takes you to get over-

Dr. Fred Luskin 43:58 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:58 ... sure. But if five years after you're still doing it, you have to understand-

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:05 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:05 ... that it's harming you.

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:07 Well, and it's also you're doing it. Like y-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:10 Yeah, that... It could be... Let, let's say, let's make it really specific. Let's say-

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:14 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:15 ... someone was in a relationship and their partner cheated on them once.

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:21 Let's say, right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:22 So it's one event-

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:23 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:23 ... that happened, and let's say they had 10 great years before that, for example.

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:29 There's so many things in what you said that I think are the traps that people fall into. So the first trap I think people fall into is making someone either all good or all bad. [laughs]

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:40 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:41 Right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:41 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:42 Yes, that was a bad, negative experience. That was something that you wish hadn't happened-

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:48 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:48 ... but it doesn't necessarily mean they're a nasty person.

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:52 No, nor does it mean the relationship is over.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:56 Yeah. I'm really-

Dr. Fred Luskin 44:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:58 ... I'm... What I'm trying to do is really get to these key points where people get stuck.

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:04 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:04 Right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:05 So if I meet somebody who's absolutely stuck like that, if you saw in the book, there's a practice called PERT.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:14 Yeah. P-E-R-T.

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:16 So it, it would be, like, take a couple of slow deep breaths into and out of your belly. Like, just quiet down. Take a... You know, inhale deeply, exhale deeply, inhale deeply, and, and, and bring your attention inward.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:34 Can I just push back here for the purpose of the conversation, not 'cause I disagree? If someone's feeling that anger and rage-

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:42 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:42 ... towards an ex-partner-

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:43 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:43 ... and they're saying or they're hearing you say, "Take some deep breaths"

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:47 But it de- depends where in the process it is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:50 Okay.

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:50 So if somebody's three months in, this is not what anybody... I would do. But again, if they're 18 months in-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:57 Okay

Dr. Fred Luskin 45:57 ... and I would do that, and then I'd say, "Remember, um, somebody you love, not the person who hurt you. Feel it. Touch it. And now you're a little quieter. Let me talk to that person. Let me talk to the part of you that's a little quieter. You both exist right here, both of you. I see the angry person. I see the bitter person, but I know there's also an entity in you, a certain vibration, way of looking at things, that's already at peace."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:31 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 46:32 "Let's bring that voice out to join the conversation." The game changes because the anger is simply a habit, and once that... It's a habit. It's c- it's conditioned. It's a conditioned response. When you're a victim, you know you have an adrenalized, um, response, and your HP axis is all over the place, and so you, you, um, you develop a conditioned response between the stimulus of the bum that had the affair and your body's arousal. So you gotta cut that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:14 Got it. So the first thing is you calm everything down-

Dr. Fred Luskin 47:17 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:17 ... with some deep breaths.

Dr. Fred Luskin 47:19 Just, just a couple of deep breaths.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:20 Okay.

Dr. Fred Luskin 47:21 And then bring an image of someone you love or a time when you felt safe or... And if you're in a horrible marriage, uh, connect with the love you have for your dog. It doesn't matter. You're opening up to a part of you that's been hidden from you. And then quiet down for a minute and just let's, um, let's tell a different story that doesn't make you upset again.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:51 A story about the event that happened?

Dr. Fred Luskin 47:53 Yes. And that story can include the 10 years of marriage. The angry story ignores the 10 years of marriage. So when people come to me all unforgiving, and they will say, you know, "The, the bum ruined our relationship because they had affair," and that's fine. If you say that story 100 times, you've said it enough. A better story is, "We were happily married for eight years. Um, things started to get vulnerable. For some stupid reason, the guy had an affair. Um, it, it, it, it almost destroyed us, but-" There's room in that story for growth, for change, but it includes more of the relationship and the truth than this one thing is not the entire determinant. But you know enough about adrenaline-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:53 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 48:53 ... that adrenaline's purpose is to us to focus a narrow-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:59 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 48:59 ... band of attention on a problem. So when people are angry as a habit, they're simply giving us an adrenalized response that they have gotten to be hair-triggered.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:14 Yeah, and the, and the really important thing for me there, Fred, is what I think a lot of people don't realize is that if you are holding onto a lot of resentments and anger and you can't let go, it changes who you are.

Dr. Fred Luskin 49:31 Oh, no question.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:32 It changes how you see the world.

Dr. Fred Luskin 49:34 No question.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:34 You are living in a stress state, and in a stress state, what does your body want? It wants narrow focus, deal with the threat at hand.

Dr. Fred Luskin 49:43 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:44 What it doesn't want is peripheral vision.

Dr. Fred Luskin 49:47 Perspective.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:48 Perspective.

Dr. Fred Luskin 49:48 It does not wa- it doesn't even know what to do with perspective.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:52 Yes. It, the, the lens through which you are seeing reality is completely different-

Dr. Fred Luskin 49:57 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:57 ... when you're in an angry stress state-

Dr. Fred Luskin 49:59 E- exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:00 ... compared to a calm, relaxed state, which is why I feel your work, honestly, is so, so important because what... I think what you've done, Fred, is you've done a lot of research and science on forgiveness, on the benefits of forgiveness. It's not just something that's gonna make us feel better.

Dr. Fred Luskin 50:17 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:17 Of course, it will do that, but it's also gonna help you interact with the world in a much more considerate, compassionate, loving way, which ultimately is the way we all wanna be. Whether we say we want to or not-

Dr. Fred Luskin 50:30 [laughs] Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:31 ... we all wanna be that calm, relaxed, forgiving person.

Dr. Fred Luskin 50:35 And, and also trusting. You're married, you said. Yeah, I've been in a relationship now for 10 years with somebody. M- I go back to them, and I'm almost certain that they're loyal, that they, they certainly haven't cheated on me, that they're, they're gonna say nice things about me. And so I walk into that house with a sense of trust. If they had done something which broke that trust, the forgiveness piece is in large part to get that trust back. But here's where people go off the rails. It's not just about trusting them. It's about trusting us to cope with our own life because life involves hurt and disappointment and challenge. And if we get that and we can't cope and we blame it on them, like, "The reason I can't trust you again is you did X, Y, and Z three years ago," that's only half the story.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:50 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 51:51 The other half of the story is I never learned to make peace with a life that has difficulty in it. I never learned that, and I... And so I'm bringing my failure into the relationship moving forward, and I'm blaming that on you. And so, like, realism is a very good patterning. So often before any big difficulties occur in a marriage, we're unrealistically positive. You know? Like, they're great, they're gonna love us forever, and we're gonna live happily ever after. That's unrealistically positive. When you get hurt or disappointed, you become unrealistically negative. What you want to be is realistic with some bandwidth. You know? That, yes, they're almost always gonna be good to me, but not always, and they make mistakes, and they have their own issues, and they're gonna disappoint me. And so I need to develop a deeper love within me where I can handle them not just doing what I want all the time but learning to love when they don't do what I want.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:15 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 53:15 It, it deepens.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:19 What's the relationship between being able to forgive ourselves and the ability to forgive others? A lot of us, maybe because of our childhoods and how we were brought up-

Dr. Fred Luskin 53:33 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:33 ... we don't feel good enough.

Dr. Fred Luskin 53:34 True. Many, many, many people grow up very vulnerable to feeling not worthy enough to be loved. And so they, they have games in their head. We all do. "I have to do X, Y, and Z to be lovable. I have to, I have to become a physician. I have to get a PhD, have to win a gold medal. I have to, you know, make money. I have to do whatever in order to be loved." That, that's a, a game that almost everybody does to some degree, and it causes a lot, a lot of pain. Um, our lovability really has nothing to do w- not nothing, it has little to do with our achievements and little to do with our outward, um, successes. There's a... We have a humanity or some- something in us that's lovable, and we connect to other people's lovability completely independent of their story, of, of, "Hi, I'm this, and I had this history," and that that's- That's not what we're loving, but we have such fear that if we don't do this, that, or the other thing, we do too much of that, that we're not gonna be loved. And so we become very unforgiving towards our mistakes or our-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:00 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 55:00 ... failures or our weaknesses. Um, whether that directly relates to forgiveness or others, I don't believe so. There are some people who are incredibly forgiving of other people and incredibly harsh to themselves, and there are other people who are very gentle towards themselves. They let themselves off the hook for everything and are harsh as heck to others. There was a, a therapeutic system 40 years ago called Transactional Analysis, and it was I'm okay and you're okay, and... But it was a basic decision. This comes, I think, from Alfred Adler's work on... We, we create through our early childhood one of four boxes. I'm okay, you're okay, which is the healthiest. You know? I like me, I like you. I'm not okay, you're not okay, which is really unhealthy. And more people fall in the I'm okay, but you're not okay, or I'm not okay and you're okay. I have found that in the forgiveness world, a lot of people are very hard on themselves but really good-hearted and kind to others. Um, and the world is awash with too many people who so quickly forgive themselves, don't even look at how they've harmed other people, don't have a lot of regret, don't say they're sorry easily.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:34 Yeah. No, it's fascinating. I guess then, are the steps we need to take so that we can forgive others the same-

Dr. Fred Luskin 56:48 Yeah, that's it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:49 ... as the steps we need to take to forgive ourselves?

Dr. Fred Luskin 56:53 Very-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:53 Or are they different?

Dr. Fred Luskin 56:54 Very similar, and that is... Yeah, they're, they're different tracks.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:59 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 56:59 Yeah. Can I add something to that?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:03 Please.

Dr. Fred Luskin 57:03 The key elements of self-forgiveness for me have evolved over time, and, and they're more now like remorse. Like, that in order to forgive oneself well, you really need to feel bad for what you did.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:20 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 57:20 Like, whether you harmed yourself or other people or you screwed up or you failed. It's really important for a while to tr- to tussle with-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:30 Mm-hmm

Dr. Fred Luskin 57:30 ... one's own failure, but more just one's humanness. Besides remorse, we as a world need desperately to learn how to be better at apologizing. Like sincere, straightforward, caring apologies. Remorse and apology are central to self-forgiveness because self-forgiveness means we're letting ourselves off the hook. You have to earn it. You have to, like, do something. And the last piece, and, and these are from the 12-step programs, is make amends. Whatever you did or I did to hurt the world, make it right in whatever way you can. So if, if you did something that harmed your marriage, make it right. If, if, if you screwed up and, you know, hurt your kids, make it right. If, if you simply forgot something, make it right. Those three, remorse, apology, and kind of amends, um, those are so-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:36 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 58:36 ... crucial and I, and I don't see them culturally a- as promulgated enough.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:42 Yeah. Taking responsibility, I think, is such an important concept.

Dr. Fred Luskin 58:46 No question.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:47 We all make mistakes.

Dr. Fred Luskin 58:48 Oh. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:49 Right? We're all human.

Dr. Fred Luskin 58:51 Oh my God.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:52 Therefore, we all make mistakes.

Dr. Fred Luskin 58:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:54 But you have to take responsibility. You have to first of all take responsibility to yourself and go, "Yeah, you know what? That was me. I could have done that differently. You know, next time in that situation, I hope to behave or act differently." And then, you know, responsibility can also mean if you have hurt someone, whether you meant to or not, taking responsibility for that and saying that and expressing that.

Dr. Fred Luskin 59:21 I'm sorry.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:23 Just taking a quick break to give a shout-out to Vivobarefoot shoes. Now, I've been a huge fan of Vivobarefoot for over 10 years now, well before they started supporting my podcast. They are the only shoes that I wear, and they really have had a huge impact on my own life and the lives of many of my patients. You see, when people start wearing minimalist shoes like Vivos, you can see improvements in things like back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain. Even things like plantar fasciitis can often get better. And scientific research shows us that just wearing Vivos for about four months or so improves the strength in your feet by over 60%, which is absolutely incredible. One thing people don't realize about these shoes is just how flexible they are, which allows your feet to do what your feet naturally want to do rather than the shoe dictating your foot's movement. Vivobarefoot are giving my audience a 15% off one-time code when you make your first order, and they make it really easy for you to give them a try. They give a 100-day trial for new customers, so if you don't like them, you just send them back for a full refund. I'm a huge fan. I really hope you take advantage of this offer. To get your 15% off code, all you need to do is go to vivobarefoot.com/livemore or click on the link in the description box below. Now, I've heard you say,

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:54 Fred, that forgiveness is easier when you get an apology, but that most of-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:00 That's not just me. That's the research.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:02 Yeah, so this is an interesting point, isn't it? Because on one hand, we're saying that we don't wanna be dependent or overly dependent on the actions of other people, right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:14 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:15 So someone did something, I perceive that as being hurtful.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:22 I don't wanna be stuck in a place where I can only move on from that-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:25 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:26 ... if that person, who I have no control over-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:29 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:30 ... is going to apologize.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:31 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:32 However, I think what the research is saying, that if that person does give you a proper apology, and I know you have some thoughts on what actually a proper apology is-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:42 [laughs] Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:43 ... if they do, it makes my job of forgiveness easier.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:47 Oh, so much easier. It-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:49 Does that mean that we're dependent then on that person?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:51 Well, it's called, it's j- it's just a gift.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:53 It's a gift.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:53 It's a gift.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:54 And what's a proper apology?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:01:57 I mean, the, the gift... A- and I like the way you, you brought out the tension in that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:03 Hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:02:03 Like, you don't wanna sit around, you know, like this, waiting for an apology before you move, and, and, and that's a really good reading of the data. But you also don't wanna be closed to an apology. Like, you can be hopeful that the person will recognize their error. You can desire it. You can ask them. It's not like being dependent on them means you're not in a relationship and can't put requests out there. What is debilitating is when you have an expectation that they will apologize. So if, if you s- let's say you're late. Um, well, I'll give you an example. Just the other day at Stanford, um, I, I, I, I do some trainings. I'm a meditation teacher for some of the athletic teams at Stanford. So I, I come in and I do mindfulness, and I teach this stuff, positivity, to athletic teams, the Division I teams. And one of the teams that I speak to, I came in and they weren't there. They had canceled practice at the last minute and didn't tell me. I was coming in from somewhere, and I show up and there's nobody there-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:29 Hmm

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:03:29 ... and I'm thinking, "Hey." So I sent the coach a text like, "Where are you?" And she sent back an absolutely sincere apology. You know, it's like, "So sorry I wasted your time. I feel terrible. We made a last-minute thing. I just forgot." You know, it's totally clean at that point. If I had sent her my text and she hadn't s- sent the apology, then I could have said, you know, "She's a jerk," or whatever. But I also could have said, "You know, next time, if, if, if you change it, please give me a call." I can o- I can put out what I want.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:10 Where I run into trouble or the human race runs into trouble is she has to apologize. She owes me an apology.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:18 And I'm not gonna move on until I get it.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:21 That's it. That's it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:22 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:22 So then you put yourself into a very weak position.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:28 Understandable position-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:29 A totally understandable-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:29 ... but a weak, but a weak position

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:31 ... yeah, and one which gives them control over your nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:38 Just say that again, 'cause that, I think, is a key point.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:40 [laughs] One that gives them control over your nervous system.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:46 Yeah, so we're effectively a puppet.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:48 Right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:04:49 I would think so.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:50 You know, the actions and words and non-apologies of other people has the power to control me.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:05:00 Hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:02 And that is so, so profound, Fred, because when you really get that, if you can get to the point where you understand that, I think you open yourself up to a new pathway in life-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:05:14 That's it. That's it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:15 ... because you realize, no, no, wait a minute, yes, bad things are gonna happen, negative things are gonna happen, but-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:05:20 And forgiveness is that opening to a new pathway.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:25 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:05:26 And a sincere apology, um, says, "I'm sorry," but it also acknowledges the harm. So, "I'm sorry that I wasted your time." It's not just I'm sorry, but I'm sorry that I wasted your time. I'm sorry that I hurt you. It acknowledges, it sees the damage done, and it makes a link between my action and your harm. Like, a fake apology is, "I'm sorry you feel bad." That makes people crazy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:06 [laughs]

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:06:08 And you get... That's a very common fake apology. "I'm sorry you feel bad," like, "I'm sorry that you're out of control." Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:16 [laughs]

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:06:17 But a r- a real apology is, "I did X. It legitimately caused Y. I'm sorry, and can I make it right, or can I tell you that I simply won't do that again?" That's what a sincere apology is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:35 And if you receive one of those, although it's not necessary, it makes the job of forgiveness a lot easier.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:06:43 Oh, so much easier.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:44 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:06:45 Because it, it repairs the relationship. What, what forgiveness does, it repairs us. But the apology helps repair the relationship.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:59 Yeah. Well, let's talk about these nine steps to forgiveness that you've published.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:07:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:05 Um, and I'm hoping that people who feel that there's something in their life that they can't let go of-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:07:13 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:13 ... I'm hoping that understanding these nine steps will give them something to work with.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:07:17 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:17 Okay? So step one, reflect on your experience. What does that mean?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:07:22 I mean, you have to know what happened, know who hurt you. Uh, it c- it can't just be vague. Like, like I had a shitty dad. That's probably not good enough to, to really forgive it. It's dad did X, Y, and Z. It hurt me in this way. We tried ... I mean, you don't have to have f- 400, you know, journals about it, but you have to have dug in a little bit to the experience and the pain so you know what it is-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:55 Okay

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:07:56 ... that you're letting go of. And it ha- it, it's also an awareness that it's still hurting me now.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:04 Okay. And these nine steps, before we go to step two, they don't have to be done in one go, right? These are things that you work on over time. You go through the steps sequentially or do you circle back? I mean-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:08:16 Yeah, did- nothing works sequentially. You've probably read enough research.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:20 Hey.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:08:21 You go from one to two to six back to four.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:24 Yeah. But these are the nine steps to look at-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:08:26 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:26 ... on your journey-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:08:27 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:28 ... through and to forgiveness.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:08:29 Yeah, that's true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:30 Okay. So number one, reflecting your experience. Number two, make a commitment to yourself to work towards forgiveness.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:08:38 Yeah. And forgiveness, as they describe now, the research, as two components. There's decisional and emotional.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:46 What does that mean?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:08:47 Decisional is I'm deciding I need to let this go. Then emotional forgiveness is the inner experience of working on it. You need both.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:56 Okay. But is, is that two, you know, make a commitment to yourself, is that basically the decision?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:09:03 It's a decision to be good to you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:06 Right.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:09:07 It's a decision that I need to suffer less, I need to change. Something has to adapt in me, 'cause the world so far doesn't show it- that it's gonna change for me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:19 Yeah. So that's step two. Step three, understand that forgiveness does not mean trying to make up with the person who harmed you or excusing their actions.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:09:29 It's the, it's the difference between reconciliation and forgiveness. Forgiveness is an inner mind body release and healing. Reconciliation is restoring a relationship. You can forgive and not reconcile. So you can have a marriage with a horrible set of affairs and you can say, "Hey, you know, I forgive you. It's obvious that this isn't a good marriage. It's obvious that whatever reason you and I can't make it work, or you can't be here. So I open my heart. I'm clean, but we're done." Many marriages reconcile and don't forgive, so they keep on coming back to each other every night, but they stay angry. So there's a clear difference between reconciliation and forgiveness.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:22 Yeah. I think there was another key point there for me, Fred, which is letting go of that pain and that hurt, forgiving that other person because the emotional charge is lessened. You are better able to move on and make good quality decisions-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:10:47 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:48 ... when you're not c-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:10:49 But that's it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:50 ... when you're not coming from anger and revenge

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:10:52 Or not just anger or revenge, self-pity.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:55 Self-pity.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:10:56 That's the other piece. To me, those are the, the poles of fight or flight. Anger is fight, and self-pity and kind of like poor me, those are the flight reactions.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:09 And it, because self-pity, it's just not gonna help you, is it?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:11:16 Not long-term. Short-term it may be necessary.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:20 Yeah. It's in the long-term. Short-term stress helps us. Long-term chronic unrelenting stress is what harms us.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:11:26 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:27 Short-term grief, perfectly normal.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:11:29 Helpful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:29 Go through it, talk to your friends, get it off your chest.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:11:32 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:32 But at some point, and that point's gonna be different for everyone, at some point-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:11:36 That's also right. Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:37 ... you've gotta change.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:11:38 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:39 You've gotta change the lens. Okay. Step four, try to shift your perspective. I guess we've just covered that, haven't we?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:11:49 Um, usually that's also from perspective from past to present. So perspective means that I ... You know, most of my energy was spent on what happened in the past, how bad it was. Shift your perspective means that you wanna move to, what am I doing now? What can I change now? And how can I be better in my life now? It's going from past to present.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:21 Yeah. Can I share with you how I do forgiveness and how I would apply try to shift your perspective? A few years ago, I chose to take on the view, it was a choice-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:12:40 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:40 ... it was a decision I made, that every single person in the world is doing the best that they can in that moment-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:12:49 That's right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:50 ... based upon who they are and based upon their life experiences. So in essence, if I was that person, if I had their childhood and their parents and their schooling and their friends-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:06 And their bodies

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:07 ... and their bodies, I would be behaving-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:09 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:09 ... in exactly the same way as them. I am not even 1% exaggerating, Fred, when I say that approach has completely transformed my life-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:22 Oh, of course it would

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:22 ... health and happiness.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:23 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:24 Because you lead in life with compassion.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:26 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:28 And I believe that if you can take that approach, and it's like we said, you get good at what you practice.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:37 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:37 So if you practice that, you get damn good at taking that approach.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:41 You get damn good at it, I know.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:43 Right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:43 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:43 You re- if it starts to become automatic at some point-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:46 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:46 ... intentionally you're thinking about it, you're thinking about it, you're trying to practice.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:50 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:50 But before you know it, you're doing it everywhere.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:52 No question.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:54 What I find so powerful about that in relation to forgiveness-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:13:58 But that is forgiveness

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:59 ... Yeah. And so this is interesting for me-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:14:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:02 ... because I think if you take that approach of curiosity and compassion to that other person, forgiveness is a natural byproduct of that.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:14:13 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:13 Because there's actually nothing to forgive.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:14:15 Well, yeah, there is because you will register offense. It's not like you become immune. You will register that that hurt or that was unskillful or that caused me harm. And the processing of that registering instead of being blame and attack will be a true opening to your own experience-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:44 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:14:44 ... which is valuable, and it will involve an understanding that while flawed, they did who they were.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:55 Yeah. I, I, I guess I feel that I wanna ... I know how many people push back against forgiveness.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:15:05 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:05 And I really wanna make sure that we've covered it from every possible angle.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:15:08 Well, also, there's one other piece that, um, the, the sense of self, the ego, like the, the I, thrives on discord. Like that, that separate self, part of its job is to find ways that it's different than other people, that it's special, that it's unique.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:35 That it's better than other people.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:15:36 Exactly. And that also it's an identification point around suffering. Like, I hurt. I, I was mistreated. The ego sense does not necessarily like letting it go because it loses its influence.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:57 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:15:59 So that part of us that's attached to the ego, that part of us is what struggles with forgiveness because the ego is being abandoned.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:10 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:16:10 It's like, yeah, you were hurt, but so what? Everybody's hurt. Or you were hurt by an imperfect human being. Well, join the crowd.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:18 [laughs] Yeah. When you, when you say it like that, it's like of course it's gonna happen.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:16:22 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:23 To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits. We can all make short-term change, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life? Often they don't, and that's why in this free guide, I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take. They're really, really effective. If you wanna get hold of that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below. There was this really nice case in your book, Forgive for Good. I think it, I think it was a chap called Mark. Mark was in a marriage for 10 years, and then his wife had an affair. Okay. So I'm saying what has changed things for me is by truly believing that if I was that person, I'd be doing exactly the same as them. Right? So it doesn't mean that Mark's ex-wife did an amazing thing-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:17:23 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:23 ... by having an affair, right? To be clear.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:17:25 Let's hope not.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:27 Of course it's gonna be hurtful for Mark, and probably hurtful, I would imagine, for his ex-wife.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:17:32 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:33 Right? But let's say I was Mark. We can apply that and go, "Okay, my ex-wife, I understand, I can see why she had an affair. It was hurtful. I wish she hadn't."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:17:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:48 But it could be, for example, she had a really tough upbringing. She was always really insecure. I was busy at work for a few years.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:17:59 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:00 I get why on some level this happened.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:18:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:04 I'm not excusing it. I'm not saying it's right, but you just ... It's like that step four, shift your perspective.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:18:09 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:09 You're just opening the door a little bit to go-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:18:11 And maybe I didn't nourish parts of her in the way that I thought I did.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:17 Yeah. Now, Fred, I know some people are gonna push back here, and they're gonna go, "Yeah, but that's still no excuse to have an affair." 'Cause, because we've covered forgiveness on this show before. I spoke to a monk last year, Gelong Thubten, and he spoke from a Buddhist perspective about the importance of forgiveness.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:18:35 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:37 And, you know, when we put out this one-minute reel from the episode onto Instagram, it got a lot of interest.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:18:45 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:45 Some people loved it. Other people were pushing back and going, "Yeah, I had a tough upbringing. I didn't feel loved when I was growing up, but I still would never have an affair." Right? Which, which may well be true.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:18:58 May well be true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:59 But what I hear in all of this stuff is some level of judgment- Right? Judgment of other people. So, uh, uh, you know, you're one of the world's leading experts on forgiveness and research on forgiveness rights. Would you agree that if Mark looks at his ex-wife and says, "Look, I, I, I don't like it, but I understand why it happened,"

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:19:23 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:23 It doesn't mean that they can stay together, but the forgiveness is... I guess, is a part of forgiveness understanding why that person acted in the way that they did?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:19:37 So the wife may have had a difficult childhood, but she also may be lazy, you know? And that she didn't put a lot of effort towards working things through with Mark.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:52 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:19:52 Maybe she had poor impulse control, you know, that, that the, the, the guy presented himself. Maybe he didn't see himself clearly and was a worse partner than he thought it was. The, the, the, the definitions and the understandings are complex. What forgiveness does is it says that harsh, hostile judgment of the terribleness of them and the blamelessness of me, I'm moving past that. And so I'm willing now to release that judgment and that blamelessness so that I can be back in my present life without storing so much energy from-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:42 Mm

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:20:42 ... what they did, because it's complex and I'll never fully know why she did it. But I accept that she and I were imperfect couple partners. She behaved badly. I didn't know how to cope with it well. It's a, it's a, it's a bigger thing than just one, you know, I look back and see this and that. It allows the complexity in.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:09 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:10 So I'm open to life's experience.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:13 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:13 I'm not, I'm not such jugging- judging or protecting. I can have conversations around it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:21 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:23 It's a... You, you get what I'm driving at?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:25 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:25 It's a present-centered freedom.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:28 Yeah. No, I love the way you put that. I guess where I'm coming from is more that, um... I, I just fundamentally believe that when we can approach people and the world with compassion-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:40 Always

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:40 ... and understanding, everything on the other end becomes easier.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:46 Because you relax.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:48 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:49 Your mind is clear. Your heart stays open.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:52 Exactly. And it, again, it doesn't, it's not condoning that behavior. It's just saying, "Okay, cool. Look, that happened."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:21:59 Shit happens.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:00 "I don't like it. Maybe we can't be together anymore."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:22:03 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:04 But it still doesn't mean we didn't have a great 10 years.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:22:06 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:06 Right? Or a great eight years until... Or whatever it might have been.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:22:10 And you can even wish them well in their future.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:13 Yeah. Let's go to step five. I think it speaks to what we've just been talking about. When you feel upset about a past harm, try calming exercises.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:22:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:22 That's the breathwork.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:22:23 I, I, and I did that, right. So with the people from Northern Ireland that we brought, the first day that they got there, the first thing that we did was we brought them to a fifth floor window on Stanford's campus and, you know, they had come from Belfast. And we opened all the blinds, and it was January, but it was still 65 degrees, and the sun was shining. And what we asked them to do was just let the sun in. Like, open your arms, feel the warmth, and go, "You know, the world is beautiful, too."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:06 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:23:06 To be open to experience, calm down. Right here and now. Right now, calm down. Yes, in the past somebody was murdered, but right now you can calm down, you can open to goodness and have a good moment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:25 Yeah. And that's a necessary step if you are gonna move on.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:23:28 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:29 You have to be able to get out of the past.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:23:30 You can't forgive, like, big life until you can have 30 seconds of peace.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:36 Yeah. Step six, remember that some things, other people's actions and feelings, are not in your control.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:23:44 [laughs] Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:44 I think we've covered that.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:23:45 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:46 Step seven, try not to dwell on the hurt you experienced.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:23:50 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:50 For someone who says, "Fred, listen, that, that sounds great, but I can't stop thinking about the hurt that I've experienced..."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:23:56 But you can. I mean, it's just that it's hard. And so one of the strategies is a cognitive strategy, which is to not say, "I can't," but, and these are just normal cognitive strategies, "Up until now I haven't been able to" or "It's hard for me" or "I want to learn to."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:18 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:19 When you say can't, you make sure you can't.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:22 Yeah. So that's hopeful and empowering for people. But they-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:25 Just it's more truthful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:27 And as you say, forgiveness is a skill that anyone can learn.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:31 And the, uh, my hope with this conversation is that we're just opening the door for people to go-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:35 That's all we can-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:36 ... "You know what?"

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:37 It's all we can do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:38 "You know what? Maybe it is something I can work on and get better at-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:41 And that's it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:41 ... and practice."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:42 And if somebody comes up with a schema like yours that works, what a blessing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:47 Yeah. Step eight, the penultimate step. Look for the love, beauty, and kindness around you.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:24:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:56 I guess that is come to the present moment.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:25:00 Let me explain how that is so related to forgiveness in a way that most people don't think about. So- Uh, you know, the, our negativity bias, the, the basic wiring. We're constantly looking out for things that go wrong, people that harm us, mistakes. Unfortunately, that bias makes us distort what we see.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:25:28 So what, what, what, what I understand is that when people are hurt, they become very vigilant to make sure they don't get hurt again.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:25:38 You know, that's part of this negativity bias. But what, what is entirely missing from that is promoting more positivity bias such as, do you notice every time your wife is kind to you? Not every time. Do you notice when people are good-hearted? What, what the... And I brought up to you, like, an hour ago about vulnerability. If you acknowledge that you're vulnerable sometimes to be hurt, in that space you can recognize how vulnerable and open you can be to so much goodness.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:20 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:26:21 Like, if you're not fighting, you see how kind people are to you. You notice it. Like, you, you allow your, like, humanness to see, "Oh, yeah," like... And I, I... An example came with the, the woman you met, my girlfriend. Like, we had a fight, I don't know, a week ago and, and, and, and, you know, it wasn't enough of a fight that it was something, but I noticed that, that she just stood there and didn't threaten me in any way. And, and, and a little bit later I came to her and said, "Wow, you know, that was just amazing. Like, you just, you're just there."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:27:04 "Like, you're not, you're not going anywhere. There's a commitment that you've made to this relationship." And, like, I saw that. I could feel it and... But that's what can happen-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:17 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:27:17 ... when you're open, when you're vulnerable, when you're willing to not have to be in control.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:23 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:27:24 You can see people's goodness and you're not so obsessed with people's not goodness. They both exist.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:32 You said that gratitude goes hand-in-hand with forgiveness.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:27:36 That is one of the few, besides an apology and being older, that's about the only research-proven thing that predisposes to forgiveness. The more grateful you are, it turns out, the more realistically you see things and the more likely you are to forgive.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:54 And again, what you practice, you get good at. So if you practice gratitude every day, guess what?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:27:59 That's it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:00 You start seeing-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:01 That's it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:01 ... good things everywhere.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:03 That's it. Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:03 Right? You counteract our negativity bias-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:07 Oh

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:07 ... which has been there for, for many good reasons, but has been there for survival.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:11 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:12 Right? Not happiness. That's step eight. And step nine, the final step, remind yourself that you made a brave choice to forgive.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:21 Yes. And that means change your story from w- what we cheesily call from victim to hero.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:29 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:30 So stop telling a story about what a victim you are and start telling more of a story about how you have handled adversity well.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:39 Yeah. Northern Ireland, you mentioned that you worked with people who'd been through some quite horrific experiences-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:49 Yeah, some pretty horrific stuff

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:50 ... and all the, you know, the troubles there-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:54 ... and the bombings.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:28:55 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:57 I think when we talk about forgiveness, a lot of people will say, "Well, some things in life, Fred, are unforgivable."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:29:06 They do say that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:08 What would you say to them?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:29:11 I mean, some things in life may be unforgivable to you, but that doesn't make them unforgivable. On the converse, the truth is there are human beings who have forgiven every conceivable thing that human beings can experience. So it's a point of view, it's not a truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:32 So you've worked with people who have forgiven, you know, their parents being murdered?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:29:38 Oh my God, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:40 The point I'm trying to make, Fred, and, and you're, you're sort of answering this, we think some things in life are unforgivable. You're saying it's not actually technically true because you have come across people-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:29:51 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:51 ... who have forgiven some of the most horrendous things.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:29:56 I've come across many people who haven't forgiven small things.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:01 [laughs]

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:30:03 So it's not only in the offense. I remember a, a woman who, at some experience that I had with her, refused to forgive her neighbor because he had built his fence, like, two inches onto their property, and she carried that grudge for a long time. [laughs] And I know families who drift apart because they don't vote for the right candidate. So if you see [laughs] that people don't forgive things that are, you know, not that important-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:39 Mm-hmm

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:30:40 ... you realize how much choice there is and how much personal processing-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:45 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:30:45 ... there is. One, at the very beginning of my work, people used to always ask me, "Well, how do you forgive Hitler?" Like, and that's... And, and, and I had a number of answers, but I remember one of them was, "So don't forgive Hitler, but forgive everybody else." I get that, like, the worst person, I, I get, but don't use that as an excuse. To not make peace with as much as you can-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:13 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:31:13 ... in your life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:14 Yeah. That, that's really empowering. You know, when my view on forgiveness really opened up was a few years ago when I spoke to this lady called Edith Eager. Don't if you know her or not, she, she lives in California now. She was 93 when I spoke to her. Still to this date, one of the most life-changing conversations I've ever had because she, when she was 16 years old, she was taken to Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:31:40 Wow.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:41 Both of her parents were murdered within two hours of getting there.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:31:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:45 And when I spoke to her at 93, I have rarely, Fred, spoken to someone who was full of compassion-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:31:53 Isn't it amazing?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:54 ... forgiveness-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:31:55 I know

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:55 ... and an open heart.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:31:56 I know.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:56 Genuinely. And I thought, "Okay, Rangan, here's the thing. If Edith Eager-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:02 Pay attention to this woman

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:04 ... Totally. And, and I did. I was literally moved so much by that conversation-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:10 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:10 ... and I use her as inspiration in my life.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:13 Of course you do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:13 If there's something I struggle to forgive or to reframe-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:17 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:17 ... I don't make myself feel bad. I go, "Hey, Rangan, listen, you know, Edith could reframe events in Auschwitz."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:24 "She can forgive."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:25 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:26 Right?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:26 "If she can forgive some of that-"

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:28 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:29 "... you can probably forgive-"

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:31 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:31 "... some of this."

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:32 You probably can.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:33 You know? Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:34 Oh, boy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:34 So I take that... And, and again, I'm not saying that everyone should be forgiving some of the most traumatic events that have happened, right? But I guess the point you're making is that some of these events that we consider unforgivable, some people actually do manage to move on and let go-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:52 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:52 ... and forgive.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:53 And if you can't forgive the worst things in your life, then it's even-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:57 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:32:57 ... more imperative to open your heart back up to all the things you can, so you don't walk around with a heavy heart.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:05 Fred, you shared with me that in a few months, I think you're gonna turn 70 years old.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:33:11 I am, in May.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:15 You have been banging the forgiveness drum for quite a long time now.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:33:20 Yeah, almost 30 years.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:22 Okay. I'm incredibly thankful that you have been doing so, that you've done all this research at Stanford.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:33:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:32 What's your hope now with this forgiveness letting-go movement for the next few years, dare I say it, the next few decades?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:33:41 Well, I mean, you know, people have tried to get people to forgive throughout history.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:46 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:33:47 Um, you know, the, the basis of the Christian faith is Jesus' forgiveness on the cross. And I mean, you know, the Mahabharata talks about forgiveness-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:58 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:34:00 ... and it's, it's, it's one of the, the hidden human skills that when it's applied is valuable in any way you look at it, but it's very hard for people to access it. And the only thing I would say that I have done is taken this idea which has been around, I guess, as long as humans have been around, and find a way to translate it into secular, simple language-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:34 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:34:34 ... so that people in 21st Amer- you know, 21st century America basically have a hook into it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:42 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:34:42 Like, I, I don't make it spiritual or religious. I make it practical. When I started this whole thing, I was a, a pre-doc and then a post-doc at Stanford University School of Medicine. I was a pre-doctoral and then a post-doctoral fellow in preventive cardiology [laughs] at the medical school, and it... all of this came from training and in orientation in behavioral medicine.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:11 Mm.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:35:12 So I took those ideas and turned it towards something ages old. That's, that's my contribution. It's, it... Forgiveness is way bigger-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:23 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:35:23 ... than any of us.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:25 And right at the end of our conversation, which I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed, Fred.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:35:30 Good. Thank you. Me too.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:32 Um, for that person who stumbled across our conversation and has recognized that they've been holding on to pain-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:35:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:42 ... they've been resenting others-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:35:47 Of course

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:48 ... they're angry about things that have happened in the past, what are your final words to them?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:35:57 Well, I mean, my final words to them, um, you know, it would probably be the same for everything. It's in whatever way you can, remember that you're loved, and connect with that. And when, if even for a moment, you remember that somewhere in you is love, you've been loved, when you connect with that, you will want to release some bitterness because love and bitterness are... they're the, they're the opposites.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:29 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:36:31 And if you can't connect with love, then walk outside and appreciate the beauty of nature, and notice a sunset or a sunrise and that will have the same thing, because they can't exist together.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:43 Yeah.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:36:44 That would be my words to them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:46 Fred, I love that. For people who wanna find out more about you, I'd highly recommend your book, Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:36:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:54 Where else would you direct people?

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:36:56 I have a... My website is fredluskin.com. I'm just finishing a book on forgiveness for people in recovery from substance abuse. That book should come out in September. Um, there's probably 100 YouTubes videos-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:14 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:37:14 ... of me teaching. Um, you know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:17 So-

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:37:17 ... a-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:18 ... check you out wherever they like to consume that content

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:37:20 ... Yeah, but the more important thing is, like, practice forgiveness, you know? Tell, tell somebody you live with that you've held a grudge with. Tell them something nice. That would be more important than-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:31 Yeah

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:37:31 ... than finding me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:33 Fred, appreciate all your work.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:37:34 Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:35 Thanks for coming on the show.

Dr. Fred Luskin 1:37:36 Thank you. [upbeat music]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:38 If you enjoyed that conversation, I think you are really going to enjoy this one about the simple things you can do for more meaning, purpose, and happiness.

Cameo 1:37:47 Time is of the essence. You could die tomorrow, so you have to be energized and motivated and excited to actually make the change