by Brian Tracy
In our business, whenever a supplier says that he or she will try to get something done by the end of the week, or will try to complete a project on a certain schedule, all our alarm bells go off. We immediately recognize that the individual is probably planning to fail. We go back and insist that he or she give us a firm commitment rather than saying that he or she will “try.” You only accept “I’ll try” when the schedule or outcome is not that important to you.
Another form of victim language is contained in the words “I wish.” Whenever you say “I wish” before a goal or ambition, you are signaling to your subconscious mind that you don’t really believe it. If you say, “I wish I could quit smoking,” or “I wish I could lose weight,” or “I wish I could save money,” what you are really saying is, “But I don’t believe that it is possible for me.”
Every time you use victim language—“I can’t,” or “I have to,” or “I’ll try,” or “I wish,” or “I’m sorry,” or “Don’t blame me,” or ’That’s not my fault”—you are reinforcing the negative emotion of guilt and driving it deeper into your subconscious mind.
Make the decision, right now, to eliminate victim language from your conversation. Speak with definiteness and conviction instead. Say “I will” or “I won’t.” Say “I want to,” rather than “I have to.” Especially say “I can” or “I will” rather than “I can’t” or “I wish.”
FREE YOURSELF FROM GUILT
How do you rid yourself of the feelings of guilt that interfere with your happiness? There are five things you can do.
First: Eliminate destructive self-criticism from your thoughts and your conversation. Refuse to say anything self-deprecating. Refuse to say anything about yourself that you do not sincerely desire to be true. At the same time, refuse to allow anyone else to speak to you in a negative way. If someone criticizes you, simply say, “I would appreciate it if you not speak to me like that because it’s not true.”
Remember, your subconscious mind is absorbing information constantly and internalizing it as part of your self-concept development. If you allow someone to say something negative about you without responding, your subconscious accepts it as a valid description of you and files it away to reinforce your feelings of guilt and inferiority. Negative statements by yourself or from others, if not canceled out or challenged, set you up for failure in the future.
Second: Refuse to blame anyone for anything. Accept complete responsibility for your life and everything in it that you can do something about. Most people do what they think is right most of the time. There is nothing to be gained by criticizing, condemning or complaining. Criticizing and blaming others actually lowers your own self-esteem and reinforces your own feelings of guilt and inferiority. When you start to feel angry with someone, use the Law of Substitution and simply say, “No one is guilty; I am responsible.”
Third, refuse to be manipulated by the guilt-throwing behavior of others. Each time anyone says or does anything to make you feel guilty, and you acquiesce to their demands, you reinforce the guilty feeling and make it easier for people to manipulate you in the future. You should have a decent respect for the feelings and needs of others, but this doesn’t mean you should sacrifice your emotional integrity to them.
There is probably at least one person in your life, perhaps more, who is accustomed to interacting with you on the basis of making you feel guilty. It can be a mother, a spouse, a boss or a coworker. You may be in a relationship in which guilt is the basic operating principle. In any case, you are responsible for changing this dynamic.
There are two techniques you can use to break another person of the habit of using guilt to manipulate or control you. The first and easiest is simply the use of silence. It takes two to tango. If you refuse to respond, the game comes to a halt.
The next time someone attempts to use guilt on you, go completely silent. Say nothing. Refuse to answer. Don’t allow yourself to be provoked. Remember, you are conditioned to respond automatically to guilt by defending or apologizing. When you exert your mental control and refuse to react, you become stronger and more capable of dealing with the person and the situation.
When the other person asks you what you have to say, you reply, “I’m not going to respond to that.”
Be polite, friendly and courteous. Smile gently, even if you’re talking on the phone. Resist the temptation to explain yourself. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. You’re in charge. Even the feeling that you have to respond is based in the reaction pattern of guilt that has been set up in the past.
Guilt throwing and guilt catching is like tennis. It only works as long as you are willing to hit the ball back across the net. You stop the game of guilt by being silent, and by sticking to it.
People who are used to getting the things they want by using guilt will react quickly and angrily to any attempt by you to change the game. They will become more demanding and adamant. They will sense immediately that they are in danger of losing control and will pull out all stops, using every tool in their repertoire to bring you to heel. They will vehemently resist their loss of power over you. Be prepared for this and don’t give in.
What you want is either a healthy relationship with the other person or none at all. To achieve this, be willing to change the dynamic. Be willing to undergo the negative reactions of the other person until he or she realizes that guilt throwing and manipulation is no longer effective. He or she will be forced to try something else, and that something else will almost invariably be an improvement.
The second method you can use to break someone of the habit of using guilt is an assertiveness technique called “broken record.” It’s both simple and effective. It requires courage and willpower at first, but then it works better and better.
When the other person attempts to manipulate you using guilt, you respond by saying, “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” You ask this question in a low-keyed, nonthreatening way, even with a tone of genuine wonder and curiosity, as if you’re amazed at such a possibility.
When Barbara and I were first married, we found ourselves using guilt on each other as a regular tool of interaction. We had come by our skills honestly, both of us having been brought up in homes in which guilt was the common language of control. And we had learned well. We could slip into an aggrieved tone of voice at the slightest suggestion that we were not going to get exactly what we wanted, exactly when we wanted it.
Fortunately, we recognized this dynamic forming and we decided to use “broken record” to break ourselves of it and abolish it from our marriage.
The way it worked was simple. Whenever one of us felt that the other was starting to use guilt for any reason, he or she would stop and say, “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
There is something in the human psyche that knows that guilt is a bad thing. No one consciously sets out to use guilt on another. It is a habit that we learn as children and slip into as adults. We learn to do whatever works in our relationships with others, and as long as the other person buys in, guilt works as well as or better than any other behavior to enable us to get others to do what we want them to.
If I asked Barbara, “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?” she would immediately respond by saying, “No, of course not.”
I would say, “That’s good, because for a moment there I thought you were using guilt on me, and that’s not a good thing.”
A little while later, she would try to use guilt again. And again I would ask, “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
Again she would deny it. Again I would say, “That’s good, because guilt is no way to run a relationship.”
This exchange would continue until, in exasperation, she would reply to the question by saying, “Yes, I am!”
Then I would say triumphantly, “Well, it’s not going to work!” And that would be our moment of recognition. It would be our signal to stop trying to use guilt, and get back to open,
honest discussion of the issue. Discontinuing the use of guilt would give us no choice but to settle down and talk like mature adults.
You’re not trying to make the other person feel guilty for using guilt. You’re not trying to punish him or her for making you feel bad. Your sole aim in using silence or broken record is to bring his or her behavior to a higher level of awareness. At that level, you can deal with guilt, and begin eliminating it from your relationship. You can both be free of an emotion that is as destructive to the user as it is to the victim.
The fourth way to rid yourself of guilt is to refuse to discuss the guilt of others. Refuse to gossip or exchange “dirt” about other people. Refuse to get into “ain’t it awful” conversations. Eliminate badmouthing and backbiting from your discussions. Remember, everything you talk about and think about is having an influence on your subconscious mind and on your personality. Make sure that what you’re saying about others is what you would want to be true for yourself. Talk about others as if they were present and you wanted to make them feel good about themselves.
THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS
The fifth way to eliminate guilty feelings and reactions is the most effective method of all. It is perhaps the most powerful and practical principle ever taught to build happiness, health, prosperity and wonderful relationships with others. It is what I referred to earlier and it is the Law of Forgiveness.
The Law of Forgiveness states that you are mentally healthy to the exact degree to which you can freely forgive and forget offenses against you.
The inability to forgive lies at the root of guilt, resentment and most other negative emotions. Holding grudges and remaining angry toward people who you feel have hurt you is the major cause of psychosomatic illness. The inability to forgive causes diseases that run the entire gamut from simple headaches to heart attacks, cancer and strokes.
To fulfill your potential, to develop your full mental capacities and to liberate your emotional and spiritual energies, you absolutely must forgive everyone who has ever hurt you in any way. You must “let go” and walk away from your anger and your resentment. You must refuse to continue paying, over and over, for the same unfortunate experience. You must put your desire to live a great life, to develop a fine character, and to become an outstanding person higher than any negative emotion that you might still be holding toward any other person.
Because your outer world reflects your true inner world, because you attract people and circumstances that harmonize with your dominant thoughts, because you become what you think about, your ability to forgive is the one indispensable quality you have to develop, through practice, if you sincerely want to be happy, healthy and completely free.
THE PRACTICE OF FORGIVENESS
There are three people in your life who you need to forgive to free yourself from negative feelings of guilt, inferiority, inadequacy, undeservingness, resentment and anger. When you let these people go, you will experience a feeling of release and joy and your life will begin to open up for you in wonderful ways.
The first people you have to forgive are your parents. Whether or not they are living, you must decide today to freely forgive them for every single thing that they ever did that hurt you. You must forgive them for every injustice and for every act of unkindness or cruelty you feel they inflicted upon you. You must rise above the hurts of childhood and let them go, accepting that your parents did the very best they could with what they had.
Almost everyone is still upset and angry over something that one or both of his or her parents did when he or she was growing up. Many men and women in their forties and fifties are still in a state of emotional distress because they have not yet forgiven their parents. A lifetime of resentment is a terrible price to pay for something about which nothing could have been done anyway.
In many cases, your parents are not even aware of what it is they did that you are still upset about. Usually, they have no memory of it at all. If you tell them why you are still angry, they will often be astonished because they have no recollection of the event ever taking place.
There are three ways that you can forgive your parents. The first is the most important, and that is to forgive them in your heart. Each time you think of the thing that he or she did that hurt you, use the Law of Substitution and replace the thought by saying, “I forgive him (her) for everything, I forgive him (her) for everything.”
Each time you recall the hurtful experience, you quickly cancel it by saying, “I forgive him (her) for everything.” If you continue forgiving them every time you recall the incident, before very long you will be able to think back on the experience unemotionally, with no negativity attached to it. Eventually you will forget it completely. You will be free.
The second way to forgive your parents is simply to go and see them personally, or telephone them. Many of the people who take our seminars go and sit down with their parents and discuss what they did and why they are still angry. Then they say, “I just want you to know that I forgive you for every mistake that you ever made bringing me up, and I love you.” By forgiving them, you set them free, and you free yourself.
The third way to forgive your parents is simply to write them a letter, in as much detail as you desire, forgiving them for every mistake they ever made. Many parents with low self-esteem hope that someday their children will forgive them for the mistakes they made in bringing them up, which they are not strong enough to admit.
It is only when you forgive your parents completely that you become a fully functioning adult. Until then, you are still a child inside. You are still dependent on them emotionally. It is only when you let go of the unhappy experiences of growing up that you can have a mature relationship with your mother and father. For most people, the very best years of their lives with their parents begin on the day that they forgive their parents and put all the negatives of growing up behind them both.
The second person that you have to forgive is everyone else. You have to unconditionally forgive every single person in your life who has ever hurt you in any way. You have to forgive every wicked, senseless, brainless, cruel thing that anybody has ever said or done or spoken about you, without exception. The refusal to forgive just one person can be in itself enough to undermine or even destroy your future happiness.
You don’t have to like the person. You just have to forgive him or her. Forgiveness is a perfectly selfish act: It has nothing to do with the other person, it has only to do with your own peace of mind, your own happiness, your own success and your own future. Perhaps the dumbest thing in the world is for you to still be angry or resentful toward a person who doesn’t care about you at all. As someone put it, “I never hold grudges; while you’re holding a grudge, they’re out dancing.”
Whatever the situation, you probably got yourself into it anyway. Whether it was a business deal, an investment, a job or a relationship, you made the choices and decisions that made it possible in the first place. It probably couldn’t have happened without your active participation, which you could have withheld. You were responsible. You were free to choose and, unfortunately, you chose inappropriately. Now, let it go.
Even if you had nothing whatever to do with it, even if you were a completely innocent third party, you are still responsible for how you respond. You are in charge of yourself and your emotions. You are free to decide what you do from this moment onward, and the best policy of all is to forgive.
THE LETTER
If you have been through a bad relationship or a bad marriage and you’re still not over it, there is a technique that you can use to get yourself free. It is called simply “the letter.” It is taught in several places now and is incredibly powerful and liberating.
The first thing you do is to sit down and write the person a letter. This letter consists of three parts, which you may make as long or as short as you want. In the first part, you say, “I accept complete responsibility for our relationship. I got myself into it and I have no excuses to offer.” You re
fuse to mention how innocent and aggrieved you are, as you may have done in the past.
In the second part of the letter, you write, “I forgive you for everything you ever did that hurt me in any way.” Sometimes it is a good idea to spell out all the things that you forgive the other person for. A woman I know who used this technique wrote eight pages of things that she forgave her ex-husband for.
In the last part of the letter, you end by saying, “I wish you well.” Then you take the letter, address it properly, put sufficient postage on it, take it down to the mailbox and send it off.
The instant you let go of the letter and let it fall irretrievably into the mailbox, you will feel a sense of freedom and exhilaration that you cannot now imagine. At that moment, the relationship will be over and you will be ready to get on with the rest of your emotional life. Up to that moment, however, you remain trapped in the quicksand of the unresolved anger and resentment that attaches to any romantic relationship that doesn’t work out.
A businessman who came through our seminar told me a remarkable story with regard to “the letter” and forgiveness. He had been married and had four children. He and his partner worked together for ten years to build a successful business. One day, his partner wasn’t in the office and when he got home that night, his wife was gone. He learned later that his wife and his partner had been conspiring together for some time to strip the business of its assets, several hundred thousand dollars, and then go off together. And they were now gone. His whole life collapsed around him. He was left with four children and an incredible sense of anger and betrayal.
For four years, he was consumed with bitterness and resentment. His wife and partner had moved to another country and the cost of going after them legally was prohibitive. He turned all his attention to keeping himself from going into personal bankruptcy. His relationships with his children suffered terribly. Day and night, he was preoccupied with how badly, how unfairly, how unjustly he had been treated.
