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📍You've built the business. You are crushing it in your career. You've scaled your impact, but are you winning at home? Welcome to the 200% Marriage Podcast. We're Meredith and Craig, and we're here to help you kill that domestic drag and turn your partner into your most elite teammate from Russian taxi mishaps to hailstorms on the summit, we're sharing the raw and real stories and tactical drills you need to move outta roommate Bill and into your 200% life.

So grab your gear. It's time to build an unstoppable team. Let's dive in.

Welcome back to another episode of the 200% Marriage Podcast. If you've been following along, and I know you have, we've been reading the book, the 200% Marriage,your winning Playbook to be an Unstoppable Team,and we are on chapter 13 and Mer

chapter 13. So she is going to read chapter 13. Take it away. Okay.Chapter 13, let that shit go.Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Buddha.Showing up as your best self feels almost impossible when you're still chained and anchored to your past. Those chains keep you stuck.

Part of releasing them, letting go of the past, you can step into your future is rewriting the old stories that are holding you back.The other part of that is forgiveness.Forgiving the people in situations from your past that keep you feeling stuck there.That includes forgiving yourself for the words or actions that may have hurt someone else or even hurt you.

Forgiveness can feel tricky because it often feels like something we do for someone else, but it's not. Forgiveness is something you do for you and only for you.Forgiving someone means deciding they no longer get to have any power over you. That's it.It means releasing the frustration, anger and resentment inside of you that has been poisoning you from the inside out.

Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. It doesn't mean you condone what they did. It doesn't mean you accept what they did. It doesn't mean you agree that what they did was okay. It just means you refuse to let it control you anymore. You're taking your power back.When you forgive, you're inviting peace, acceptance, freedom, lightness, and relief.

Instead of stress, tension, resentment, bitterness, frustration, sadness, and anger.You feel less stressed, more mentally clear, and you have a greater capacity for joy and connection, which I assume, yes, I know. Assuming is dangerous, is at least part of what you're looking for from this book.The cool thing about forgiving someone is that nobody has to know about it.

I know, right? I grew up believing that you had to tell someone that you forgave them for it to count.Myth. Not true. Complete bullshit. You never have to tell the person that you forgive them. It's none of their business. I mean, you can if you want, but it's not required to actually forgive them. They never have to know you've forgiven them because forgiveness is something you do only for you.

Here's another myth.An apology isn't required for forgiveness. Boom, that's something else I had to unlearn.Whether the person who hurt you has apologized to you or not has zero to do with whether you can forgive them, because forgiving them has nothing to do with them.

It's everything to do with you.So the big question becomeshow?How do you actually forgive someone for what they did to you?First? Don't try to forgive everything all at once. If you're trying to forgive someone who hurt you repeatedly, trying to forgive them all at once for everything is like trying to eat an elephant in one bite.

It's much more effective to take smaller bites.It's hard to forgive multiple hurts all at the same time.Instead, try forgiving them for a specific situation. Then work on another particular situation and then another until eventually when you think of that person, no old hurts come to mind, and you're able to wish them well in your mind and hope for the best for them.

Okay, so how do we actually forgive a specific situation?Great question. There are four steps to forgiveness.Step one, acknowledge your pain.Be honest with yourself about how the situation impacted you. Before you can release it, you have to understand it. You could either talk this out with a trusted friend, a coach, a therapist, or you can journal about it.

There's something magical about writing things on paper that helps you organize your thoughts and brings you clarity.It has to do with your prefrontal cortex. We won't get into all that boring, sciencey shit here, but it works. Writing things down is a life hack for gaining clarity.

Step two, release your need for an apology or for justice.Closure doesn't come from someone else's apology. It comes from your decision to let it go. It comes from taking back your power and deciding to release this burden from your life.Forgiveness doesn't require reconciliation.

Forgiveness is only about your peace. It has nothing to do with mending the relationship between you.Step three, shift your perspective.This is tough. But critical.Find every bit of good that came from that situation.Even the most horrible situation offers you something positive to take away.Maybe it made you stronger and more willing to stand up for yourself and others.

Perhaps it helped you find your voice or maybe it showed you exactly who you didn't wanna be. Like our client with her mom from chapter 10.How did it shape you into the kickass human being who's reading this book right now? There's always something, and often many things that you took from that bad situation and molded into something productive, something constructive, something amazing in your life.

Today,make a list of all those lessons and positives that you can carry forward.

Step four, replace your resentment with compassion.Look for the other person's humanity. They're a flawed human just like we all are. Their behavior came from their own pain experiences and limiting beliefslead with empathy and curiosity.

What might they have been going through?What's a story you can tell yourself that could be true?A story that helps you understand why they hurt you.You've likely heard the saying, hurt people hurt people.It's true.They may have had a traumatic childhood, been bullied, never experienced love at home, or learned cruelty early.

There are a million reasons why someone hurts another human being, and most of them are what they learned growing up.Find compassion for the hurt little kid inside of them who never learned a better way to treat people.Don't get me wrong, this is really hard. Sometimes it helps to picture them as a child doing the best they can with what little they know.

Children make mistakes all the time, and we don't hold them responsible for those mistakes forever.This in no way excuses their behavior. It simply helps you release the emotional charge it carries.The story you make up is for you. It's meant to help you find some compassion for them. It's intended to help you feel better.

It's not about them.Commit to a regular forgiveness practice because forgiveness is not a one-time event. It's a processletting go of bitterness, pain, resentment, anger, and sadness takes time.Give yourself grace. One step at a time, you're becoming the best version of you who chooses freedom and power over resentment.

Craig here, jumping in with a quick.Going through pain sucks, especially when that pain was inflicted by someone you feel is supposed to love you.But when you can reframe the situation as a gift and have genuine gratitude for the experience, you give yourself the greatest gift of all freedom.

We have a client in our mastermind group who has been struggling in his relationship with his dad. When he was younger and still living at home. The two of them had serious falling out. His dad eventually had him sent away for what he considered, quote, troubling behavior.One night, a couple of big burly men came to his house and took him to a facility.

The experience was deeply traumatic and his time at the facility only made things worse. He felt completely dehumanized and the experience left lasting emotional scars.

He still harbors strong feelings toward his dad and has little relationship with him, despite sincere attempts to reconcile.In his pain. He wanted to call his dad, say things he knew would hurt and end the relationship for good.We didn't blame him for feeling that way at all. We know him well, and we knew that the reaction he wanted to give his dad came entirely from a place of hurt.

It wasn't who he truly is. He's genuinely a kind, loving soul. What he wanted to say was deeply out of alignment for him and clearly rooted in pain. We helped him see that for himself.From there, we guided him through stages of forgiveness, starting with acknowledging the pain and the betrayal that he felt over being sent away.

His dad has never apologized and likely never will, so we helped him reframe it.As painful and misguided as it was. It might have come from a place of love. His dad might have been doing what he thought was best for him. His dad will likely never see things from our client's perspective. He had to be brutally honest with himself about whether he'd keep letting this pain consume him for the rest of his life.He decided he wouldn't.He was finally ready to move past it and find the good in the experience.

I asked him what had happened after leaving the facility.He told me he went to live with his mom and not long after met his now fiance.In that moment, he realized that if he hadn't gone through all of it being sent away and everything that followed, he likely never would've met her.His relationship with his fiance now means more to him than anything else in the world.

If he had known from the start that the hardship was part of the path to meeting her, he said he would've chosen it willingly. That realization was the perspective shift he needed. In his eyes, his father had given him the greatest gift he could have asked for. With that shift in perspective, he was finally ready to call his dad, but instead of calling him out or saying something hurtful that could cause irreparable harm, he was ready to lead with love and gratitude, to thank his father, regardless of whether they'd ever have a relationship again. He was finally at peace. It wasn't for his dad, it was for himself.

That's it for me for now. I'll be back.. Soon.

For giving other people is really hard. Forgiving yourself. Oof.That one's even harder. You know exactly where the evidence is buried to prove you are a terrible person and don't deserve forgiveness, but it's not true. That's just your brain playing tricks on you.You do deserve forgiveness.

We all do.Remember, you can only love someone else to the degree that you love yourself. You do deserve forgiveness, so you can release those anchors and increase your capacity for joy and love and connection.Forgiving yourself is basically the same process as forgiving someone elsewith a couple of additional steps since you are in complete control of the situation.

Step one, acknowledge your pain or the pain that you caused.Follow the same processes in step one for forgiving others. Remember, it's important to be honest with yourself about how the situation impacted you and also how your actions may have impacted others.Step two, make amends.Since you're in the driver's seat of this whole situation, you get to make amends wherever possible.

Making amends doesn't mean the other person has to accept your apology and forgive you because that'll depend on how much work they've done on themselves, whether they're ready to forgive you or not. You don't get to control that part. You get to control the apology.

Step three, shift your perspective.

Same as step three for forgiving others. Find the good that came from this situation.Sometimes you have to get really creative to find it.

Then step four,replace your shame with compassion.If you could have done better, you would havereplace that high expectation you have for yourself with appreciation for what you were able to do.

Give yourself grace.Find a story that you can believethat explains why you did what you did and how you were doing the best you could in that moment.Step five.Apologize to yourself in the mirror.Look yourself in the eyes, apologize sincerely, and say how your actions hurt you or others. How you've made amends or will make amends, and how you will commit to doing better.

And then step six, forgive yourself in the mirror. Look yourself in the eye and say, I love you. I forgive you. I'm proud of you.You are worthy of forgiveness, of love, of joy, of connection.Forgive yourself. So you can leave the past behind and let this version of you move forward into the life and the relationship that you deserve.

Craig, here again, I'm jumping back in because I can confirm that forgiving yourself is the toughest. You've heard my story. I was brutally hard on myself for my failed marriage, and truthfully, part of me harbored some anger at my parents for not showing me a better way,but they did the best they could.

They didn't plan to get divorced. They were learning just like their parents before them. Remember divorced grandparents too.I had a choice. I could carry that anger and resentment around with me forever, or I could release that poison and move on with more joy in my life.I chose joy, and to be fair, my parents gave me a pretty great childhood.

Their divorce as divorces go, was amicable. They tried hard to make it easy on my brother and me. Meeting them with empathy and compassion helped me forgive.The next step, however, was much tougheras you now know, I was really hard on myself for quite a while after my failed marriage.

I promised myself I would never get divorced, and I broke that promise if I was gonna get past it and stop it from further impacting my life, I needed to forgive myself. That took work. I managed to find some good in that pain. I learned a lot about what not to do in relationships. I grew up a lot and I needed all of that experience, the good and all the bad to become the version of me who could find and attract Mer.

I had to go through all of that hard stuff to become this version of me so that I could find my forever personsimilar to our client in the last story, if you had told me at the very beginning of that tough season of my life. I would have to go through all of that to get to be here with Mer, I would've signed up immediately and without hesitation, that perspective made forgiving myself infinitely easier.

That's it for me.Over to Mer again.

The last piece of forgiveness work that's gonna be required probably over and over again in your life.Is forgiving people who don't meet your expectations.Sometimes those expectations were never communicated, and uncommunicated uncommunicated expectations are like premeditated resentments.

It's like creating a set of rules for a game you invented, but never told the other person they were playingand then getting upset when they don't play by your, and let's be honest, probably stupid, made up rules because they don't know about them.Stop having uncommunicated expectations.Communicate them at least then you've done your part.

Communicating expectations is no guarantee that they will be met.In fact, it's still quite likely they won't be, which is tough. We want our loved ones to meet the expectations we've actually spelled out,I've struggled a lot with this. There are people I love deeply who consistently don't meet my expectations.

I work to forgive them. I genuinely believe they are doing the very best they can, and if they could do better, they would. Wouldn't. We all do better if we could.So instead of sinking into bitterness, resentment, and frustration, I'm working to replace my expectations with appreciation. Maybe they didn't respond the way I wanted in a stressful conversation.

Perhaps they didn't support me as I needed them to. I have a choice.I can either stay disappointed. Let that fester into resentment.Or I can look for things to appreciate instead.One choice leaves me angry and bitter. The other grateful.When I started thinking of it like that,it became a no brainer for me.

This works really well in pretty much every situationand in every relationship in your life.Going to a big conference? Replace expectations with appreciation sitting down for a performance review? Replace expectations with appreciation.Having a really uncomfortable conversation with someone you love? Replace expectations with appreciation.Coming home to a stinky garbage that nobody took out? Yep. Replace expectations with appreciation.

When you can forgive the people and the things from your past, including yourself,it's a major life hack. You become more joyful and really, who doesn't want that? We all do.

And the good news, you can have it.If you're willing to let that shit go.

And that's chapter 13,bubig chapter forgiveness. Yeah, giant chapter, actually. Like one of the hardest parts of any,well, for me, of my personal growth journey. Forgiveness for sure. Yeah, I think so. For me too.Especially for myself. Yeah. And I, I talked about it in the chapter that, that's forgiving others and finding the good out the situation.

I was able to, once I learned about forgiveness and reframing it and figuring out what's the, the story I'm telling myself and what's the good I can take out of it into the future. Okay, got it.But looking myself in the mirror and being able to forgive myself.It was a lot harder. Yeah. I'm, I'm my own, we're all our own worst critic.

I'm, I'm especially hard on myself or always, historically have been. So it's, uh, yeah, it was, uh,it was something I had to get through for sure. Mm-hmm. And it sounds easy, like in those six steps of forgiving yourself, like step five is look yourself in the eye and apologize to yourself. Not an easy thing.

It sounds easy on paper. It's easy to write it down. It's, it's really not that easy to do. But step six. Actual forgiving of yourself. Like, I love you. I forgive you, I'm proud of you.That is way harder to do in practice than it is to just talk about, like we're talking about now. Yes. It sounds easy to do for sure.

Like, oh, that's all I have to do. And then you go to do it and it's like, oof, this is awkward, this is uncomfortable. This doesn't feel good. Uncomfortable. Yeah. It's cheesy. Yeah. It's stupid.And that's the reason most people don't do it. Mm-hmm. Right? It's very simple. It's not complicated.

Not at all.But most people won't do it. Mm-hmm.Unfortunately,and it sucks because I, I see it with people in our life and people in general that.They're holding onto these things.They just can't let them go. And they, and they churn on it, and it just, you can tell that it's eating them up and they're notmoving to the place they want to ultimately be.

They're not happy about it. And.It's just,it's because it's so hard that they just don't wanna look in the mirror and do that work well. And I think that there's two myths outside of what we talked about in this book that are kind of at the root of that. And one isthat, oh, I can compartmentalize it.

Like, oh, this thing is really bothering me. I'm just gonna like put it in a box and put it over in this part.And you think that you've put it away and you don't think about it.That never happens. You might not consciously think about it day in and day out, but it is subconsciously driving your behavior without you even knowing about it.

So if something is, is bothering you, you've got something inside that you need to forgive yourself for or somebody else, and you're like, oh no, I'm gonna put it, shrink it down at a tiny little box and bury it really deep and compartmentalize it from any other area of my life,that's a pipe dream. It doesn't actually work.

It doesn't actually happen. You might not think about it on the regular, but it is 100% controlling everything that you do, whether you believe it or not. Under the surface, it's, yeah, it's, it's pulling the strings. Yeah. The second thing is about forgiving yourself. We touched on it in the book, butI just wanna underline it.

Double click on it a little bit is. You, you know exactly how to make yourself feel the worst. Like you, you can talk yourself into literally anything. You're the best salesperson to drive your own behavior, and when you wanna make yourself feel shitty about something, you can do that you know where all the bodies are buried.

You know exactly how to make yourself feel like you don't deserve forgiveness for the thing that you did,but you do. I don't care who you are or what you did.If you could have done better, you would've done better. So forgive yourself. Get in the mirror and forgive yourself because you can talk yourself out of it all day long,but your life will change if you forgive yourself.

It's likethe story we used in the book of our client with his dad. Mm-hmm. He really struggled in that relationship for a long time, and I think they're still, still working through some stuff.He is in a much better place today and is able to see and appreciate the good that came from it andalsohis part in it.

Mm-hmm. Like, because he had admittedly was acting out a little bit. Mm-hmm. And so that's part of what made this situation happen.He was able to forgive himself a little bit for being that person. He's a much different person now and being engaged and going through that process has really matured him.

And so he's starting tobecome the version of him that he, he's always wanted to be.And it's really cool to watch and to see the evolutionand to see him push through it, I guess, and be on the other side of it in a much happier place. Like he's in a much, much happier place now that perspective shift, like in that particular instancefor him was I never would've found her if I hadn't gone through this.

And when you can find that thing.Whatever it is. Like in every situation, there's something that you can pull out of it and it it, like, it almost makes things click into focus for you. Yeah. When things click into focus for you and you're like, ah, I never would've learned that. I never would've become that.

I never would've done that. This never would've happened if this terrible thing hadn't, hadn't happened. Yeah. For me, it was in my previous relationship, it was like a training ground. It was like the practice for the real thing.In a way. It was.Me figuring outwhat not to do, what to do, what to avoid,uh, what to lean into.

AndI'm in the moment when you go through something like that,it sucks. Like it's brutal. It's terrible. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. However, looking back, I can see it for the gift that it was in that Oh, okay. It forged me into the person that I was meant to be. So that I could find the person I'm meant to be with.

And I'll be forever grateful for that. And, and I will be too. Because what you brought into our relationship and the like, the, the way you've challenged me and the way that you've led the way with the things that you know, that didn't work before and doing it differently now, we wouldn't have the relationship, even if we had met, we would not have the relationship we have now.

If you hadn't learned the skills you learned before, 'cause then you taught them to me.

Forgiving others who don't meet your expectations. Don't meet your expectations. It's funny, I feel like I have a track record of this a little bit. Back in my corporate job, I can remember the guy I shared an office with telling me at one point that I had really high expectations,like it was a bad thing.

Like I, I got, my expectations were too high. They were unrealistic. People can't meet them. But were you telling him about them?Well, I was talking about somebody else.We had someone else on our team that wasn't meeting my expectations and I was trying to get this person, coach them up to meet my expectations.

And I think he was trying to coach me that my expectations were unrealistic and too high.And it was the first time I remember someone telling me that my expectations were high and it wasn't a good thing. Like I was being unfair. And I, I stepped away to think about it 'cause it was the first time that that really happened to me.

And that's when I realized, yeah, I do have high expectations of other people, but I also have high expectations of myself. It's not like I put an expect. The reason my expectations of other people are high are because my expectations of myself are high. I want people to meet me where I am, and not everyone is going to do that.

And that's a hard fucking lesson. And not everybody can, not everyone's capable of meeting you where you are. Mm-hmm. And I learned that in my corporate job, and it'sway easier to accept that the chick I hired a couple of months ago in this temp job is just not cutting it and she's not gonna meet my expectations.

And that's disappointing,but it's, it's a lot easier to accept that than to accept that someone you love.Can't meet your expectations, they can't meet you where you are. And they're doing the best they can, but they are frustrating, capable of meeting them Frustrat as frustrating as it is, as much as you wanna like choke 'em sometimes and shake 'em and give a swift the why can't you see it this way?

Yeah. It's just the way the world works. We're all different. but I love the quote that you had in the book , uncommunicated expectations are premeditated resentments. Yes.And like it's like playing a game that you are constantly changing the rules and expecting them to be able to win. Mm-hmm.You're moving the goalpost. You're making it, they're kicking the field goal.

You're moving the goalpost. Ah, you lose. Sorry. It's kind of like when you play hockey withthe boys down the street. Yeah. They, they want you. Oh, that doesn't count. That doesn't count. I wasn't ready. I, I like No, no. We're, that's how we play. No, no.Yeah. Or, or my dad. Or you or your dad.

Love you, dad.But you know, you like to make up the rules that could benefit youstill love you, but it, it is like when you make up. Rules for someone else to play by in life and then you don't tell them what they are, you're setting them up for failure, which you know you're gonna resent them for. So it's almost like you're doing it on purpose.

'cause you know, we all like to be right and it feels really righteous and our ego loves it when we feel right. And if they're not meeting my expectations, well I'm right and they're obviously wrong. So it's a little bit of an ego stroke and lets you feel validated that they're not.Doing what they're supposed to be doing according to the rules that you've made up and not told 'em about it.

There's only one way that ends, and that's in resentment. So it's a premeditated resentment to not communicate your expectations.Not that communicating expectations is an easy thing to do necessarily. It is not sometimes. Mm-hmm. It's easier in corporate than it is in in real life. Yeah. It can be hard to have those conversations.

Those, and we talk about is uncomfortable conversations. It's, we'll talk a lot more about talking about what it is that you need from somebody is awkward and uncomfortable, and especially if they have a track record of stonewalling or not interested in meeting your needs. Being defensive. Yeah. Any of the four horsemen that we'll get into later.

For sure.On that note, communicating expectations,doesn't guarantee they get met. It, it certainly doesn't, not communicating 'EM guarantees they don't get met, but communicating 'em doesn't guarantee they will get met. But it's a step in the right direction. Correct.And on that note, communicating some expectations, that's the end of chapter 13.

You can expect that we're gonna read chapter 14 next week. And that's also gonna be MacKay because she also wrote that chapter. I think that's the last of my run for a bit, right?We'll see. We'll see. we like to keep you on your toes.

See you next week. Bye..

If today's episode gave you a new lens for your relationship, don't let it stop here. The best teams never stop training on Thursdays. We drop the Unstoppable Team Newsletter on LinkedIn. It's our high performance briefing. Designed to give you one tactical drill. You can run with your teammate over the weekend.

So just search Meredith and Craig on LinkedIn or click the link in the show notes to subscribe. Get the briefing, kill the domestic drag, and we will see you next Tuesday.