I have a question about Chapter 1 of Ready for Anything, Cleaning Up Creates New Dire

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I have a question about Chapter 1 of Ready for Anything, Cleaning Up Creates New Directions.

At the end of the chapter David asks three Questions.

1. Where are your potential cleanup areas?

2. What's the next one to tackle, when you're not sure what else to be doing?

3. What could you forgive today?

My question is about that last item. What does he mean by what could I forgive? I couldn't find any reference to it in the chapter. Am I letting something go? It doesn't seem to fit or am I just reading this wrong?
 
I re-read the chapter and enjoyed it again. Thank you for asking your question!

I understood it on two levels.

1. What can you forgive yourself for not doing, right now. Get the guilt and stress of not doing it out of your mind. Write it down so you won't worry about forgetting it, or not doing it.

2. David put in a quote on the preceding page by Father Desmond Wilson, "It is the act of forgiveness that opens up the only possible way to think creatively about the future at all." To me, that means be forgiving to yourself for not handling everything perfectly in the past. Don't waste your time and energy putting yourself down about the way things were. Forgive yourself. Move on with a clear mind, alert and open to receive the opportunities as they come.

Elena
 
Answer from David

Thanks much for the great input. I am glad you got more out of the chapter Elena. I wrote Liz and e-mail and she forwarded it to David. This is what he wrote:

Brian,

In my experience forgiveness is the master clean-up process. Guilt, or
resentment, which are both unproductive behaviors, represent an incomplete
way to deal with stuff in your life. Let go, do differently from now on,
let them go, don't get hung up in past inadequacies...

Thanks for asking.

David​
 
an example

A few days ago there was some very,very rude and completely unacceptable behavior in our household and I was stuck ruminating about it for two days. Of course, I got nothing done. After I talked with a friend I realized that the only thing I could do was to find ways to prevent such occurences in the future by spotting the contributing factors earlier and doing somethng about them. The "offender" needed forgiveness (not in words but in attitude and deeds) for reacting out of total and buidling frustration and I needed to forgive myself for both taking too much responsbility about some aspects and not enough for others. As you can imagine this has given rise to a few GTD projects for me.
 
Just forgive yourself?

I understand the posts which refer to the idea of forgiving yourself, but I think it goes deeper than that. If you have ever watched the movie "Unforgiven" you may have caught what I mean. Forgiving others sets you free to use your own energies in a more creative and life-giving way. Forgiving others also sets *them* free to choose a more creative and life-giving approach to life, and particularly perhaps, in their own relationship with you. This is true both because you model a new way, and also because you release them from payback. Forgiveness is an absolutely beautiful thing, for everyone!

In the Great White North,
Gordon
 
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