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Forgiveness is Power
8 Plays1 month ago
Forgiveness is often misunderstood as weakness. The Stoics saw it differently. In this episode, Manny unpacks the Stoic framework for forgiveness — grounded not in sentiment, but in reason.
Marcus Aurelius reminds us that people act from mistaken judgments. Seneca calls anger “a brief madness.” Epictetus teaches that we control our response, not the offense.
This episode explores:
- Why resentment is self-inflicted damage
- How to separate accountability from anger
- Why forgiveness does not require reconciliation
- How leaders maintain strength while releasing bitterness
The core principle: you are not harmed by what happens — you are harmed by your judgment about it. Forgiveness restores sovereignty.
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Transcript
Introduction to Forgiveness in Business
00:00:04
Speaker
The Voice of Growth, Mastering the Mind and Market. Welcome back to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. My name is Manny Turan, and I'm your host.
00:00:16
Speaker
On today's podcast, we're talking about something that is seemingly squishy, seemingly doesn't really fit or i don't know, doesn't does it doesn't fit the mold of a business podcast.
00:00:27
Speaker
But this is more than just business. This is personal development. This is professional development. They're all kind of intertwined and entangled. And that subject is forgiveness.
00:00:39
Speaker
Forgiveness seems like one of these words that belongs more in the self-help section than the business section.
Forgiveness in Entrepreneurship
00:00:47
Speaker
But I'll tell you right now, there's nothing further from the truth because the things that happen in business, in front of you, because of you, in spite of you are all basically proving grounds for expectations, for things to go awry.
00:01:08
Speaker
And in these situations, we need to have as stoic entrepreneurs, as people that are trying to move their vision forward, we need to have a way to deal with when things go wrong.
Manny's Personal Journey with Forgiveness
00:01:21
Speaker
Forgiveness for me has been a journey of self-exploration, has been a really a study of how do I get past this in my own mind.
00:01:34
Speaker
I'm not somebody that holds a lot of vengeance or vindictiveness. So i don't feel like I need to lash out per se, but I've always sort of held things in and they sort of have festered until I basically explode.
00:01:51
Speaker
So today we're talking about a bit of a rational framework for being able to let go and be okay with it. So the idea of forgiveness isn't just about forgetting.
00:02:05
Speaker
It's about truly accepting what the fate was, what happened, and being okay with it. I have lots of people I know, and I've also been guilty of it, that we say we forgive, but all we're really doing is forgetting. We're just shifting our attention away from that situation, but it doesn't fully ever get resolved.
00:02:30
Speaker
So what I have been exploring, what I present to you is something for you to explore is the idea of not only to forget, because I think that's part of it in a way, but also so that's like one third of it, but the other two thirds of it. So the the balance of it is being okay with it.
Understanding True Forgiveness
00:02:49
Speaker
So there's a core a core Stoic principle that people act, from mistaken judgments. So it isn't necessarily that they are trying to do something wrong, although sometimes they are, but as stoics, as entrepreneurs that are just trying to move our vision forward, we need to reframe things in a way that when things go wrong, when somebody crosses us, when we feel like somebody owes us an apology or other way around, when we do something wrong,
00:03:19
Speaker
It's really more about the actual mistaken judgment than some vindictive evil situation. I'm going to come back to that evil thing in a bit. So wrongdoing is really rooted in the ignorance that they either didn't know it would affect you that way or they didn't even think about it at all. They never even crossed their mind that what they were doing was wrong.
00:03:44
Speaker
The true responsibility of a stoic entrepreneur is to respond with reason and not to react. I've seen situations and i too have been part of these situations where there is some level of a wrongdoing and then there's this instantaneous reaction and it's almost like chemistry. You know you you add this substance to the other substance and there's an explosion.
00:04:10
Speaker
and And so there's no room for that if you are trying to build an organization, a ah vision to the next level. It just doesn't work in that domain.
00:04:22
Speaker
So Marcus Reyes actually even said, when someone does wrong, it's because they think they are right.
Root Causes of Conflicts and Forgiveness
00:04:30
Speaker
Let that settle in. So if somebody does something wrong that crosses you, it's because they think what they're doing is right.
00:04:40
Speaker
And there's this misalignment in expectations that is the root cause of so many other things, but I'm just going to focus on this forgiveness piece for today. And so what we're called to do is see the error instead of the evil. i mentioned evil before.
00:04:59
Speaker
It isn't necessarily that they're trying to do something wrong or put you down or hurt you, although that does happen. It's more that there is an error in their thinking, in their in their way of being, what it what it might be. so what you need to do is detach your own emotion from that that evaluation, whatever might have happened.
00:05:19
Speaker
By detaching your emotion, it doesn't mean that you are being detached from the situation. Matter of fact, I believe that to get the most out of life, to get the most out of business, to get the most out of creating joy and harmony in your own life, you need to let that feeling settle in.
00:05:41
Speaker
i've I've mentioned this before in previous podcasts, and it's a lot more difficult than you might imagine is to sit in the filth, to sit with it, whether somebody crossed you, whether something went wrong, if you sit with it and you actually process it through having it be inside of you until you figure out that it doesn't belong anywhere near you, then at that point, you actually begin to grow.
Consequences of Not Forgiving
00:06:10
Speaker
I can speak from exact moments in my life when I have pushed things away. Whether it was a romantic partner that i we were having an argument or if there was a business partner or whatever, we have this tendency to to basically be defensive, push it away, and to each go to our corners.
00:06:32
Speaker
um And it's only after a lot of inner work, a lot of meditation, a lot of stoic work, that I've been able to understand that there is a stronger, more powerful way of dealing with things.
00:06:46
Speaker
And that's why I'm compelled to talk about this today because I think that we oftentimes don't fully understand what it takes to truly forgive.
00:06:57
Speaker
I've seen families broken apart because of dynamics in the family. I've seen business relationships where friends that have been friends for 40 years ended up going their separate ways because of some misunderstanding.
00:07:10
Speaker
And gonna go through some things about why it's important to realize it's not about forgetting. It's not about bringing somebody back into the fray that might have caused you harm. It's it's a lot more about, it's actually all about you, not about them at all.
00:07:27
Speaker
So when you forgive, it's an act of of you letting go of something in your own life and also moving past it, which is really a way to protect your own clarity.
00:07:41
Speaker
One of the words I use a lot besides identity, besides other words, it's clarity and alignment. Clarity is worth its weight in gold. When you have a situation where somebody crosses you and you don't believe that it it bothers you, it does bother you subconsciously.
00:07:58
Speaker
That tip of the iceberg, which is our consciousness, might be able to process at things in very quick manner and you're just pushing forward. But underneath that piece is festering.
00:08:09
Speaker
I have seen that play out in my own mind where I thought, I'm fine with this. But as things as time evolves, as time as things move forward, then I've realized, man, there's something really there.
00:08:23
Speaker
And it manifests its way in not always the best times or the best ways. So when you hold that resentment, it's really a self-inflicted harm. You're doing yourself a disservice. Seneca actually said, he called anger a brief madness.
00:08:40
Speaker
So when we're angry, we have this way of almost like we let go and we don't have any control. um I've had that happen. That's one of my main issues that I've dealt with in my whole life is i have this almost like when you light a fire a firework or something like a firecracker.
00:08:57
Speaker
You light it and it it you can't unlight it. I mean, you can dance water on it maybe, but at that moment you can't reverse it. And it's it's really the stoic panacea to reach a point where that firecracker is lit and you're able to remove yourself from the
Forgiveness as Strength and Personal Growth
00:09:16
Speaker
situation. You're able to respond in a calm way, not react, and that firecracker will just burn out.
00:09:23
Speaker
it won't It won't explode. Epictetus talked about control and he kind of went old school on the stoic side about how when something happens in the world, there's a wrongdoing and there's some level of forgiveness that should take place.
00:09:39
Speaker
It's really a matter of letting go and realizing that you can't control that other person. You can't control that situation, but you can't control your judgment and you cannot control the other person's behavior, but you can control how you react to it, how you respond to it.
00:09:55
Speaker
It goes back to the old school um stoic ideologies. Something else about forgiveness, it is not weak at all to forgive.
00:10:07
Speaker
If you've actually ever truly forgiven somebody for something, you already know that it's a very difficult thing to do. And it represents significant strength and not one shred of weakness.
00:10:24
Speaker
It doesn't mean that you automatically trust you the other person. It doesn't mean that you don't hold them accountable. It doesn't mean that you ignore their injustice. Or it doesn't mean that you you somehow don't worry about the the boundaries anymore.
00:10:39
Speaker
Matter of fact, it's the exact opposite of all of those. It means that you prevent their wrongdoing to enter into your space.
00:10:50
Speaker
Because forgiveness is an internal process to you. That means that you need to sit with that and also need, I mentioned before, the one third is, is the score of like forgetting about what had happened, the pain.
00:11:03
Speaker
But by by just doing that, you're going to repeat that situation and it's not going to be fully
Forgiveness and Responsibility
00:11:09
Speaker
resolved. But when you sit with it, when you're able to understand that it's not your fault, that it's not within anything within your control of what might have happened, but it's in 100% control of how you you respond to it, man, it's huge.
00:11:25
Speaker
It also doesn't absolve them or you for this matter from your responsibilities. um Oftentimes something happens with a ah break in in this communication or judgment or whatever that that is that it necessitates the forgiveness aspect.
00:11:44
Speaker
And we believe that sometimes, we just walk away and everything's fine. Well, there's there might be some things tied behind that. And there's a lot of strength when you actually go to the table and you say, look, listen, um I believe that what happened was was wrong. and i And I believe that in my book, I'm going to go and and forgive you. And I'm going to go in my own own direction. You go in yours.
00:12:06
Speaker
But we need to resolve this piece for the sake of you name it, our business, our family, whatever it might be. It doesn't mean you escape your your responsibility.
00:12:17
Speaker
The goal here is really a preservation of your character.
Lessons from Personal Stories
00:12:22
Speaker
There is a ah story I'll tell about a young company that I was the founder of. It was called Aztara.
00:12:29
Speaker
We were about three years old. we had three engineers, a couple of technicians and myself. And so every dollar counted. You can imagine that our payroll was just every two weeks it was coming and we got a job with a very large defense contractor.
00:12:48
Speaker
And the guy came in and said, look, we need this done quickly. We'll pay extra, give us a quote. And they were doing a rocket test where previously they were manually actuating certain things. They would flip a switch,
00:13:01
Speaker
And then about a second and a half later, they'd flip another switch. And then a ah one second later, they'd flip another switch. so it was sort the sequential thing. And one started the whole process, one lit one part of the rocket and one lit another part of the rocket.
00:13:17
Speaker
So you can imagine there was almost no repeatability. It was terrible. So we came in as mechanical, electrical, and software engineers. We developed this really cool process where they were able to do things within a millisecond, one to the next. and it was a Very laborious project. We were there, 10, 12, 13, 14 hour days for a week straight.
00:13:38
Speaker
And it was a ah fair price for the project. I think it was a little shy of $50,000 with all the equipment. And we're a small company, mind you. So we had to front the equipment because this particular defense contractor had 90 day terms.
00:13:55
Speaker
But was as as the customer said, he was going to open up all these doors for us. And so we made the measured decision to say, OK, we'll go through with this project. So we got the PO, and the PO was to deliver to deliver the system and also to do a formal training with a handful of their technicians. Well, because this was such a on you know pants on fire situation. We went in, we did the project and he was having a flight test and and we trained the the technicians very quickly. And we said, okay, fine, we'll we'll do the more formal training later. you know he He actually was the one that recommended that.
00:14:33
Speaker
So we delivered it. It was fine. And we submitted the invoice and nothing happened. I didn't get any response for weeks. So finally, I tricked i was calling him, by the way. I was emailing him. I tracked down the name of the buyer. I called the buyer and I said, hey, listen, what's the status of this? I have not gotten a response from our invoice.
00:14:53
Speaker
And the buyer said, well, that project has been um killed. It's been it's dead. The PO has been canceled. And I'm like, what do you mean the PLS bid canceled? Well, yeah, he wants to return the equipment to you because you did not finish the project because you did you did not do the training for his team members.
00:15:13
Speaker
my jaw just dropped. Here I am having spent $20,000 on equipment, having spent i'll countless dollars on my engineering staff working tirelessly for a week straight, week and a half.
00:15:27
Speaker
And now they weren't going to pay us because of some technicality of which he recommended that we wait and do the formal training later. So a couple of things about forgiveness and another huge lesson that I need to really make very clear is this When this happened, i of course, was very upset. i did my best. i went through all the channels and at every every place I got no, no, no, no. everywhere Everywhere I went in that organization to try to get this figured out, I got the no.
00:15:59
Speaker
So first thing is i did not immediately forgive him. Forgiveness isn't always something you can flip a switch and it's done. It takes time. It took months for me to actually forgive him, we'll say the 80%, and it took me years to fully forgive him.
00:16:16
Speaker
But I'll tell you this, what I took from it is something that you can take from situations where a forgiveness or or some level of forgiveness is is necessitated from the wrongdoing.
00:16:32
Speaker
There's a lesson there. There's a lesson for you if you look for it. In our situation, lesson was to never do a project of this nature with this particular group.
00:16:43
Speaker
And there were some words in the contract that were sort of on the gray, never do it again. So the lesson for us is never work with this person, never work with this team, and never take projects of this nature.
00:16:56
Speaker
And that piece, if you really mirror it with some of the other stoic principles of of temperance, 100% temperance, because I could have lashed out. I could have made a huge stink and I could have actually in some ways blackballed my company from doing projects with this defense contractor.
00:17:15
Speaker
Because later on, we did tons of other projects with this defense contractor. And we even heard from other um people in this company that that person was, number one, let go. Number two, had done this before with other organizations.
00:17:30
Speaker
Everything went fine. i was able to get the equipment back. I sold it off. We did lose some money, but we gained so much. And that's the the mentality that that I believe you need to have is that understand that that it is whatever happened, happened.
00:17:46
Speaker
ah Humans are um are going to err, they're going to cause issues. Just realize that you can only react ah respond in a way that is within your control. um Choose your these virtues over your own ego.
00:18:03
Speaker
Our ego sometimes wants to just rush in and put these things to bed and cause lots of issues. No. um Something else about that person that that later on when he got let go from this company, somebody else, and by the way, I see him on LinkedIn even today, and I'm just like, what a joke.
Professionalism in Handling Rivalries
00:18:20
Speaker
um Somebody came to me saying, hey, I want to, he left that company, he started his own engineering company, and they were curious whether I knew who he was and whether or not I would recommend working with him.
00:18:33
Speaker
And this this is the moment where where the rubber meets the road because I could have totally been a pulled out the flamethrower and just burnt him down to a crisp.
00:18:46
Speaker
But what instead I did, i remember that actual conversation, I just laid out the facts. I chose courage, I chose wisdom, I chose true justice, and I chose was temperance and I laid it out right there and I said, this is what occurred, these are the facts, this is what resulted in it, you make up your mind.
00:19:05
Speaker
Because I believe that when you are vindictive, when you start to slash and burn, that it makes more of a fool of yourself then whatever you're trying to accomplish to harm the other person.
00:19:18
Speaker
Those are elements that I've always taken to heart and I'm teaching my children to do so. it's It's not an easy thing to do. And when things actually matter most is when it's the most difficult.
A Stoic Approach to Offenses
00:19:30
Speaker
So a couple of things to sort of frame up the balance of this of this podcast is the response from a stoic, the response that I that i believe is the the way that can create the most personal growth, the way that could pave the way for taking your vision to the next level, because mind you, when you don't forgive, when you have these things harbored inside, they are speed bumps along the way to your success, is to pause before reacting.
00:20:00
Speaker
Choose to respond, right? Number one. Number two, reframe the offense rationally. Think it through. Sit there and believe, okay, that occurred because of this. Use as much reason as you can, recognizing that sometimes emotion is going to be there on both sides.
00:20:21
Speaker
Number three, the assess the the the just action. What occurred and what needs to occur to make this right. um And sometimes it's possible to to make it right. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's it's irrevocable and you can't go back.
00:20:39
Speaker
So by doing so, you need to, number four, release the anger. And then number five is act with discipline. So go out and really do what you got to do to move forward.
00:20:52
Speaker
The more time you harbor, the more time you provide that situation, the the less time you're able to dedicate to taking your own vision to the next level. I see people that are bitter, that have been bitter for years because they chose not to forgive. They chose to harbor inside.
00:21:12
Speaker
of course i'll say again is forgiveness is for you not for them it's you being able to to let go to to create that sense of of uh of internalizing it and growing from it and in the moment we have this choice to also stay calm under that situation and recognize that being the bigger person the bigger man or woman at that to to basically walk through the direction, let things settle, maintain your standards without any sort of resentment.
00:21:44
Speaker
And then ultimately is protect the culture. If this might have happened, not in vacuum, but within your organization, within your company, within your community, recognize that the culture The leadership position, that you're the the tenants that you're setting at that moment are going to define the culture that is within your company, within your family, whatever it might be, which is sometimes something that we don't think about. We think about forgiveness is obviously very personal. I just mentioned it before. It begins it belongs to you.
00:22:24
Speaker
But how it manifests to the rest of the world can also cause a culture change.
Forgiveness in Company Culture
00:22:28
Speaker
it can cause a either a beneficial or a detrimental culture change.
00:22:34
Speaker
And especially if you're able to talk about it, of which sometimes you may not be able to talk about it openly, but if you are being vulnerable and saying, this is what might've happened, Feel free to redact the names, but ultimately i believe it's a lesson that can be taught and a lesson worked worth teaching.
00:22:52
Speaker
um And that's basically it for the podcast today.
Conclusion and Resources
00:22:56
Speaker
I think recognize that forgiveness does occur in business. does It doesn't mean you have to bring them back into fray. doesn't mean you have to trust them. It doesn't mean that you absolve them of accountability.
00:23:08
Speaker
But certainly it restores these your your own sovereignty over your mind, over your your actions. When you don't forgive, you're giving the other person way too much power.
00:23:25
Speaker
And I'll talk about this idea of giving people power in a subsequent podcast because I have seen it play out with loved ones. I've seen it play out in my own life that we ascribe way too much power to other people over our own selves that we're almost held hostage.
00:23:47
Speaker
But that's for another time. Thank you for your attention on this matter. And um believe it or not, you can even um look at some of the old school teachings of Marcus Aurelius, like meditations, or you can also even look online, there's lots of resources regarding stoicism and forgiveness. If you happen to be a person of faith, I mean, there's obviously lots of doctrine there as well.
00:24:13
Speaker
But if you just look look at it rationally, if you're looking at it from a business perspective, there's a lot of value. If you're coaching somebody in your life that might be struggling with this, feel free to share this podcast with them or provide other resources and recognize that sometimes forgiveness, you need a little bit of of help from other people. goes back to the culture of understanding that it's better to let go than hold on and be swallowed up by the pain.
00:24:43
Speaker
Cheers. Thank you.