Why You Can’t Move Forward Until You Do This

In this episode of The Fuck It Shift, Adam Ross shares the story of a simple conversation that became a turning point in his life.

While training a client during a difficult rebuilding period, he was told something that made him uncomfortable but stuck with him: nothing would change until he learned to forgive himself. At the time, Adam didn’t want to hear it—but he eventually realized he had been carrying the weight of his past failures everywhere he went.

Adam explains why self-forgiveness is often the missing step that keeps people stuck, why letting go doesn’t mean ignoring what happened, and how speaking forgiveness over yourself can be the first real step toward moving forward.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the show, the fuck it shit podcast. I'm Adam. I'm joined by Jay as always. Jay, what do you got for me?

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Adam, was there a specific conversation that changed how you see yourself? And did the other person have any idea about what they just did?

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Wow. Look, there's a night where I'm in the gym, I'm training a client. It is a client that I've had for a year and a half. Somebody I actually had a lot of respect for, owned a business. And we didn't talk a lot about business, but there was a lot about me keeping her motivated and staying on track for where she wanted to be fitness-wise. And she was often encouraging me to try again. So when you're with somebody in a client relationship when you're a personal trainer, you start to share, you know, stories. Everybody's got one. And while I didn't give her a great detail of everything, she knew the Cole's notes that I had a business failure, that I got divorced, that I started from zero. And I was kind of in this transition period where I just was really focused on giving back to people. And she looked at me one night. I had locked out the leg press machine, and she said, nothing changes until you learn to forgive yourself. And at the time that was a very uncomfortable thing to receive. I still remember the feeling in my body was tensed up, like I had been discovered that I'd been walking around punishing myself for not letting go of the past. And I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it. Yet this person encouraged me to have the courage to forgive myself. This comes full circle because just recently I shared the same message to someone else because it was so powerful for me. And I'm sharing with you today. I first pushed back and said, I don't know what you mean by that. When I knew damn well what she meant by it. And she said, until you're able to take inventory of what happened, accept that it happened, and just flush it and say out loud, I forgive myself for making mistakes for the way things worked. You're always going to be stuck here. And I know you well enough to know that here isn't where you want to be. That was such a pivotable, pivotable and powerful moment for me that it just I remember driving home, fighting with my negative voice, saying she doesn't know what she's talking about. I'm fine. And then I was at a stoplight, and I'm driving this piece of shit car with 300,000 on it. The windows don't go down, it's hot. And I'm like, no, she's right. I am carrying this giant sack of failure with me. And as long as I keep doing that, I'm hunched over. I'm not, I don't have my chest out. I'm not proud or positive. And I'm in this positive environment until you can do one more. Come on, come on, come on. Yet in reality, inside I'm like, uh, I'm stuck here. I'm always going to be here. And I went home that night. It was the last client of the night, and I got super quiet. And I literally, it was really hard for me to do, but I literally said out loud that I forgive myself for where I am. I'm alone in this crappy apartment, but I'm forgiving myself at this moment. And I even had people around me who were close to the situation, be like, yeah, you know, it's not a big deal. Move on. But that wasn't the words that I needed to hear. I needed to hear that it was that I needed to forgive me. That kind of like took the negative bully in my head and shrunk him down a little bit. He wasn't so loud anymore, reminded me every day that you fucked up, that you failed, because I started speaking forgiveness over myself. I would courage, I encourage anybody to do that. Here's the full circle moment. I have somebody, a friend of mine, really close to that's going through a really tough situation, and they were listing off how bad things are. And I said, or it's the end of one chapter. And the best part about this is once you forgive yourself, you get to write a whole new chapter and you decide who's in it, how it goes, and what the ending is. This isn't the end, this is the beginning. But you got but it starts with forgiving yourself. And I think we struggle with that today. It's really hard sometimes to release the guilt and to learn how to forgive. And I don't mean about sweeping it under the rug and saying, I don't care. I don't care as an international sign to me that it's actually bothering you. Because you do care. But you gotta be okay with giving yourself permission to grieve it, to let it go, and give yourself that forgiveness that we so often don't give ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

So you you said you don't want to sweep it under the rug. So what does it look like then? Or what does it feel like? And also, you said it, you went home that night and said you forgive yourself. Waking up the next morning, did you feel different?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Nothing changed. And it felt incredibly stupid to sit there and alone in my apartment and say, I forgive myself. But the reason that feels stupid is it's because it's uncomfortable and you're not used to it. So think about the flip side of that. If it's uncomfortable to say out loud, I forgive myself, that I want to move forward from this situation. What the fuck are you doing? The opposite is you holding yourself back and not saying it because you feel stupid, because it's comfortable. You're comfortable being comfortable in failure. So yeah, I said it the first night I woke up, I felt exactly the same. But you want to know what's interesting? I thought about it again. I reminded myself that I forgave myself. So even though that was one little exercise, the next night I did it again. And I forced myself to keep speaking forgiveness over myself, it became a joke where I laughed out loud. But guess what? The difference was there? The laughter felt a lot better than the pain I was carrying. So now I can look back at it and be like, and I laughed when I said that, right? I forgive myself. But I was actually learning how to deal with it and speak forgiveness over myself, which actually allowed me to open up my eyes to new things, new possibilities. I promised myself I would never own a business ever again when it failed. Here we are today, and I own more than one. It's all because I was willing to give myself a little bit of a break.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Does the person who told you that know what they did for you that's a good one?

SPEAKER_01 7:09

I don't think she has any idea. I don't think she really realizes that that was such a pivotal moment, or I use that as a springboard to actually move forward in my life. But it's so impactful, the only way I can really pay it forward is to share it with other people. And that they're I think we take forgiveness a little bit for granted. We hold grudges, we don't forgive somebody for doing something, and what we don't realize is when you do that, you actually carry it. Because if the other person doesn't give a shit that they hurt you, the other person doesn't care that what happened to you, and they truly don't, they just move on with life, they're not good people, you're carrying that around for both for them, thinking that it's directed at someone else when in fact it's holding you back. So if you are you're listening and you're going through it, you need to just learn to forgive you. You should love you, you should be your number one supporter. And wouldn't you want the person who loves you the most to be the one that gives you forgiveness? You're in control of the forgiveness.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Let's spin it a little bit so people can maybe um understand or just kind of relate to it a bit more in terms of why don't people forgive themselves? Why don't they give themselves permission to do so?

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Aaron Powell I think that what you realize as a as you're growing up in life, when you get mad at a friend or somebody does something wrong to you, you're kind of taught by others when you voice what happened to kind of hold it against that person. And it feels good to push the ownership to that person that they did X. But you start as you get older, learn like people who lost a loved one learned to forgive the killer, and you think that's such a crazy concept. How could you possibly do that? But that person released what could have been years and years of grief and heartache and negativity and this heavy weight by learning the power of forgiveness, yet you won't give it to yourself. You love you, you're the champion, you're the cheerleader for you. Even if you don't know how to give yourself forgiveness, because it we talk about it like it's something you can give, when in reality it's something that you speak and that you practice. Speak it over yourself and you'll see shit change. Again, nothing shifts until you say, Fuck it. Thanks for joining us.