Forgiveness is one of the best gifts you can give yourself and someone else. Neither you nor I are perfect. Your company will fail you. Your team will fail you. Those who are close to you outside of work will fail you. You are also going to fail all three of those groups as well.
Forgiveness is not about forgetting or excusing harmful behavior; it’s about releasing yourself and others from the grip of resentment. Holding onto bitterness erodes connection, trust, and peace. In leadership and life, forgiveness is an intentional act of strength that creates space for healing, growth, and restored relationships.
Forgiveness is hard work, especially when trust has been broken or the pain is fresh. You’re not weak for struggling with it; it just shows that you are human. When you choose to move toward forgiveness, even slowly, you open the door to healing and real peace.
Acknowledge the hurt
Forgiveness doesn’t start with pretending everything is okay—it starts with telling yourself the truth about what happened. The hurt, betrayal, or disappointment you experienced is valid. Naming and acknowledging those feelings doesn’t make you bitter; it makes you honest with yourself and the situation.
Before we can begin to forgive someone, we need to face the impact of what happened without guilt for having feelings. Many of us were taught to suppress pain or were told things like, “Just let it go,” or “Don’t make a big deal out of it.” But unspoken pain doesn’t disappear…. it just festers.
When you avoid naming the hurt, you also delay the healing. Forgiveness becomes hollow; something you say you’ve done, but deep down still feel stuck in. Real acknowledgment means sitting with what happened and letting yourself feel and understand. Some self-reflection questions that can help are:
- What exactly hurt you? Was it betrayal, neglect, disrespect, or something else?
- What did it cost you? Trust, time, confidence, relationship equity, peace?
- What are you still carrying from that experience? What impact has this had on your thought process, mental space, or even physical behaviors?
The point here isn’t to wallow in self-pity, it’s to tell yourself the truth because you can’t release the burden and weight until you recognize it.
Separate the person from the behavior
This step is difficult, especially when someone’s actions feel personal or deeply damaging. But here’s a truth that’s helped many leaders I’ve worked with: People are not the sum of their mistakes (and neither are you). Even the people who hurt us are often hurting themselves, or acting from broken places we can’t see.
Forgiveness becomes possible when we stop defining someone entirely by what they did. That doesn’t mean what they did is okay. It means we’re choosing to see their humanity instead of only their failure.
A self-reflection question you may ask yourself is, “What story or history might explain why they acted this way?” The point of the question is not that you look for a reason to rationalize or excuse the behavior, but sometimes understanding can soften the resentment just enough to allow some grace for the other person.
Keep short accounts
I had a whole slew of issues with my father as an adult – betrayal, broken trust, fabrication of the truth, and lack of communication led to us not talking for a number of years. He missed the birth of both my children, and we would go for years without talking or seeing each other. At some point, I realized that forgiveness wasn’t just letting him off the hook for his actions, but holding on to those negative feelings was also holding me back. That self-revelation ultimately led to me calling my dad one day to simply say that I forgave him.
After that event, we began to talk a bit more, and when even got together a couple of times, where he got a chance to meet the kids. About a year later, he passed away very unexpectedly. Can I tell you how thankful I was that I didn’t have to carry that regret of not forgiving him and carrying a burden of guilt and anger the rest of my life?
The longer you hold onto offense, the heavier it gets. Practice the habit of checking in with yourself regularly. “What am I holding onto that I need to release?” Don’t let unspoken frustration turn into long-term disconnection. You never know what circumstances may change, where you are no longer afforded the opportunity to forgive the person.
Set boundaries without bitterness
One of the biggest misconceptions about forgiveness is that it means letting someone right back into your life the same way. But forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. You can forgive someone and still decide that certain behaviors, access, or dynamics are no longer acceptable. That’s not punishment; that’s protection and what’s best for you. In the example with my father, I had internally forgiven him and then went on a new journey. “Now what do I do?” was a consistent thought that I pondered on during that time. Should I reach out? Should I just leave things the way that they are and rest in the fact that I no longer carry the weight of resentment like I had for years? Do we just act like nothing ever happened?
I ultimately settled on that while I would reach out, I wasn’t quite ready to jump right back into things. We talked for a few months before we actually met. We got together for lunch as my family was getting ready to move about 10 hours away from his home, and that would end up being the last time that I would see him alive. After our get-together, we put intent to talk about once a month on the phone. It felt good to talk and share about life again,
Setting boundaries can actually be a sign that you’re healing. You’re no longer driven by revenge or fear, but by wisdom and peace. In my case, the physical distance put a natural barrier there between us. That may not be your circumstance, but remember that it is ok to think through and pre-establish what those barriers may look like, from time, distance, types of interactions, and other areas.
Forgiveness isn’t weakness, it’s actually strength with direction. It’s leadership of your own heart. It’s choosing freedom over bitterness, not because the other person deserves it, but because you do.
If you’re struggling to forgive, take heart: You’re not out of place. You’re in process. Keep going, and you’ll find that the baton you’re passing, whether to your team, your family, or your future self, is lighter and stronger than before.
Make a better tomorrow.
-ZH
