First published 20 January 2020 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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After last week got a bit emotional, Nigel wanted to go back to being a bit more happy clappy. He had one more thing to say about forgiveness first. Tell a kid to say sorry and they'll say it. They won't mean a word of it. Nigel knows because he was that kid.
When he was young his brother had a country and western tape that was his favourite. Nigel unwound it and hid it behind a cupboard. He doesn't remember doing it, but he's been told the story plenty of times. It turned up months later and he swore he had no idea what had happened. He'd have been made to apologise, and he reckons he'd have done it in that tone. His point is you can't really forgive anyone until you've gone through why it hurt in the first place.
I picked up from my line last week, if you want to level up you've got to level in. Take a stocktake of yourself. Write down who's hurt you and who you've hurt, whether it was ten minutes ago or twenty years ago, and be honest about your part in it. Sometimes that leads to a hard conversation. Sometimes it's better just to get it down on paper, which is what Nigel calls the total truth letter.
Then Nigel, sitting about six feet from me, pointed out I can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do. Which got us onto roads. He moans about potholes and the barrier at the top of his road, and admits he quite likes the fight. I told him about Woodmill Bridge in Southampton, where locals let two cars over and then wait for two coming back. Nobody else knows the rule. They tried traffic lights once and took them out again.
And then my timekeeping. Nigel now leaves three minutes earlier to get there two minutes earlier. I asked if that was a hint, as I was only about two minutes late this time. It was five, apparently. He'd let it go for 2019, but since I'd brought it up.
Worth remembering
- Making someone say sorry doesn't mean they are. Kids or adults.
- Write down who's hurt you and who you've hurt, and own your part in it.
- If a hard conversation would make things worse, write it down and get it out of you instead.
- If a road winds you up every day, take a different road. The government isn't listening.
- Everyone's playing by their own rules, like the two-car rule at Woodmill Bridge.
Your rules and mine are not the same. So we're all playing a game of life, but we've all got our own set of rules.
Neil Martin
I promise you, the government's not listening to me as I'm driving my car.
Nigel Risner
