Episode 21: The Power of Forgiveness in Leadership — Drop the Rocks and Claim Your Joy

In this episode of The Joy CEO Podcast, I’m diving into a topic that’s been truly transformative in my own leadership journey: forgiveness. For so many high-achieving professionals, the weight we carry isn’t just from deadlines or responsibilities—it’s from unhealed moments of the past.

I share the four types of forgiveness that have helped me and my clients find more peace and clarity: forgiving your younger self, your parents, your past blockers, and everyone else. Each represents a “rock” we’ve been carrying—one we can finally choose to set down.

I also introduce what I call the Hula Hoop Principle, a simple but powerful mindset shift that helps you focus on what’s actually within your control and release what isn’t.

To help you put these ideas into practice, I close the episode with a seven-day “Forgive to Win” challenge—a gentle invitation to lighten your emotional load, one day at a time, and make space for more joy, confidence, and ease in your leadership.

🔑 What You’ll Learn

• Why forgiveness is one of the most powerful (and underused) leadership tools.
  
• How to “drop the rocks” by forgiving your younger self, your parents, past blockers, and everyone else.
  
• How the Hula Hoop Principle can help you stay focused on what’s within your control.
  
• Simple, daily steps to make forgiveness a lifelong habit of freedom and clarity.
  
  

💬 Reflection Prompts

Use these questions to go deeper after listening:

1. Which “rock” feels heaviest for me right now—and why am I still holding it?
   
2. What might change in my leadership if I chose to forgive myself for past mistakes?
   
3. How have old resentments or unmet expectations shaped the way I lead today?
   
4. Where in my life or career do I need to apply the Hula Hoop Principle?
   
5. What would it look like—and feel like—to finally lead with a lighter heart?
   
   

🌿 Who This Episode Is For

This episode is for driven, heart-centered professionals who want to lead with more clarity, compassion, and joy.
It’s especially for you if:

• You’ve achieved success on paper but still feel weighed down emotionally.
  
• You’re ready to stop replaying old stories that hold you back.
  
• You want to show up as a more grounded, authentic, and emotionally intelligent leader—at work and at home.

🌸 Your Challenge

Join me in the Seven-Day Forgive to Win Challenge. Each day, identify one “rock” you’re ready to drop—and notice how your energy, perspective, and joy begin to shift.

🕒 Episode Breakdown

00:00 – Introduction to the Joy CEO Podcast
00:49 – The Power of Forgiveness
03:21 – Forgiving Myself: The First Rock
04:43 – Forgiving My Parents: The Second Rock
07:16 – Forgiving the Blockers: The Third Rock
08:17 – Forgiving Everyone Else: The Fourth Rock
09:17 – The Hula Hoop Principle
15:27 – Seven-Day Forgive to Win Challenge
21:20 – Conclusion and Next Steps
22:24 – Closing Remarks and Call to Action

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

• Follow Lori on LinkedIn to continue the conversation
• Book a Leadership Strategy Call with Lori: loripine.com

🎧 Subscribe to The Joy CEO Podcast

⭐️ Leave a review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show

📲 Share this episode with someone who’s navigating pressure and wants to do it with more grace

Transcript

Hello, I'm Lori Pine, the Joy CEO, and I'm so glad to have you here with me today. Today we are going to talk about the power of forgiveness and how [00:01:00] necessary it is for you to win. So imagine you're dragging a bag of rocks with you into every single meeting you go into. Each rock inside the bag is a grudge.

A boss who didn't believe in you, A coach who might have benched you, a parent who couldn't give you what you needed, a younger you who just didn't know better yet. It's heavy. You are the only one whose back hurts because you keep lugging this back around with you everywhere you go. And today we're going to put the bag down or at least start to think about what it would take to put the bag down.

We're gonna talk about forgiving four groups and keep our power inside of our hula hoop. You know that famous hula hoop that I'm always talking about and really choose joy because leaders who travel light go further [00:02:00] faster. So let's dig in. This episode is really a permission slip and a plan.

If you want to win in your career, in your leadership, in your life. You can't do it while hauling around a sack of rocks. Resentment on your back. Joy, real joy, as I talk about it, is not a perk. It's performance fuel. It's the superpower that is gonna take your leadership to the next level. It's not fluff.

It sharpens your decision making. It protects your energy and it returns you to what's inside your control. And what's not inside your control. The hula hoop principle reminds us of this. What's outside of the hoop might be loud. It might be obnoxious. It might be in our face. It might even haunt us, but it's [00:03:00] not yours to carry.

What's inside The hula hoop is where the real power lives. So let's start setting down some rocks one by one. There's gonna be four types of forgiveness that I'm gonna talk about today. AKA, the four types of rocks that you can drop. So rock number one, we're going to forgive the younger version of you.

You know, this rock has some regret. We look back at that younger version who made choices that might have been a little reckless, a little rambunctious, but we made those choices without the tools, the support or the information. That we have today. So we don't wanna punish that younger version of us for not having the experience we have today.

Instead, what if we offered that younger version of [00:04:00] ourselves some grace? So the reframe of this would be that choice taught me something I can now use to better lead. A mantra could be, I release me from what I didn't know then, and this real set the rock down moment. You know, past me, thank you for getting us here to today, and now I can move forward thanking you for how hard you've worked instead of really.

Kind of shaming you for some of the things you just didn't know better for. Okay. Rock number two, forgive your parents whether they were great, complicated or messy. We're going to forgive the people who brought us to this planet. This is your rock of origin. It's, you [00:05:00] wouldn't be here without them. So blame can explain some sort of beginning, but it doesn't have to define your destiny.

Any sort of way. So we wanna keep the gifts and release any of the gaps, release any of the shortcomings that they might have had, and maybe this is gonna take therapy. It's gonna be a lot more than a podcast episode, but we can at least start to recognize where this is a rock that you have a choice to put down.

So the reframe is, I can honor what I received. Still meet my own unmet needs as an adult. I don't have to wait for somebody else to do that for me today. And the mantra could be I would honor what I was given. I release what wasn't. Instead of sitting around complaining and upset and wishing for things to be different, the set [00:06:00] down the rock moment.

Is I choose to build for myself what I didn't get without carrying a resentment as my blueprint. So if you didn't get it, you can build it for yourself. You know, this was a really big turning point, just a personal reflection here. When my mom passed away, I felt like my kind of whole family of origin just.

Fell apart, and I really had to make a decision to build a family of my own here in New York. My boys were little, and I was a single mom at the time, and I needed to build what I wanted on my own instead of being so tormented by the grief that it was ripped from me the way I had always known it for 40 years.

And. It took a lot of digging deep to really make that choice, but [00:07:00] I can honestly tell you that what I've built today is beautiful and fulfilling, and it's made all the difference. So if that helps any one of you out there. I, I hope my sharing that can just be a little bit of an inspiration. Okay, rock number three.

We're going to forgive the blockers. You know, the people who blocked our success. It might've been a boss who doubted you, a coach who didn't pick you, a friend who back stabbed you, and really just devastated you. These people are not driving your life today. They are not in charge unless you hand them the keys to the car.

That's the only way they have power over you. So the reframe is their choices helped sharpen my discernment. Now I know what it looks like when somebody disappoints me, and that now helps me today with boundaries. [00:08:00] And with a little bit of grit. Mantra, your choices are yours. My future is mine. You can own your own power and the set down the rock moment, I take the lesson, but you don't get to take my energy.

And rock number four, forgive everyone else. You know, the daily disappointments, the people who are going to miss the mark, the slights that are going to happen because if you carry every single one of them, your bag will keep refilling by lunchtime. And your back is going to ache from dragging around all of this garbage with you.

So the reframe for this one, I can let go without pretending it didn't matter. I can just release it. Mantra. I'm traveling light. I'm choosing peace [00:09:00] over proof that this person just wronged me and to set down the rock moment. I don't need to collect evidence against everybody in the world. I can just release it.

So let's talk about the hula hoop principle. I talk about this a lot. You've heard me say, imagine that you have a hula hoop at your feet. What's on the outside of the hula hoop is other people's opinions, old decisions that you might've made, swings in the market. Timelines you don't control. Promotions handed to somebody else, somebody who might not have been as deserving as you.

It's the past. That's what's on the outside of the hula hoop. Those are rocks that you just do not have to carry today unless you choose to. Inside the hula hoop your attention, [00:10:00] your actions, your attitude, your boundaries. Your follow through and the meaning you assign to events. So if every interaction with a person is somehow some sort of slight against you, man, oh man, you are gonna be picking up rocks everywhere you go.

And that might not be your best path to joy. So let's think about how you can really win by owning what's inside the hula hoop, which is you. So let's do a quick check-in. Is this inside My hoop? Is this inside my hula hoop? If the answer is no, then release or somehow slightly influence it to let it go.

Let it go. Like the song from Frozen, we're gonna be a theme song here. [00:11:00] We're gonna let it go. If yes, then choose an action that moves you forward. You have a choice. Do you wanna ruminate? Do you want to gossip? Do you want to choose differently? Do you want to focus on what's your way to win? What's your path forward?

Okay, so some scripts that will help you release your rocks. Okay. Boundaries. I can commit to X by Y. Anything on beyond that, let's reprioritize. So for example, I can commit to really dropping how I look at my family of origin. Today, I can reprogram that. If I am resentful that my dad doesn't pick up the phone and call me regularly, I [00:12:00] can pick up the phone and call him.

And guess what? Every time I do, he's so thrilled to hear from me. So that's my choice. I can choose to take that action. A closure script. This one could be to yourself. This belongs outside of my hoop. I'm simply choosing not to carry it anymore. I'm just not gonna carry it anymore. I'm going either going to forgive, I'm gonna let it go.

I'm going to do some sort of ritual. Maybe it's a journal entry, then I'm gonna burn it to let it go. And then the last thing would be. A visibility script, and this is where you're just gonna give a quick update to some stakeholders. Here's what move this week, here's what's next, and here's where I need alignment.

Visibility is really critical. As you lead and after you drop the rocks, that's when you'll use this because [00:13:00] lighter leaders create momentum. And it's really hard to have momentum when you're weighed down with all of these rocks and all of this baggage. And so momentum deserves visibility and you're gonna wanna keep the visibility going with the momentum you have once you're able to put some of this down.

Okay, so let me tell you about a time when I was literally. A can of paint and I was splattering paint from that can like a Jackson Pollock painting, except it wasn't a piece of artwork. It was messy. And my calendar was a mess and I was double booked and everything was chaotic. And I had two young boys, a house that didn't feel like a home yet.

I was in a divorce. My heart was carrying too much. I had a new team I wanted to impress, and I was [00:14:00] saying yes to everything. I just moved from Arkansas to New York and everything looked impressive until it didn't, until I ran out of steam. And there was a really defining moment when I had no choice but to stop carrying rocks that were not mine.

They were outside of the hula hoop, and the day I stopped carrying those rocks, my decision sharpened, my energy started to come back to me. Instead of it being, like I said, splattered all over the place like a, a messy, messy. Painting. There was nowhere near a piece of artwork, and what happened was my confidence stopped depending upon other people's reactions to me.

I didn't need their validation near as much. As I had. And so it was the same work. I was the same [00:15:00] person, but it was a different weight I was carrying and, and I really think that that's the magic of the release when we stop carrying these rocks, these weights that just do not serve us and don't belong to us.

We can start keeping that paint in the bucket and actually create something beautiful instead of just this splattered mess. So I'm going to encourage you to do a seven day Forgive to win challenge because I know that you have big goals. I know you want to win. I also know that if you're like many of the people I coach inside of my private coaching, there's stuff getting in your way.

So one week, seven small moves and I pretty sure I can promise you a pretty big shift. So write this [00:16:00] down or I'm gonna leave it in the show notes for you. If you're out and about while you're listening to this day one, you are going to address younger you. You're gonna write a five line note to your past self, and you're gonna end it with I see you, I forgive you, I love you, and we are moving forward together.

Day two, you're gonna write to your parents. List three gifts you received and three needs you're meeting for yourself now. Keep the gifts, meet the needs, and as best you can, let go of the rest. You know, families are complicated. Once I became a mother, I realized just how hard it is, and I think that everybody does the best that they absolutely can, which on some days it's really great and on other days.[00:17:00]

Nobody's getting an award. So day three to the blockers privately, name them, make a list. Who were they? Can you remember the moment? Do you know where you were? Did you feel humiliation? Did you feel shame? Were you embarrassed? And then for each one of them, write one skill that you built because of that moment.

Was your resistance sharpened, discernment aligned, courage, strategic, patience, like what happened as a result? Because chances are something really positive came out of that. One of my defining moments was my dad telling me that I couldn't go and apply to a really expensive Ivy League college, and instead I ended up going to a state school and I was devastated.[00:18:00]

His reasoning was. I wanted to go onto law school at that time or so I thought, and he did not want me to graduate with enormous debt, and I really thought that I would end up a failure because I wasn't going to a fancy college like some of my friends. And there were so many lessons that came out of that for me.

But he was right in the end, he was right. I got an excellent education and I graduated cum laude with scholar athlete awards and. I ended up going to work for a Fortune 500 company right out of college, and my career took off not because of the college I went to, but because of my own hard work, my own grit, my own values and ethics and, and so I just share with you that, because perhaps there's something like that that you still kind of hold onto and maybe you can see the good that came from it.

Okay, day four, [00:19:00] everyone else, and perhaps this one happens throughout the day, but you can just catch one micro resentment that happens throughout a day. You're in the office, you're in a commute. Somebody's cut you off. You know somebody takes credit for work you did in a meeting. See if you can let it go.

See if you can let it go in under 60 minutes. What would that be like? And note how your body feels afterwards. Are you freer? Are you lighter? Do you feel the actual release? It could be pretty amazing. Day five, let's do a hula hoop audit, two columns, what's on the outside, what's on the inside, and then move one item from the rumination.

So it's on the outside to action. On the inside, what you can actually control. Then take that action. What is that single next step that you need to take [00:20:00] and commit to taking it? Day six. Evidence bank, this should only take a few minutes, but capture three wins that you've noticed by traveling lighter.

Maybe it's a clearer conversation, a faster decision. Better sleep. Oh my gosh, wouldn't that be nice? Or a calmer meeting. Something went smoother because you now have a little bit more space. Not so many rocks in the bag. Okay, and day seven a declaration. This is for you. 20 seconds spoken out loud. Maybe you're in your car, maybe you're in the bathroom, but you are going to declare this for yourself.

I'm ready to win. Ready to achieve my dreams. I choose me and my joy. I release anyone and anything who no longer serve my growth, honor my values. Respect my boundaries. I keep my power inside my [00:21:00] hula hoop. I travel light, I lead with love, and I am moving towards my goals. Alright, and a little pro tip for that day seven would be to actually record that on your phone so that you can play it back to yourself when you need a little bit of a reminder.

So let's put it all together. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to drop a rock. You're going to forgive somebody, maybe even yourself. You are going to ask the hula hoop questions. Is this inside? Is it mine? Is it outside? Is it somebody else's? Then you're going to take one inside the hula hoop action.

You're gonna send the email, you're gonna make the ask. You're gonna clarify the priority you are going to. Do the forgiving part that actually is going to clarify everything for you, and then you're gonna share the momentum. Like once this is all done and you're [00:22:00] feeling clearer, like you have more space, you're gonna start to turn joy from a nice idea into a really strategic leadership edge.

Because you are lighter. You are in touch with things that actually matter, and you're letting go and releasing things that no longer serve you. Okay. If this episode hit home with you, I have made you a simple one pager. The Forgive to Win checklist. It's the four rocks, the mantras, the release scripts, and the seven day challenge and the full seven day declaration.

So I'm gonna link that here in the show notes. And. I hope you take the time to grab that. It will really change things. I think for you. All of us have all four of these rocks. That really weigh us down. But when we pay attention, do the work to put some [00:23:00] of these in a different bag, get them out of our bag.

We sure do lighten the load. So it's a pleasure. Two have been here with you today. If you are a mid-level leader or senior leader and you are interested in upleveling your career, I would love to talk to you more about that. I am here to serve leaders who want coaching around. Their next promotion, visibility and how to sustain exceptional performance.

So get in touch with me and let's see how we can just help you win all of your goals. You don't have to carry more. You win by carrying the right load. Not the entire load. So let's put down some rocks. Keep your power inside your hula hoop, and choose joy. I'm Lori Pine, the joy CEO, and it was a pleasure to be here with you.

I'm always glad to be doing it with you, and I will see you next [00:24:00] time.