Before it’s too late…

April 15, 2025

The Best of Jack’s Winning Words – Originally sent July 24, 2010
“Why do people always apologize to corpses?” (David Brin) Recently I saw an article about how to say, “I’m sorry.” The writer suggested that empathy (putting yourself in the other’s place) is the start of a good apology. Besides that, people who apologize tend to have better mental health. Oftentimes we will make an admission of guilt but fall short of asking for forgiveness. They go together. “I’m sorry! Forgive me!”. How about sharing those words with someone today…before it’s too late. 😉 Jack


Jack’s advice to do it now, before it’s too late, is valid for apologizing and asking for forgiveness from others and for admitting your own mistakes and forgiving yourself. It is as big of a mistake to go to the grave with guilt and remorse things that you should have forgiven yourself for doing (or not doing) as it is to wait too long to apologize and as for forgiveness from someone who has died.


People don’t realize how debilitating remorse can be to their own health. It can deprive them of sleep and will certainly deprive them of being as happy as they otherwise might be. Don’t wait. Deal with it. Forgive yourself and move on.


Some may ask, how do I apologize to myself and forgive myself? Whatever it was that you have remorse for having done (or not done) was likely offensive to God, too. It may be easier to first apologize to God and ask his forgiveness.


So, take Jack’s advice and use the words that he recommended in a prayer – “God, I’m sorry for what I have done (or not done). [You may wish to insert the details of your transgression here.] Please forgive me.” You will likely feel an immediate sense of relief for having ask for God’s forgiveness and that will make it easier for you to forgive yourself.


While you are in that positive frame of mind it is a great time to take the next step and unburden yourself of the false belief that you can control the things happening in your life. As long as you are already talking to God, you might as well go ahead and add the little prayer that I use a lot – “Not my will, but thy will be done.”

walking man


Doing both of those things will free you from the guilt of things in your past and the anxiety about things in your future. You will be free to live in the moment, and that’s a good thing.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Try giving some slack and a hug…

March 7, 2025

The Best of Jack’s Winning Words – Originally sent February 24, 2015.
“The ones who are hardest to love are usually the ones who need it the most.” (Peaceful Warrior) When my sister would meet up with someone who wasn’t particularly likeable, she would bake a batch of cookies and give it to that person the next time they met. It’s surprising how often the relationship changed into a more positive one. I’ve found that angry people usually have other issues in their life, so I try hard to give them some slack. 😉 Jack


I’m sure that we have all met someone who is not very likeable, maybe even hostile. Is your immediate reaction to try to love them or to ignore them or to be hostile in return? It is not usually our knee jerk reaction to reach out and hug someone who is being unfriendly or unlikeable in some way.


Jesus said in Matthew 5:43-45 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven”.


So, Jesus wants us to go beyond just giving them a little slack. He wants us to love them, to pray for them, and I’m sure somewhere in there he wants us to forgive them if they have wronged us in the process of being unlikeable. I think it is important to keep the message from Peaceful Warrior in mind that these are people who most need your understanding, forgiveness and friendship.


Perhaps baking a batch of cookies for them would still work, but you can get started by just being as pleasant as you can towards them the next time that you meet. Avoiding them is not helpful to them or you. You must engage them if you are ever to find out what their real issues are. You have to go slow on that. Asking, “What’s your problem?” is more harmful that saying nothing at all. Whatever the issue or problem is will come out eventually.


Sometime just being willing to listen is the best approach. It is natural that people want to share whatever it is that is bothering them and causing them to act the way that they are. For unlikeable people the issue is often anger; anger at some recent event that they can’t change and need to vent about. Listen patiently and do not try to jump in with an answer or to say, “I understand”; you don’t. Just be empathetic and sympathetic and let them get it off their chest.


The process of venting and getting it off their chest is often cathartic enough to change them from an unlikeable person into someone who could be your friend. At the minimum, since they have unloaded their issue on you, you now represent someone that they can trust or at least talk to and that will change their approach to you.


Initially cutting them some slack at least partially defuses the situation; however, what Jesus commands and what Peaceful Warrior was pointing to is the need for you to take positive actions to love that unlikeable person and in the process help both of you.


Now get out there and find someone that you may think is unlikable and give them a hug.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Don’t stress out, get stronger instead…

October 1, 2024

The Best of Jack’s Winning Words 9/30/24 – Originally sent September 24, 2021.
“It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) Cardiologists use stress tests to warn people if they need to “slow down” before the heart reaches the breaking point. Many things, besides a treadmill, can put the heart under stress. Maybe it’s the job, listening to the news, or a relationship that’s not going well. Stress can cause misery, but it can also make us stronger. Athletes stress their bodies when training to be stronger when it matters. If you’re dealing with stress, try to build strength from it. It isn’t easy, but it can work. 😉  Jack

Let’s begin by admitting that much, if not most, of the stress in our lives is what might be called a self-inflicted wound. It is us reacting badly to what are largely imagined things. I’ve commented here many times about how wonderful the human mind is at imagining all of the possible bad outcomes to almost any situation. Imagination is a powerful human thing that has led to all sorts of useful inventions and discoveries; however, it has also led to many cases of psychosis and even to depression. Stress feeds our imagination and then feeds on what our imagination has conjured up. That is a powerful loop which is sometimes hard to break.

Stress is a fellow traveler with fear, anger, remorse, regret and other negative reactions that we have to life’s twists and turns, whether they are expected or not. Since stress is mainly self-imposed, it is usually up to us to deal with it ourselves. I have danced around this issue before. On August 8, 2015 posted “Dealing with Life’s Problems” and on August 3, 2022, penned the post “Dump Your Ego and Find Peace”. In both cases I was discussing how to deal with things that would cause stress in your life.

One of the keys to dealing with life and stress is to be able to Forgive Yourself. Which I posted about this on August 12, 2021. Since you may being stressed because you are beating yourself up about something that you did or maybe that you did not do; you need to forgive yourself before you can move on. Sometimes it helps to realize that God forgives you, whatever it is. And if God can forgive you, who are you to go against God’s will and continue to beat yourself up? Surrender to Gods will byu using the little prayer that I use in my posts quite often – “Not my will, but Thy will be done.”

If you can get top that point and honestly use that prayer, you will be surprised how quickly the stress fades away. You might also be surprised how much stronger you feel after that. Why? Because you have taken control of yourself by trusting God with your life.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Dealing with your selfie…

January 24, 2024

Every now and then, in an unguarded moment of honesty we get a glimpse of ourselves – a mental selfie, if you will. Not everyone likes what they see. Not everyone can deal with what they see.

self

/self/

noun

  1. a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.

Introspection may lead to feelings of guilt or shame over something that we did or maybe didn’t do. In some cases, one’s selfie may result in feelings of inadequacy or disappointment over aspirations not met and goals not achieved. In many cases those feelings reflect our perception of how others see us; however, some, if not all, eventually resolve down to how we see ourselves – our mental selfie.

I believe that it is critical to your mental health to be able to forgive yourself. You must be able to forgive and let go of your past mistakes in judgement or deed. You must be able to give up what might have been, forgive yourself for the decisions that resulted in you ending up where you are, accept who you are and what is and move on.

Most of us do a better job of feeling sorry for ourselves or even hating ourselves than we do at forgiving ourselves. Sometimes in order to forgive ourselves we need someone else to forgive us first. That is where God comes in.  

Since, by definition, these moments of introspection usually occur when we are alone, there is no one else to turn to for forgiveness. It’s just you and God sitting there contemplating what you have discovered or admitted in your selfie. The Good News is that if you accept Him into your life, God forgives you no matter what it is and God loves you no matter who you are. You are then free to forgive yourself.

I have shared here a few times the simple little prayer that I use to forgive myself by accepting God’s forgiveness – “Not my will but thy will be done.” That simple prayer is your surrender of yourself to God and with it comes the transfer and forgiveness of your entire past and the entrusting of your entire future to God. You can feel the weight of your guilt or disappointment, or self-loathing being lifted from your shoulders as the hope for a better future rushes in.

So, go ahead and do your mental selfie. Take a look at what you see and realize that you are not alone while seeing these things in yourself. Accept God and hand Him your past. Accept His forgiveness and then forgive yourself. Now you can face the future without the baggage of the past. There’s a new you ready for your next selfie. You’ll love what you see in that one.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Don’t be lonely…love yourself

January 6, 2023

This quote, that I got in a recent email, states eloquently the end result of forgiving and accepting yourself – “What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.” (Ellen Burstyn)

I’ve known people who just couldn’t stand to be alone. I don’t think it was self-loathing, so much as being so unsure of themselves or so unforgiving of themselves that they did not find being alone to be good company.

That’s really sad because we are all destined to be alone for some part of our lives, and for some for most of their lives. Being alone doesn’t have to maker us feel lonely. After all, you are spending time with the only human being that you will ever truly understand. I suspect that the feeling of loneliness is really a sense of lack of validation, the need to have someone else always there to tell you that what you are doing or thinking or saying is “OK”. It’s as if they needed permission for everything in life. They have a need for everything that they do to “fit in” to the lives of those around them. When they are alone, there is no one to accept and validate what they are doing, thinking or saying; and for them that it frightening. People who do not need that external validation are comfortable being alone and are often identified as “self-reliant”, “independent” or “confident”.

I have posted here a few times about forgiving yourself. I think carrying around guilt and not being able to forgive yourself for past mistakes lays the groundwork for becoming dependent upon the acceptance of others – it requires constant reassurance and validation and abhors time spent alone with feelings of guilt or remorse.  

The road to recovery from the insecurities that cause loneliness begins with accepting that God loves you and forgives you all of your sins. If you can accept that, then it is a short mental jump to forgiving yourself and from there not requiring the validation of others to love yourself. Once you can love yourself you will begin to enjoy the times that you have alone and never have the feelings of being lonely. You will realize that God is always there with you. The conversations that you can have with God and with yourself when you are alone will more than fill the void that you may have felt when you were alone in the past.

What a lovely surprise you will discover when you accept God’s love, and love yourself, and discover how unlonely being alone can be.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Forgive yourself…free yourself…move on…

October 8, 2022

Every so often I see a series of quotes on a topic that just seem to make sense when put together, Such was the case this morning in an email that contained a series of quotes by separate people on the topic of letting go of things.

All I had to do was to arrange them in the proper order and they made perfect sense.

You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you. – Paulo Coelho

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” – Steve Maraboli

You can’t go back and make a new start, but you can start right now and make a brand new ending. – James R. Sherman

Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. The past is closed and limited; the future is open and free. – Deepak Chopra

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Forgiveness is just another name for freedom. – Byron Katie

Forgive yourself…free yourself…move on. – Norm Werner

Have a great new beginning. Move on and enjoy the brand new outcome.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Close that chapter and move on…

October 4, 2021

Today’s post was inspired by a graphic that I got this morning about moving on to the next chapter in your life. I’ve written about this a few times, that it is important to let go of the past to move on in life. A big part of that letting go process is forgiving yourself for things that you might have done or maybe left undone in your past.

I was given the opportunity to deliver the sermon at this last weekend’s Sunday service at my church. I talked about forgiveness and the need to forgive ourselves. People who can’t forgive themselves are stuck re-reading past chapters of their lives, usually past mistakes that they feel they made.

The bottom-line of my remarks on Sunday was that we must accept the forgiveness that God has promised us through the death of Jesus on the cross to forgive ourselves and move on. To do any less is to deny the forgiveness that Christ suffered and died for. We are forgiven. You are forgiven. The past chapters of your life are closed.

Now, let’s all move on with life.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Free yourself…

August 21, 2021

I saw this quote recently in a daily email of inspirational quotes that I somehow got on the mailing list to receive.  

“Forgiveness is just another name for freedom.” – (Byron Katie}

One may be excused for not immediately associating freedom with forgiveness. However, if you think about it for a while, the inability to forgive, whether it be forgiving someone who has wronged us in some way or forgiving ourselves for our own mistakes, holds us captive to the bitterness and pain from which we cannot free ourselves.

If, or once, we find it in our hearts to forgive, we are free to go on with life, unencumbered by the baggage of past transgressions, whether by us or against us.

We can find the advice to forgive others in the Lord’s Prayer, where we are admonished to forgive the transgressions (sins or trespasses are terms also used)  of others as God forgives our transgressions. It is in accepting that God forgives us that we also find the reason to forgive ourselves and free ourselves to move on in life.

Forgiving others is sometimes not easy, especially if it is still close in time to whatever the incident was that needs to be forgiven. Sometimes there is an initial reaction of shock to some slight, rejection or wrong that we perceive has been done to us. That is usually quickly replaced by anger. We get mad at someone or maybe at ourselves. We seek someone to blame for what has happened. Hopefully those reactions dissipate quickly, and we can start to think rationally.

There is no way forward along the paths of hate or disappointment that does not lead to further hate or even to depression.  The only way forward that leads to a better life is to forgive. The forgiveness path replaces hate with love. Forgiving does not equate to forgetting, it just means putting the incident in proper perspective and making the choice not to continue down the paths of hate or disappointment. If God can forgive you for your mistakes, surely you can forgive others for theirs or yourself for those same mistakes. If you can reach that point, it is a short journey down that path to get to love for those same people or for yourself.

I know of no greater example of this than the forgiveness that the survivors of the racial massacre of nine worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. in 2015. After the initial shock of the heinous act by Dylann Roof wore off, the survivors found it in their hearts to forgive him and even to pray for him. They freed themselves from the fears and hate of that incident and found a way to share God’s love.

Let us hope that none of us are involved in anything so horrific. Let us also strive to put whatever smaller incidents have taken place in our lives into perspective and move as quickly as we can to forgiveness, so that we, too, can be free.

Forgive…Free yourself.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Forgive yourself…

August 12, 2021

Every now and then I stumble across a web site with a bunch of quotes on a topic that I feel is important to write about in my blog. Today is such a case. I was looking for a quote to use on self-forgiveness and happened upon a site that had the quotes that I’ve used below. I’ve tried to arrange them is an order that makes sense as a progression of thoughts about self-forgiveness. The first three sort of set up the problem that self-forgiveness allows us resolve.

Lack of forgiveness causes almost all of our self-sabotaging behavior. – Mark Victor Hansen

You don’t want to beat yourself up for beating yourself up in the vain hope that it will somehow make you stop beating yourself up. – Kristin Neff, Ph.D.

You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens. – Louise L. Hay

Self-forgiveness is really part of a healing process that help us recover from mistakes or failures in or lives. Forgiveness usually starts with recognition of the problem, admitting that it happened, instead of continuing the denial process. Once we accept that something happened or that we made a mistake, we can begin the healing process.

In order to heal, we must first forgive … and sometimes the person we must forgive is ourselves. – Mila Bron

It’s not about worthiness, it’s about willingness. – R. Alan Woods

It helps to start the process of forgiving ourselves to think about the fact that God forgives us. After all there is no greater authority than God.

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than him. – C. S. Lewis

Once we get into it, we can have compassion for ourselves and move on into forgiveness and love for ourselves. It is only when you can love yourself that you can love others.

Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. – Pema Chodron

Forgive yourself. The supreme act of forgiveness is when you can forgive yourself for all the wounds you’ve created in your own life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows. — Miguel Ángel Ruiz Macías

So, stop looking for someone else to give you love until you first give yourself love.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. – Buddha

The Aretha Franklin film RESPECT opens this week in theaters. To have the respect of others you must first respect yourself. I think a big part of respecting yourself is forgiving yourself and loving yourself. Forgive yourself and earn that respect.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Who am I to judge?

June 2, 2021

In the post to he blog, Jack’s Winning Words, to day Pastor Freed used this quote sent to him by a reader –“You’ll never look into the eyes of a person who God doesn’t love.”  (Sent by Pr Jennie) 

Freed went on to comment about God’s grace – forgiveness without recompense – and the fact that there is no sliding scale for sins or forgiveness. So, we don’t have big sins and little indiscretions, just sins. And God does not use a scale from 1 to 10 to measure out his grace.

As he usually does in his blog, Freed challenged the reader with a question – Paul, the one we call a saint, referred to himself as the “chief of sinners.”  Would you ever say such a thing about yourself?

I seldom stand in front of the mirror admonishing myself as a sinner; however, I realize the sins that I have committed in the eye of God and stop occasionally to ask for God’s forgiveness and His help in not committing them again. Sometimes it is hard to look that guy in the mirror in the eyes and forgive him his sins.

I used the line from Pope Francis as the headline today because I think it is important within the context of all of us being sinners that we stop and ask that question of ourselves when our tendency to judge the sins of others takes over. The phrase “rush to judgement” comes to mind. We rush to overlook our own sins and focus on the sins of others. And, our focus is not to forgive them, but to shame or condemn them for those sins. We place ourselves in the roles of judge and jury and sometimes of executioner.

I have posted here before about the most striking examples of people following the example of God’s grace and forgiveness. One of those examples was reported on the news shows when parishioners from Emanuel African Methodist Church were interviewed after the shooter was arrested and convicted. The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre) was a mass shooting on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The surviving members of the Bible study group when interviewed all said that they had forgiven the shooter and were praying for him. That’s just hard to wrap one’s head around. Yet, that is the level of forgiveness that God shows all.

So, while we may have a sliding scale of sins from 1 to 10 in our minds, they are all sins in the mind of God and he loves us so much that he forgives them all. God’s love and forgiveness is always a 10. So, who am I to judge the sins of others? My role should be to find a way to forgive and love them, too; even that guy that I see in the mirror.

Let us all take this piece of advice from Luke – “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:37)

Have a great and forgiving day!

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Posted by Norm Werner

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