There is a story I have carried with me for years, from long before Alfina existed. I want to share it here, because it changed how I understood responsibility… and because I have seen its four simple sentences work with my own eyes.
Four sentences, repeated
The practice is called Ho’oponopono, an ancient Hawaiian way of making things right. In its modern form, it comes down to four short sentences, repeated quietly, to yourself, about whatever is troubling you:
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
That is all. No long ritual, no complicated technique. Just those four sentences, said with sincerity, again and again.
The story that is told
The version of this story that travels the world goes like this: a psychologist, Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, worked in a high-security ward at Hawaii State Hospital, for patients who had committed violent crimes and been found criminally insane. He never sat down with a single patient. Instead, he asked for an office and the patients’ files, and as he read each one, he silently repeated the four sentences… not to heal them, but to heal whatever was in himself that had, in some way, created what he saw in front of him.
As the story is told, things began to shift after a few months. Patients who had been restrained were allowed to walk freely. Medication was reduced. People who had been considered unreleasable were released. Staff who had dreaded coming to work stopped calling in sick. Eventually, so the story goes, the ward closed.
I want to be honest with you here, the way I would want a friend to be honest with me: I have not found independent proof of this exact story. There are no published hospital records, no outside study confirming it, only Dr. Hew Len’s own account, which became famous through Joe Vitale’s book Zero Limits. So I share it the way I first heard it… as a story, not as a verified fact. And still, I find it beautiful. Whether every detail happened exactly this way or not, the idea underneath it has never left me: that what we meet in others may be asking something of us first.
What I saw with my own eyes
I did not need Hawaii to believe in this. During my years as a coach, I taught Ho’oponopono to several people, and one story has stayed with me clearly.
A man I worked with was struggling to communicate with his ex-wife. They had children together, and he wanted to keep things workable between them… for the kids, and for his own peace of mind. But every exchange left him drained. He started saying the four sentences every day, quietly, on his own, thinking of her and of the situation between them. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. He was not trying to change her. He was just doing the practice.
Within a short time, something in their communication shifted. Not because she had changed… he had not asked her to, and could not have if he tried. Something in how he showed up had changed, and she met that differently. The tension eased. They found a way to talk that had not been there before.
Not fortune-telling. Not even therapy on the other person.
This is why the story, true in every detail or not, still means something to me. Ho’oponopono was never about fixing someone else. It is about turning inward first, and trusting that the outward shifts on its own.
That is also, in its own way, what a card from Alfina asks of you. Not to predict what someone else will do. Not to change them. Just to look at your own part in what you are experiencing, with honesty and without harshness.
Try this today
- Choose one relationship that feels a little stuck right now.
- Set a quiet moment aside, even just a minute or two.
- Say the four sentences to yourself, thinking of that person and the situation between you: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.
- Repeat daily for a while, without expecting the other person to change. Afterwards, write down what you noticed in your Alfina journal. Did they feel different? Did you?
