Five techniques for getting past resentment

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 8:29 pm by Guest Contributor

Five techniques for getting past resentment 2015-03-13T20:29:40-06:00 Guest Contributor

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What has your resentment done for you lately? What positive thing has it ever done for you? Probably absolutely nothing. The sooner you can let it go, the sooner you can move on to more productive and fulfilling things. Here are five methods for doing that.

1. Realize the folly of your resentment. It’s wasting your time. It’s using your energy. It’s casting a negative light on your relationships. It’s bringing unneeded negativity to your life and your world. And in return, it is not bringing you anything of value. Why would you want to hold on to it? There’s really not a good reason.

2. Challenge your resentment. Is it even true? Are you absolutely positive that the assumptions supporting your resentment are even still true in this moment? Can you prove it? And even if you can prove that your resentment is based on truth, so what? What does being right about it really get you? It’s certainly not worth all the negativity that your resentment brings into your life.

3. Experience it fully. Okay, go ahead and get it out of your system. Immerse yourself in the resentment. Feel it in all its glory. Once you’ve had your fill (and it shouldn’t take too long if you’re really feeling it intensely), then you can know that you’ve already gotten everything you could have possibly expected from it, and you can easily let it go.

4. Find a way to be truly thankful for whatever it is you resent. That may sound strange, but think about it. Let’s say you resent that some company you do business with is giving you lousy customer service or charging prices that are too high. How could you possibly be thankful for that? Look at it as a great opportunity to find an alternative—either buying from someone else or using some alternative product or service or doing without it completely. Your resentment brings to the surface the incongruities that exist between what you expect and what you are experiencing. That’s very valuable knowledge to have and to act upon.

5. Put whatever you resent into perspective. Compare it to the overall abundance in your life and see how truly trivial it is. Visualize it in your mind as a physical object, and then visualize it getting smaller and smaller as you move far beyond it. Then see it simply disappear completely. Realize how truly easy it is to let go of your resentment, and with that realization, just go ahead and really do let go.

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