Resentment... An oppressive feeling of pain caused by unjustified expectations. Almost everyone has experienced this painful bitterness, and everyone knows how destructive this feeling can be, first of all, for its owner.
Of course, much depends on the true internal cause which makes a person feel offended. And, oddly enough, often the feeling of resentment is built on a positive intention. Although, this intention is usually directed at oneself.
The reason is always inside
How to forgive an offense without knowing its cause? How to cure a disease without knowing what and why it hurts? And the reason is not at all what a person usually voices out loud. More precisely, a person, as a rule, talks about an effect, trying to pass it off as a cause. After all, the reason, as we know, must be sought within. She's always there.
If all the justifications for resentment are based on the “wrong world outside,” then the person is looking in the wrong place. And in this case it will not be possible to forgive the offense. After all, then the internal conflict of the offended person will not be resolved. And the world in his understanding will remain just as unfair and wrong. After all, no one can change the world. You cannot force a person to think like you, you cannot change someone’s ideology, ethics, moral principles, understanding of friendship. You have no right to demand from outside world anything. After all, every person, not just you, has free will. And absolutely everyone is free to do as they see fit.
Therefore, no matter how much you try to forgive your offender, as long as you consider him to blame for the current situation, the offense will not go away.
You cannot change the world around you, but you can change your attitude towards the world. Without demands and expectations, resentment cannot arise. Stop trying to fit everything and everyone around you into your moral framework. This is impossible.
"The force of action is equal to the force of reaction"
Newton's third law
And the stricter your demands on the world, the more this world will disappoint you, the more painful the click on the nose will be. Think for yourself, because the stricter your principles, the stronger and deeper your disappointments in people will be. Let's say you do not tolerate betrayal and people who crossed your beliefs no longer exist for you. But what looks like betrayal in your eyes may turn out to be an act for someone else. good will. A person may, with the best of intentions, reveal your secret or lie, assuming that this will help you. Thus our principles force us to renounce those who represent real value on our way. This is how we lose true friends, discarding them only because they do not fit into the framework of our templates.
Acceptance and forgiveness
Resentment is rejection. When you take offense, you reject something or someone because it doesn't fit your beliefs.
“To understand means to forgive. To forgive means to understand.”
How are you going to understand something if you reject it? Do you think someone's morals are not high enough? But what is morality anyway? Everyone has their own. There are as many moral codes as there are people. But among all these codes, is there at least one correct one? ...Or is one wrong? People base their moral principles on the experiences of their lives. You have no idea why this person is like this. You don't know how he explains his behavior. It is very likely that if you gave him the opportunity to explain the logic of his action, you would understand him, which means you would forgive him. If you really want to get rid of resentment, first make at least the assumption that another opinion may also exist.
Yes, looking at the situation through the eyes of another is not at all easy. And often we cannot even imagine what exactly makes a person behave defiantly and impudently. But, one way or another, all of us external manifestations- this is always the result internal processes. And it is very likely that your offender himself is the owner of an extremely vulnerable soul. Inner pain forces us to do rash actions, and a person under the influence of emotions thinks little about the consequences of his words and actions. Understand the pain of another, and you will no longer be able to be offended by him. After all, to understand means to forgive.
Why does resentment arise?
Resentment is the ego's reaction to external stimulus. A situation arose that, in its essence, fell exactly into vulnerable spot, and the person feels offended. As a rule, our vulnerability is a consequence of the presence of some quality in its extreme manifestation, which causes unevenness in our “I”. Every manifestation of a person’s “character” is always dual, that is, there is always back side a medal that is not visible to the naked eye. For example, pride and excessive feelings self-importance necessarily has a companion in the form of self-doubt and wounded pride. By the way, it is these qualities that are common cause excessive touchiness in man.
A person draws conclusions based on his experience or the experience of his environment. This is how attitudes and patterns appear in his mind. As a rule, such attitudes and patterns are rooted in childhood, but can also appear during adult life. For example, parents repeat to the child how beautiful he is, praise him and present him, comparing him with other children. On the one hand, it may seem that there is nothing wrong with this, because this is how parents develop a sense of self-confidence in their offspring. However, everything can turn 360 degrees. And it’s not even a matter of pride, arrogance or arrogance that can arise as a result of such attitudes. After all, a person accustomed to constant praise will still have to face the outside world. And how painful the absence of this praise will be perceived cannot be predicted. And how will a person who is inclined to compare himself with others feel when he meets someone who is superior to him in at least some way? This is where the other side of the coin can show itself - self-doubt and wounded pride.
We know that every cause is nothing more than a consequence of some even more deep reason. Undoubtedly, there can be an infinite number of reasons that have formed an inferiority complex, self-doubt and pride. Negative experience in society, relationships with parents, psychological trauma from fear or humiliation, excessive care or, conversely, inattention - all this puts destructive programs into our personality that rock our emotional background. With similar internal conflicts any situation affecting the patient will cause negative emotions and, as a result, resentment. However, a person always has a choice. And although we cannot force the world to live by our rules, we can change attitudes towards it.
How to forgive an insult?
“Change your attitude” - this is the one magic formula for all time. After all, it is our attitude towards the environment that shapes the world.
Are you tormented by resentment? Let her go, let her float away from your Universe. Think about it, does the situation that causes this depressing feeling in you really matter?
You are a beautiful monad, unique and inimitable, endowed with light and beauty. This world needs you just like everyone else. And you don’t need to compare yourself with anyone, because you are holistic and self-sufficient. There are no two in the world identical people. And this is where all the beauty of the universe lies. Difference is beauty. Every person is not like you. But he is no worse and no better. He's just different. Surely you wouldn't be offended by someone just because he speaks a different language?
Yes, there are other people. And they are also necessary in this world. Each of them goes their own way. Everyone has their own goals and objectives. And every person has the right to choose a path for himself, but not for another. What can we give each other along this path? Only freedom. Freedom and independence. Give these people freedom to be who they are. And they will give this freedom to you.
“Judge not, lest ye be judged, for with the same judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Gospel of Matthew, ch. 7
Avoid templates. Don't judge, don't demand. Become a dispassionate observer. And you will discover how the world around you will begin to change. It will blossom and open up before you. Now you can not be afraid of sidelong glances and caustic words. Because you remember that your world is yours alone, and only you can decide what to let into this world and what not to let in.
Have you been rude on the bus? Does it matter? Smile, because you haven’t become any worse for it. You are still beautiful and unique. This aggression is in the world of the person who produces it. But if you don't let it come to you, it won't touch you.
Did your friend forget about the meeting? “Perhaps there was something more important in his thoughts.” This doesn't mean he doesn't respect or value you. Perhaps he lives in a different rhythm. Perhaps time doesn't matter to him at all. Let him be who he is. Just change your attitude. Know that when planning something important, you need to take into account this feature of a person close to you.
In this way, you can reconsider any situation in life and avoid many conflicts and disappointments. After all, a situation has no emotional connotation until we attach it to the situation. Only depending on our attitude is a sign formed: plus or minus. Resentment will not affect you if you look at the world with understanding and acceptance, throwing away all judgments about the people around you and, of course, about yourself. Ask yourself “why is this happening” and the world will give you the answer and understanding. And to understand means to forgive.
“The wizard sees the world and allows it to be as it is. But this is not passivity. The basis of everything in the world of a wizard is his ability to penetrate into the essence, his understanding: “All this is myself.” Therefore, accepting the world as it is, the magician sees everything in the light of self-recognition, which is the light of love."
Deepak Chopra "The Wizard's Way"
How to forgive an insult? The answer to this question is quite ambiguous. After all, it is not always so easy to forgive a person who has caused pain and offense.
In order to easily learn to forgive, you often need to do this more than once. A unique training method will help you approach the process of forgiveness with maximum ease and ease. Below is an algorithm of actions, following which you can easily let go of unpleasant feelings and free your heart from the burden of grievances.
The real strength of a person's will lies in the ability to forgive offenders, even if they are greatly to blame for him. The feeling of being offended negative impact How on internal state soul, and on the state of the body as a whole.
- It is always nice to forgive a person, thereby freeing yourself and your thoughts from energy that adversely affects state of mind. It is noted that 99% of all worries and grievances occur because of little things that, in fact, are not even worth it.
An algorithm of actions that will help you let go of the unpleasant feeling of resentment:
- First of all, you need to remember that resentment is evil. An evil that, if not eliminated in a timely manner, will begin to destroy the state of mind. Warming up and feeding resentment is the stupidest human mistake. For what once again wind yourself up?
Thoughts like “I’m right, but he’s wrong” do not carry any benefit or meaning. Having taken revenge, first of all it will be worse for you, and not for the one who felt this revenge. The feeling of conscience will gnaw from the inside, repeating that it was done incorrectly and in vain. There is no need for this burden that will drag the soul down. You need to learn to forgive, selflessly, fairly and with a feeling of absolute ease.
2. Negative motivation is what will help you cope with resentment. Think about what your life will be like if this feeling haunts you constantly? The answer is simple:
The destructive feeling will always be with you, developing inside, thereby injuring all the bright feelings in the heart;
If you don’t learn to cope with grievances, then with every moment their number inside you will only increase, and this, of course, will not make it any easier;
It has even been noticed that people who are prone to offense suffer painful and long death, and also have a high risk of acquiring cancer;
Resentment has an extremely negative effect on relationships with loved ones; often by resorting to such feelings, a person creates problems for himself in his personal life;
Resentment destroys such bright feelings in a person as love, faith and mutual understanding. If you don’t want your love to die, learn to cope with resentment. IN otherwise Even the strongest union will be destroyed.
When deciding to take revenge, a person can make mistakes that he will certainly regret in the future. They can even radically influence fate, changing it radically.
Advisor, resentment, or enemy - only you can choose.
3. This best strength, which can help you on the path to correction. If you learn to forgive, the favorable results you will receive will not be long in coming. You will get a lot positive emotions, among which the main ones can be identified:
A feeling of complete euphoria, a feeling of freedom from negative sensations will come in your soul. Even the unpleasant actions of others will no longer hurt and torment you so much. It will become impossible to piss you off.
The heart will be filled with joy, faith, and others exclusively positive feelings, which will certainly have a beneficial effect on the state of mind and the body as a whole;
Building relationships even with people who once offended you will not be difficult. Forgetting about all the grievances, you will begin to look at the world differently, with clear eyes, and stop paying attention to the mistakes of other people;
State of happiness, love of life and feeling inner harmony will always fill the soul;
The level of attractiveness will increase, because everyone is attracted to people who do not spend a lot of time on any addictions, but have predominantly positive energy and independence from the opinions of others;
Having learned to forgive, you will have a new companion who will accompany you everywhere - success.
This list can be continued endlessly.
4. You need to find the weakness in yourself that does not allow you to let go of the offense, and get rid of it! Start with yourself, ask “What caused the offense? Maybe it's because I'm weak? What got me so hooked?” You must be completely honest when answering. The reasons may be fictitious illusions, or erroneous conceit.
Below are 2 options that will help you let go of the grudge:
Option 1:
Write the reason for the offense on paper, and figure out what can replace it so that it does not cause more anxiety and emotional unrest. How to choose an approach in which the attitude to the situation will be the most neutral.
Option 2:
State in writing your answer to the question - what circumstances caused the current situation? What decision does fate want to achieve? What is the best thing to stop paying attention to, and what should you give proper time to?
5.Make the most of the power of forgiveness. Learn to forgive both your offenders and yourself. Say more often: “I forgive him, because you cannot demand from a person more than he is capable of,” “God will judge everyone.” Say this until you begin to feel that the resentment is receding and your soul becomes lighter. The same phrases should be applied to yourself.
6. Learn to give thanks. Gratitude is the most important thing right attitude to all life lessons destined by fate. Thanks to life, even for the most difficult, sometimes seemingly insurmountable lessons, you can cultivate maturity and fortitude in yourself.
Start gaining knowledge from everyone life situations, and you will certainly become the owner of wisdom that will help you cope with all your problems. Even Kant once said: “Everything that doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Take this phrase as main principle in life. Let every lesson you learn make you happier and stronger. Feeling gratitude is much more pleasant than feeling offended. Learn to replace the latter with the former. Ask yourself questions: “What useful knowledge will I gain from this situation?”, “What will I become stronger in?”
7.Replace resentment with wiser actions. Start analyzing everything decisions made, which led to changes in the situation in a favorable direction. After this, it will be easy to note where it is best to direct your energy and what not to spend it at all.
If necessary, you can punish the offender if justice requires it. But everything must be done with justice, and in no case out of revenge. Every bad thing must be punished. You can also follow another rule: if possible, punish - do it, if you can’t - leave this action for others, for example, Higher Powers. In this way you will show your wisdom.
8. Good feeling humor – there really is power in that. The ability to joke about oneself, to laugh at one’s own shortcomings is not absurd at all, but on the contrary, a quality strong people. Turning a situation into humor is much more pleasant than holding a grudge. You don’t have to wait for someone to start poking you at your shortcomings; it’s better to laugh at them.
9.If you consider yourself to be a believer, the power of prayer will help you overcome your grievances. You have the opportunity to draw help from the Forces of Light. It is enough to sincerely ask the Creator to help remove resentment from the soul, to teach us to forget about resentment and negativity. Contact him with a request to also teach him how to make the most positive qualities, such as wisdom, all life situations and lessons destined by fate. I always practice such actions, and I can note that the effect is positive.
How else can you forgive an offense?
10. To overcome your resentment, try to pay attention to the living example of worthy people. Determine for yourself an image that evokes in you greatest feeling delight from his actions and actions. Let him become your authority.
For example, it could be Jesus Christ, Buddha, or any other hero that you like. When a controversial situation arises in life, think about what your hero would do if he were you? What would be the reaction? Strive to ensure that your actions are like those of the best, worthy person. After all, this undoubtedly deserves respect!
Instructions
To learn to forgive, you need to decide to take responsibility for your own own emotions and experiences. Feeling offended, people often say: “How can I forgive this, because they did this to me here!” But such an approach demonstrates that a person reacts to an external stimulus and succumbs to it. Forgiving old grievances is important not because you are doing your offenders a favor by “absolving” them of their sins, but because you are throwing out this old garbage from your own soul. Decide to decide for yourself what to keep inside and what to get rid of.
Forgiveness of grievances is not based on changing the past: this is impossible to do. But you can change your own attitude towards what happened, try to erase unpleasant memories. Therefore, first of all, realizing that forgiveness depends only on you and that you need it, try to look at your life philosophically. Try to understand what motivated those who offended you. Sometimes it helps a lot to look at situations in detail; sometimes this is enough to forgive.
After you realize that you no longer hold a grudge against the offender, your emotions may continue to try to follow the beaten path for a long time: thoughts will arise in your head. negative thoughts. The fact is that the human brain gets used to thinking in a certain way. Therefore, when you begin to work on grievances, at the same time begin to carefully monitor your thoughts. Record negative thoughts and get rid of them. If you do this rational way If it doesn’t work out, then you can distract yourself with something pleasant. Consciously tune in positive perception every morning.
Try to get rid of negative emotions from resentment. To do this, you need to do two things in sequence. First, write down in detail how everything happened and how you felt. Most likely, emotions will overwhelm you, you may start crying, and it will be painful to experience this again. When you calm down, repeat the procedure. Once you write down your experiences several times, they will subside and become much less intense. Expressing your pain, releasing it from within is very important. This method can be very difficult to do alone if the injury is serious or the resentment is deep and fresh. In this case, it is better to work with a psychologist.
When the emotions are released, you will feel somewhat empty. This is fine. Now write down the whole situation again, but change the ending. Make sure everything ends well. Try to imagine a positive ending in every detail. This will allow you to replace bad emotions with good ones.
Our lives are filled with a huge amount of emotions - this is a natural and completely understandable reaction to the world around us.
However, emotions are divided into two types: constructive and destructive.
Joy, happiness, delight - this is what brightens us. Anger, irritation, envy are what destroy us. But perhaps the worst destructive emotion- this is an insult.
It not only destroys our world, it deprives us of the joys of life, acting as a kind of blinders behind which nothing good is visible.
What is resentment?
It seems the answer is obvious. We are offended, we are offended. It turns out that resentment is a feeling that arises when injustice is done to us. But in reality it is self-pity.
It is born from the feeling that we have been treated unfairly, from the desire to talk about it and receive sympathy, to hear condemnation of our offenders.
It would seem that everything is logical. But resentment, like self-pity, is a quagmire that drags on and completely changes one’s worldview. It’s one thing when a person was offended, told the offender about it, and the problem was solved. Another is to accumulate resentment, simply enjoying your position as an unfortunate person.
After all, a person who publicly declared: “I was offended” finds himself in the center of everyone’s attention. And if there are no stronger ones in life positive emotions, then the feeling of eternal resentment becomes a source of good emotions.
Such a distorted attitude towards oneself, people and the world leads to the fact that a person begins to depend on his emotions, gets used to being in the role of a victim and constantly demands the attention of others. Simply put, it turns into an energy vampire.
It becomes impossible to be with such a person for a long time: he sees in everything attacks in his direction, attempts to hurt his dignity, to humiliate him. Even innocent jokes are perceived painfully and sharply. Sooner or later, friends cannot withstand the emotional pressure and gradually move away from the offended person, so as not to act as an unwitting offender.
And this is where a reasonable question arises: Is it really worth being offended if this feeling changes your life so much in a negative way??
Learning to forgive and let go of grievances
It is important to take into account that a person who is accustomed to living in a state of resentment is almost unaware of this. If you tell him about this, you can hear a rather harsh answer. You need to come to the realization of the problem on your own, after which you will have to work on your thinking.
There are techniques that can help you get rid of feelings of resentment. They seem simple, but only for a person who is not familiar with this emotion.
- Awareness of your feelings. This is the most important and difficult stage. You need to understand that the emotion that arises as a result of someone’s actions is resentment. Say this, identifying all the nuances: “I’m offended because he (the name of the offender) did what he wanted, not me. I feel bad, I want him to apologize and understand how badly he acted. Then I can calm down and forgive him."
- Talk about the grievance with the offender. This is reasonable, because people usually do not have telepathic abilities. Only outright villains can intentionally offend someone. In other cases, forgetfulness, inattention, and misunderstanding are manifested. In a conversation, you must say directly: “You offended me with your behavior. We agreed to arrange a holiday for a mutual friend, and you did it yourself.” Most likely it will turn out that the offender did not even think of insulting you, but simply acted in his own way.
- Understanding the bully's reasons. It is not always possible to communicate with the one who offended you. But you can put yourself in his place, think about why he acted this way or that way. By identifying yourself with another person, you inevitably become imbued with a feeling of sympathy for him.
- Eliminate the expressions “And here I am...”. Yes, you can always say: “But I don’t act like that, I don’t think, everything is different for me.” But the other person is not you. You need to learn to perceive other people as individuals who have their own motives, moods, and problems. You can’t compare everyone to yourself, no matter what standard you are.
- The ability to talk about your feelings. Resentment arises as a desire to get a little attention from others. But there are other ways to do this: show attention first, help someone who really needs it, speak directly about your feelings.
- You can approach a friend, loved one or loved one, hug and say: “I want to stay with you for a minute, let’s talk/sit/go for a walk.” Maybe everything is simpler than it seems.
- The ability to see good in the world. Positivity lies in everything: good weather, the premiere of a new film, the opportunity to sleep on a day off, paints for painting.
- Life is full of joyful moments, although not grandiose in essence, but pleasant for specific person. By noticing and enjoying them, we simply displace resentment as a chronic feeling from our lives. Where there is positivity, there can be no offense.
- Understanding the value of your time. Just stop and realize how much time has been wasted on resentment. How many minutes of communication with a friend or loved one are lost due to the desire to demonstrate his guilt, how many are missed pleasant moments, other emotions, inspiring ideas.
It's a shame, isn't it? Decide what is more important: the joy of life or resentment. And finally get rid of this destructive emotion!