RESENTMENT

Resentment means that you are living an event over again. This would be all right if you were only reliving the good things that happen, but most likely what you are reliving are the negative events. Some people think this is normal. They think it is normal to feel resentment, but others believe that it is not. Therefore, we should not be reliving the negative things that happen to us over and over again.

Suppose you are at work and something unpleasant happens; for example, you have an unpleasant dispute with a co-worker. This turns into a constant thought in your mind and you replay it over and over again with what you might have said that would have been better than what you actually did say. These actions etch this dispute in your brain so that you have a very good memory for it. As you continue to recreate the memory and make up other scenarios for it you are obsessed with the memory. This is a horrible thing to do to yourself and is not normal.

A better action to take is to not let yourself get upset in the first place. When your co-worker becomes difficult, if you do not allow yourself to become as emotionally invested in the argument as this other person you will save yourself the resentment that inevitably comes from fights. Maybe it seems impossible at this time, because whenever anyone started an argument you always gave it back to them. But, it is possible to train yourself into not reacting to someone’s bad temper. When you do this you will find that you will not harbor any resentment toward this person because you did not invest your emotions in some trivial matter. Without resentment you will not relive the moment over and over again and you can place your energy in the important things such as your family, your friends, the activities that give you joy.

It is not important for you to fight everyone who wants to fight you. If the other person turns violent, then you are obligated to defend yourself, but short of that you can work on being a more serene person when it is appropriate. It will do wonders for your well-being and your health. Your blood pressure will not spike as often and your heart rate will remain steadier. There are also diseases that take years to develop. It is believed that our emotions can be partly responsible for diseases such as cancer. If this is the case, becoming more relaxed in your life will help prevent those diseases from festering.

This concept of not becoming upset during an argument may seem very foreign. There is a wonderful website where you can become more familiar with these concepts developed by Roy Masters. It is called the Foundation of Human Understanding and can be found at http://www.fhu.com/. It is termed a Christian organization but you do not have to be Christian to benefit greatly from this website. Roy is Jewish, after all. Visit this website and it will change your life.