Got Anger? Got Resentment?

Have you ever felt so steamed and angry at someone that you couldn’t think straight?  How about totally irritated and irked, so it affected your whole life and how you show up in the world?

What if you were able to free yourself from those feelings that are causing you such anguish?

I propose that you can.

You see, I had a breakthrough last weekend.  I went away to a seminar that I thought would help me bring my career to the next level.  What I learned there was powerful.

I want you to have this power too.

Resentment can sure eat at a person can’t it?  You can hold on to pain inflicted by someone in your life years and years ago.

When I was 12, we moved from a lovely sunny place in California, where I had grown up since I was 5, to a tiny town surrounded by a corn field in the middle of America.  My father moved our family because he decided that he wanted to become a preacher.  He felt called.  So he would leave to attend seminary school during the week and come home on the weekends to preach as a student pastor.  Meanwhile, my little preteen life spiraled down and out of control.  I was shy, so I was brutally teased and picked on.  I cried when I came home from school.   It was a difficult time of life.  This is when I decided to accept that life was hard and it was better to just accept depression as a natural way of being.  I decided that my dad must not really have cared about us that much, and he must not really love us.  How could he let that happen?

We moved back West to another small town when I was a sophmore in high school.  It was a bit icy between my dad and I during the rest of the time I lived at home.  Eventually it got better, and we were back to a friendly relationship.

What became crystal clear during the seminar is that my dad didn’t do anything to me.  I am the one that decided he didn’t care and didn’t love me.  I am the one who had held on to this resentment for well over a decade.  I am the one that has prevented a close relationship, not one that is just nice on the surface, but one that would really allow me to get to know my dad as one adult to another.

This set me free.  I decided to let it go, because he never did anything to me.  He has always had unconditional love for me.  I was the one being a jerk! WOW!  That was eye-opening for sure.  I saw examples of this in my other relationships too.  This meant that I wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t always right.  Being right all the time is sure exhausting, and when you can let that need go, you will regain your aliveness!

The point is, if you look back at your life and have any hard feelings with anyone you care about, I invite you to really take a look at that.

Did you make something that happened in your life mean something to you that isn’t necessarily true?

Most of us have issues with our parents, whether they are deserved or not.  Most of these parents are not perfect, but they do love us.  Have we skewed something that they did to mean it meant they didn’t care or didn’t love us?

What about your co-parent?  Is their goal really to upset you or are they a good person, thinking they are doing what is best and right?  If you genuinely believe it is to upset you, it should be very easy to let this go because it’s not about you, and how sad for them?

If so, I invite you to set yourself free. Let them know what happened and let them know what you made it mean.  Tell them that you are sorry, and then just let it go.  If it comes up for you, remember that you let it go, and move past it.

This will make life a lot easier!