Don't Leave Room for Resentment
🤔 How Intentionally Happy people keep going
Intentionally happy people get hurt and betrayed just like everyone else. But the pain never destroys them because they do one thing differently than the rest of us.
They never leave room for resentment.
It's normal to hold onto pain from your past. No one will blame you. In fact, some people will celebrate that. They'll be mad with you. The problem is that resentment will destroy you.
Resentment is a lot like being bitten by a rattlesnake. It hurts like hell, and it consumes all of your attention. All your focus goes to the pain point. But instead of getting help, instead of treating the wound, you just sit there waiting for the snake to come back and apologize.
Everybody who passes you lying on the ground is like, "Hey, can I help you?"
And you're like, "No, but can you believe what that snake did to me? You'll never understand the pain the snake caused me."
"Okay, but, can I get you to safety?" they ask again.
"No, because that snake needs to come back here and make it right. As a matter of fact, that snake needs to suck the venom out of my leg."
That's ridiculous, right? The snake is never coming back. And even if it could, it's like Wayne Dyer used to say, you can never be unbitten. It's not the snake bite that actually kills you, Dyer said. It's not the wound. It's the poison that courses through your veins as a result of the wound. And if you don't do something about the poison, it's going to kill you.
This isn't to trivialize your pain. I'm sure I can't even imagine some of the things you've gone through. But resentment is like punishing yourself for something someone else did.
At some point, you have to set yourself free.
And the only way to do that is through forgiveness. And forgiveness is not permission. It's not restoring the relationship. Forgiveness isn't letting other people off the hook. It's getting their hooks out of you.
It's never easy, but intentionally happy people process their pain. They get the help they need. And then they set themselves free. Isn't that what you want?
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