LTL 137: Move Past Resentment To Take Control Of Your Future

I’m excited about today’s episode. Last week, in Episode 136, I talked about why leaders can’t afford the high cost of resentment. Well, today I’m going to show you how to move past resentment to take control of your future.

Initially, you might be wondering why this matters. It’s a reasonable question. Furthermore, it would appear that many people have used resentment as a form of motivation. Instead of getting past resentment, it seems that storing it up fueled their success.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t work out the way you might think. Imagine that one person who you have always sought approval from – the one who you looked up to, admired, or revered the most. The one who you dreamed of getting a “great job” or an “I’m proud of you” or an “I love you” and truly meant it when they said it.

Instead, that one told you that you would never amount to anything. That one crushed your spirit verbally, emotionally, and physically. That one not only made you feel worthless but also made sure to point out every single action you took that validated their assessment of you: worthless.

Listen to me: no amount of achievement, whatever that looks like to you, will remove the sting of those words. As a result, no amount of money, accolades, trophies, recognition, or publicity can make up for what you wanted to hear from that person. It’s because you are designed to be relational. The other stuff is secondary – I didn’t say it doesn’t matter; I’m saying that people matter and how they behave toward us matters.

Because no matter how much fuel you have to stoke the fire of performance and achievement, you are actually allowing someone else to control your future. And that fuel is inexhaustible. In other words, you will never reach a level of performance that you can look back and say, “There – now I know I’m valuable to you. Or “There, now I know you will love me.”

Why? Because you can’t control what someone else does, says, or thinks as a result of your actions. If that person that you can’t please dies tomorrow, are you done living because now you have no one to prove wrong? Of course not. What I’m advocating is that there’s a better way. But you will have to move past resentment to take back control of your future. So trust me, you have a future worth living!

So to break it down, I’m going to summarize parts of a brilliant post written 10 years ago by James J. Messina. The title of the post is Handling Resentment. If this doesn’t help you to move past resentment, then I want you to let me know.

First, what is it? How can we define resentment? We need to know what it looks like if we are going to move past resentment. Consider the following:

• harboring animosity against a person or group of people whom I feel has mistreated me
• anger over a negative event earlier in life that I have not taken time to resolve
• seething, aching, emotional turmoil I feel whenever a certain person is present or a past event comes up in discussion
• feeling unjustly victimized with no resolution to the problem or simply suffering in silence

Mr. Messina refers to it as a cancer that robs you of contentment in your life and could potentially be the source of your depression. You have to deal with it because it can destroy you.

So, how does it start? There are so many ways because as humans, we are really good at hurting each other! Think about these:

• accepting negative treatment from others passively, never expressing negative feelings about it
• agreeing to do something for others while feeling taken for granted or taken a