You and I will have times when a person or group has harmed us. When you hold animosity toward those individuals or groups or carry a resentment, it’s called a grudge. Have you, at times, developed the habit of carrying grudges? Are you looking for more to carry? You may even store these grudges in your personal Grudge Backpack.
Your Grudge Backpack makes it convenient to recall and revisit your animosity and resentment. You may develop the tendency to look for more grudges to carry.
There are 5 dangers with a Grudge Backpack
First Danger - Pigeonholing
It leads to a point where you start pigeonholing people. You may start seeing people for the mistakes they made, or the wrong they did. As a result, you don't give them the space and opportunity to change. This is because you have them labeled. That grudge becomes like a stone you've put in your backpack.
You may even go so far as to find people or groups that are similar to the one that hurt you, and lump them all together. You begin to assume they’re all the same. You can’t trust any of them, you stay away from "all" of them. You may go so far as to warn other people about it. Now the stone you put in your backpack has multiplied.
Second Danger - Weighed Down
You're carrying the weight. The person who did the perceived wrong may not even know you've been harmed. Even if you think they know they harmed you, they are not carrying the weight. You are. It’s your backpack. It’s not like you put the stone in their backpack. It’s your weight to bear.
Third Danger - Energy Drain
When you're carrying this kind of weight it actually drains your power. It drains the efforts you can put into more constructive things. It drains the energy of conversations. It drains the intensity of effort. This compounds the danger. It more dangerous to your goals and the things you want to accomplish in your life. The other person is experiencing none of this. The reality is you’re still the only one carrying that weight.
Fourth Danger - Comfort
You may become comfortable with the backpack. It becomes part of you, It becomes part of your identity. You may even be so comfortable that you look for other stones to put in the backpack to justify having it. You might be the type of person that brags about how many times you've been wronged, thereby showing off how large your backpack is.
Fifth Danger - Bitterness
When this backpack becomes comfortable and becomes part of your identity, you will find yourselves looking for other stones to add to the backpack. That's when you can start recognizing you’ve probably become a bitter person. Others may have already seen you as bitter, but now you can recognize it too. There are people who actually don't want to be around you anymore.
The 4-Step Solution
What's the solution to having this Grudge Backpack full of stones of animosity and resentment? The solution is broken into four steps.
Step One
You need to recognize that you're carrying the grudges. Admit you have a backpack. You have grudge stones. You have animosity. You have resentment. You must start recognizing the very moment it happens. You can recognize this by negative reactions when you see the person or group. When there’s some reference to them, and you have a visceral response of negativity to them. You can observe at that point, “I've got a backpack and it’s a grudge backpack.”
You can recognize you may have actually had a part, you may have had a role in the wrongdoing, in the issue that you're holding. By admitting your piece of the issue it becomes simpler to cast off the stone.
Recognize there are things that you can probably have learned from the event, and then learn those lessons. Don't pass on the opportunity you have to learn from negative experiences. You can recognize it as a negative experience, and learn, and become better for it.
Step Two
Start to put down the stones of grudges. Put down those Pebbles of animosity, and the rocks of resentment. You can recognize you don't have to associate with that person or group if you don't want to. You don't even have to associate with them if they're mentioned or there is a passing by, or some kind of other interaction. You don’t even have to recognize they are there. A word of caution though, don’t do this in a rude way. You still want to be polite but you don't have to engage in their realm. You don't have to be associated with them. We can choose to become ambivalent about them. If they have wronged you and they continue to do these wrongs you will learn from it. You moved along and don't want to associate with them. You don't have to keep trying to interrupt what they're doing, we can become ambivalent to who they are and what they do.
Step Three
You need to quit picking up new stones. If you have a backpack and think it's empty you’ll keep wanting to fill it with stuff. If you want evidence, look around at some countertops, and flat surfaces. How many exercise machines are filled with everything that doesn't have to do with exercising. We have a tendency as humans to see a space and want to fill it. The same thing is true with your metaphoric Grudge Backpack. If you feel it's getting empty or light or you don't feel the weight anymore then you're going to seek for stones. You need to stop picking up new stones.
Step Four (most powerful step)
Get rid of the Grudge Backpack. When you can get rid of the entire backpack there's no place to hold the grudge. You won't have a place to put it, so you'll have to put it down. You don't have to keep it. You can simply choose to not allow animosity to be a part of who you are, to not be resentful to people, situations, and groups.
It’s your choice. You get to decide your own mindset. This whole process of having a backpack that's there entirely to put your grudges in, is your choice.
Do you have a grudge backpack?
If you do, put it down.
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