“Curing” Resentment
[or Forgiveness, Love, Hate, and Resentment]

This stren addresses the management of one of the greatest epidemics to plague humankind, resentment. 

            Resentment is a condition characteristically prevalent in humankind.  It causes immense harm, often leads to violence, has been prominent throughout our history, is very contagious, and it has thus far, been resistant to treatment.  Resentment tends to become chronic and cause both physical and mental disease (dis-ease).  Resentment may be thought of as a mental cancer.  Yet, the means for cure are readily available through some simple changes in our thinking, what I have described as ANWOT, a newer way of thinking.  You have, or may readily attain, the five needed ingredients of change … faith, work, patience, direction, and a bit of risk-taking.¹ 

            Resentment, re + sentiment, is literally the re-experiencing of an emotion.  Sentiment may be positive and/or negative.  However, resentment has come to represent ill will due to a real or imagined offense.  It has come to be associated with anger and the desire to do harm to a person or thing.

Here are the simple “what to do” steps to effectively treat resentment:

1. Convince yourself that to create and sustain the desire to cause harm to a person(s) or useful “something” is misuse of your energy and intelligence.  In my search for the wisdom of others, as well as my own reflection, I am unable to find support for the expression of the destructive force we call resentment.
2. Recognize that resentment rarely, if ever, gets us what we want.  Be prepared to label this experience as something you want to get rid of with whatever passion and might you can muster.  Remember that you are attacking the emotion and not yourself.  You are murdering this undesirable intruder for your benefit and the benefit of others.  There is no law against this type of aggression.  You become a hero, not a villain.  Ridding resentment is a service among the most noble of acts you can perform. 
3. Resentment is sustained by blaming.  Look and you will find the prescriptive word that feeds resentment, viz. should, have to, must, ought.  Substitute descriptive words, viz. could, choose to, am wise when, prefer, and the like. When you take responsibility for your emotions instead of attributing others with the power to control your feelings, you are far more likely to connect with your power to make a difference.  
4. Likewise, use the personal responsibility words of self-mastery, I allow, rather than the dependent blaming words of nature and nurture, he/she/it/they make me. The fight/flight tendency we genetically inherit and our prolonged dependency on our nurturers when, indeed, others were responsible for our well-being is wisely replaced by assuming the directorship of our own life’s experience.. 
5. As you develop skill in the newer way of thinking of self-mastery, ANWOT, as proposed in this Guide, you will change your perspective.  Your engagement in productive use of your energy will automatically, i.e. relatively effortlessly, starve the resentments that bring you what you don’t want.
6. Apply the magical sentence to find effective means to spend your energy: “Given this situation (that may be unfair), what is most likely to get me what I want in the short-term and the long-term, that may benefit me and the ‘other’.”  Usually the more appropriate action will involve education and setting limits more so than punishment and attempts to dominate through some physical or symbolic harmful action.  Limit setting puts the emphasis on protection and limiting destructive action more so than punishment.  The outcome is likely to benefit “the other” as well as yourself.  Thoughts and actions are more wisely guided by reason more so than emotion.             
7. Expect that you will still periodically engage in resentment.  Endorse yourself each time you recognize you do!  Remember, you are going to make mistakes throughout your lifetime.  This step will become easier as you develop your ability to recognize that mistakes are opportunities to learn wiser ways to direct your resources to constructive ends.²
8. Keep in mind that when you engage in resentment, you are inviting someone or something you don’t like to live rent-free in your thinking.  Instead of having your own hand on your React Button, you have turned it over to the least desirable controller of your thinking, feelings, and actions.   

To my knowledge, all major religions support the concept of forgiveness, literally for giving.  Giving is also the act we call love.  Embrace the concept of “forgiving my enemy, because an enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.” ³