Resentment is being petty. Let’s change that.

It’s been a strange journey from playing the victim to where I am now. I’ve always thought of myself as being open but how wrong I was. My experiences from the past years affected me more than I cared to believe. Yes I did grow in some ways but I didn’t realise I closed up other parts of my life for instance my spirituality.

Resentment.
That’s a word I know off but never really looked at. Have most of us?

It’s a word used quite commonly in AA circles (just to clarify – I’m not a member – I’m not a fan of organized religion and anything that resembled a cult or has some Big Book that you keep referring to. That smells like a cult to me. But  it proves a point that you can learn things from places you least expect and I’m bloody grateful for that). It started with promising to be more open. Lo and behold, it got me looking closer at myself and what I’m resentful of and where did that it come from. And believe me, being aware is a beautiful thing (we’ll get into Action after being aware later). It’s like turning that frown upside down. Heads up, I was resentful at the universe for the shit luck I had and the bad experiences I had. I always thought that I always tried to be good to people so why did bad things always happen to me?

Well obviously I had a big part to play in everything. It’s my life, my movie and I’m the star in it. The more I looked at everyday resentments, I started writing them down, the more I see how petty and foolish I was. It’s just my view of the world like ‘why did he give me that piece of work when somebody else can do it when I’m so busy?’ . I had to stop and think – Really, let’s look at that again. Maybe that person didn’t know I was busy. Maybe I was the best at that job. Maybe he just trusts me a lot’. Those are all great things to be.  So why does our brain immediately imagine the worst of people?

Can’t really answer that but I know we can change that person we see in the mirror. Start by changing our perception of our world. Change out the lenses through which we see the world.

So thanks AA for that simple but powerful insight.

 

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