Resentment Is Like Drinking Poison

Resentment is like a poison we carry around inside us, hoping that we can deposit it where it will harm another who has injured us when we get the chance. The fact is that we carry this poison at extreme risk to ourselves. We will explore ways to let it go in this talk so that we can find peace and happiness in our lives. (Please note: this is a talk, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Have you ever heard the quote,

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die?

Whether you have or not,

There's a lot of wisdom in this quote.

But how,

Dr.

Puff,

How would holding resentment towards someone who terribly hurt me cause me pain?

It's because of what that hatred,

That resentment,

That anger does to us.

It eats us alive.

And this is so easy to prove.

For example,

If you know someone who is a very resentful person hanging on to a lot of things,

Ask them or watch and see how is their life going.

You won't find happiness there.

You won't find joy there.

You'll find a lot of pain and suffering because of that resentment that they're hanging on to.

Now let's say we know someone else who went through a horrible experience growing up,

Perhaps by a parent or a relative or even a stranger.

If they're going to be better,

They have to let that go and heal.

The key word is heal because if we don't heal from our resentments,

They will destroy our lives in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways.

But again,

Why is that?

How do we prove ourselves that this is true?

Again,

It's simple.

Think of an example in your life where someone really did you wrong and you felt so much anger and resentment towards that person.

We probably all have had examples of this in our lives.

And then ask yourself at that time,

How is life going?

How are you feeling?

Were you happy?

Were you joyful?

Or are you in so much rage and anger,

Now one ounce of pleasure of happiness could exude from your pores.

Think of it this way as a form of a metaphor.

If you have a pot on the stove and there's water in that pot and you turn the stove up to very high,

What's going to happen?

It's going to start boiling.

And if there are any ice cubes or even normal temperature water in there,

It's going to dissipate and it's going to start boiling very rapidly.

You can't have hot and cold at the same time.

You have one or the other.

We can't have resentment and joy at that same time.

We can have one or the other.

Because resentment is like having a hot coal in our hearts,

Burning away,

Tearing us up and wanting so badly to do damage to that person that hurt us.

And what does that do to us?

It destroys us.

It kills us.

It makes so much damage to us.

And the other person perhaps may not even know.

And even if they do,

We still are suffering from hanging on to that horrible resentment.

But why does resentment hurt us?

Think of it like energy.

When we are around energy,

Like a high vibration,

It is moving at a very fast pace,

Driving perhaps like a Maserati on the freeway,

Going 170 miles per hour.

It is dangerous.

It is stressful.

It is exhausting.

At the same time,

When we're in our perhaps Honda Accord,

Just gently cruising around town,

Going at the speed limit,

It's so much more relaxing and enjoyable.

Resentment is like that.

It's high energy moving through us and causing a lot of potential danger.

Whenever we're under high energy,

There's a threat.

There's a threat to our health.

There's definitely a threat to our happiness.

And we just can't go at a fast speed and a slow speed at the same time.

We have that high energy speed and we have that low energy speed.

If we're hanging on to resentment,

It is highly destructive energy that we need to get out of our system ASAP.

So I'm hoping I've convinced you that resentment is a poison that we're drinking and waiting for someone else to die.

Once we realize that,

How bad it is for us,

Let's now talk about how do we get the resentment out of our system.

Well,

We start with awareness.

We explore.

We look at.

We try to understand what am I resentful about right now.

Sometimes we don't even know.

We just feel angry.

We just feel a high energy tension inside of us and we're not sure why.

So we begin with understanding what happened.

What's causing me to feel this resentment?

Because we can't change it if we don't know what it's about.

But once we know what it's about,

Then we ask ourselves,

Okay,

Is there anything I can do about it?

For example,

Let's say it's our birthday and our best person in our life,

Whether it be our mom or dad or sister or husband or child,

Completely forgets that it's our birthday.

And we acknowledge that,

Oh yeah,

I guess I am feeling some resentment here.

Quite a bit actually.

Why did they forget my birthday?

I'm supposed to be special to them.

What's this about?

What's wrong with them?

Do they really not even care for me?

Because you see,

Resentment is fueled by thoughts.

And the thoughts make it burn.

It's like the stove with the water pot on it.

We have to have fire to get that water boiling.

And it's our thoughts to get it boiling.

What we could do initially,

If there is something we can do,

Is talk to that person and say,

Hey,

I know you may have forgotten,

But it's my birthday.

Do you maybe want to celebrate?

Do you feel the energy with what I just said?

From why did you forget my birthday?

Do you not even care for me?

To,

Hey,

It's my birthday.

Do you want to maybe celebrate with me?

Could you imagine the response we could get from the latter,

Particularly if it was someone that we cared for?

I think we'd find a lot better response.

But what about when they're more complicated?

Again,

Let's say we lost our job and it has had devastating effects on us.

And we were so resentful at our boss for letting us go.

And we just hate them.

Well,

The truth is in a lot of situations,

There's nothing we can do.

Or it's probably best if we didn't do anything,

Because if we do something,

Then we're going to start a feud or we're going to get in trouble or a lot of things can happen that could negatively impact our lives.

So we decide that we're not going to hang on to this anger anymore,

This resentment,

Because it's hurting us.

And we realize that we're going to go out there,

Find another job and adjust to the changes that have come from losing our job.

And say,

That's what life does sometimes.

Even there are people out there that do really awful things,

But I'm not going to let them take away from my joy and happiness.

Because that's what resentment does.

It takes away from our joy and our happiness.

And we don't want to let people do that.

We don't want to give them that power.

For sure we don't.

So what we do instead is we have to let it go and move on and start finding ways to live our life well,

No matter what they've done to us.

And I know sometimes people do horrible things.

I mean think of like rape or physical altercations where they hurt us physically.

Those are horrible situations.

So we do things to protect ourselves,

So they'll never do it to us again.

And at the same time,

We're not going to let them rob us from our joy of living well in life.

We're going to do things to find joy and happiness and stay away from people like that as much as we can throughout our lives and protect our hearts.

Because that's super important.

But the key concept here is not letting resentment take away from our joy of living.

Because that's what it does.

And when we really understand that,

Then we're going to be very proactive.

Again,

One,

Figuring out what we're resentful about.

And two,

Getting away from it as fast as possible.

And then three,

Which I just mentioned,

Protecting our hearts so that other people can't hurt us again.

So we can avoid resentment in the future.

Again,

Being with people that are kind and loving.

If we're in a relationship that's causing us to suffer and creating us resentment,

We need to move on or work really hard at stopping them hurting us.

Because resentment,

Again,

Is just bad for us.

And if we're in relationships where people keep hurting us,

It's not going to help us in the long run.

And it's not even going to help them.

No one wins when we let people hurt us.

So let's not let people hurt us.

But if they do and they sneak one in,

Let's as fast as possible get away from it.

And at the same time,

Heal our hearts super fast too.

And that's what I want to conclude with.

How do we heal our hearts when we have resentment?

Because sometimes we really do have legitimate resentments.

Sometimes other people can be truly awful and cause us so much harm.

And we just want to be angry and hang on to that resentment.

You know where you see it often,

And it's very sad,

Is when someone dies who has something,

Like money or a house,

Whatever it may be,

And then the people left fight over it.

And then there's so much resentment between that battle.

I want to share a story with you about someone that I used to see long,

Long ago.

She's passed,

But she did give me permission to share this story.

She had one sister and her last parent died.

Well,

They had inherited this beautiful gold necklace with an actual gold nugget on it from their grandfather who had been part of the gold rush and had passed it on through the generation.

Well,

It was just her and her sister.

And they were truly fighting over who got it because it was priceless.

It was part of the family.

And they both really wanted it badly.

And I can tell you,

Because I was talking to them,

That if they didn't come up with a solution,

They never would have talked to each other again.

And they were very close.

So it was so sad.

So here's what I came up with.

They both really liked and they ended up doing,

And they did it for years.

They decided that every year starting January,

One person would get it.

And then the next January,

The following year,

The next person would get it for that year.

And then the following January,

They switch it back and back and forth.

And they did that for years and metaphorically lived happily ever after.

Because we have to let go of resentment.

If we don't,

It can cause so much damage.

But not every event has a positive solution like the one I just shared.

So what we can control and we can't control is what we have to look at last.

And what we can't control is we can't control what other people do.

We cannot.

We can influence it.

We can talk to them about it.

But if they're going to do what they're going to do,

We're not going to stop them.

But what we can do is control ourselves and our own emotions and really decide that resentment is a poison that we're drinking and it's not going to help us.

We may need to get into therapy to heal from what's been done to us.

We may need to talk to someone and say,

You know,

This really hurt my feelings.

We may need to journal.

There's so many good ways of letting go of resentment.

It's about feeling the feeling until you don't feel it anymore.

And then it'll be gone and you let it go.

What fuels resentment are our thoughts.

And when we keep hanging on to,

Well,

That wasn't there.

That was unjust.

I will hate them forever.

We can.

But it's a miserable existence.

And we're probably listening to this because we don't want to be miserable.

We want to be happy.

We want to find joy in life.

And that journey is towards letting things go towards forgiveness,

Towards moving forward.

Again,

I want to share another story.

And again,

I have permission to share this one too.

And this was one of the most beautiful souls I ever knew.

She had perhaps the hardest childhood I've ever heard of.

It was molestation.

It was abortion that she was forced to do.

It was horrible,

Horrible experiences she had going on for years.

And I worked with her for years.

And you know what?

She was able to forgive and let it go.

She realized that was the last thing she had to do was to forgive and let go of what had happened to her.

And what again beautifully happened to her is she ended up getting out there and sharing other people or stories to help them heal.

So sometimes what we can do as our resentment is actually make something good of it,

Helping others that may be struggling.

If you're not from the United States,

You may have never heard of this acronym,

MAD,

M-A-D-D.

But what it stands for is Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

And it's exactly that.

These are mothers who lost their kids to drunk drivers.

And I don't think there's much more that we could be resentful against than having someone kill our own child because they were drunk.

I mean,

What a horrible thing to happen.

But these beautiful women now are proactively involved in having criminal charges put against drunk drivers so that they don't keep driving and getting away with it.

They've done so much good in our world because of their resentment turned to action.

So resentment is a poison that if we hang on to it,

It hurts us.

We need to first acknowledge what it is,

What are we resentful about,

And then see if there's anything we can do about it right now.

And then if there isn't,

We need to let it go and move on or even perhaps make the world a better place because we're turning our resentment into something proactive and beautiful.

We can do this,

But we just have to remember in the long run,

Hanging on to resentment is going to hurt us.

We need to let it go as fast as possible because it can hurt us very painfully.

And we don't want that.

We want to find joy and happiness in our lives.

And we're not going to find it there if we hang on to resentments.

We need to let them go and we can.

And when we do that,

We will find that our lives can truly be a beautiful adventure.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Insightful!

Thank you so so much🙏🏻

Thank you for the great overview of resentment. I was wrapped up in it but I feel I can better handle it now. Thank you.

Accept what is and let it go move on perfect sense 🤔

Awesome talk. Thank you 🙏

Always refreshing to get a reminder about resentment. It IS a poison. Thank you for sharing🙏🏼💞

Great listen and reminder of how damaging it is to our own happiness when we resent others for their misdoings. 🙏

Spot on! 💜

Thank you very much for this talk, it was very helpful.

So informative and helpful. Thank you.