So this week I have been called unhappy, bit­ter, unkind, spite­ful, a com­plainer, angry, pas­sive aggres­sive, ugly, a bully, nag…amongst a lot of other things. Most of you who know me would not use these words to describe me, or maybe I hide this side from all of you. In any case words are hurt­ful and peo­ple who really love you do not keep a record of wrongs. Can you recall the last time when you dealt with a dif­fi­cult per­son or peo­ple say­ing things with the inten­tion of hurt­ing you. These words are hurt­ful and no amount of say­ing them will change a person…encouragement is a much bet­ter avenue! What do you do to get through these sit­u­a­tions with peace and grace and most of all for­give­ness!
No mat­ter where we go, we will face peo­ple who oppose our ideas, the way we par­ent, the way we run our every­day lives. The fact isn’t the cause of con­flict, but it is the trig­ger to our emo­tions and our emo­tions are what drive us back to our most basic sur­vival instinct: react and attack back to defend our­selves. In these moments we may lose track of our­selves and become the human ani­mal with an urge to pro­tect our­selves when attacked. This is nat­ural. A stingray when feels threat­ened will attack, or a momma bear pro­tect­ing her cubs. How­ever, we are the only ani­mal blessed with intel­li­gence and the abil­ity to con­trol our responses…So how do we do that? It may take some time to over­come the nat­ural urgency to pro­tect our­selves and attack back.
Why should we bother con­trol­ling our human instincts? For one we do more harm to our­selves. “Hold­ing a grudge against some­one is like drink­ing poi­son and expect­ing the other per­son to die.” The only per­son we hurt is our­selves. I real­ize that now after three years of hold­ing a grudge…it is hurt­ing me and my fam­ily way more than it should have ever. I looked to other peo­ple to fill my void…to get away from my anger and resent­ment and it has seri­ously torn me apart! I am always feel­ing as though I am threat­ened and feel as though I have some­one count­ing every­thing I do wrong and are adding them to this lit­tle book to once and for all destroy my well being. When we react, we are dis­turb­ing our inner peace and men­tally cre­at­ing pain within our­selves.
Usu­ally when peo­ple ini­ti­ate neg­a­tiv­ity, it is a reflec­tion of their inner state expressed exter­nally and you hap­pen to be in front of that expres­sion. When you respond neg­a­tively it become a unpro­duc­tive bat­tle of who is right. Anger feeds anger, Neg­a­tiv­ity feeds Neg­a­tiv­ity. Rarely can any good come out of react­ing against some­one who is in a neg­a­tive state. It will only trig­ger anger and addi­tional reac­tive response from that per­son. The angrier our thoughts become, the angrier we become. It’s a neg­a­tive down­ward spi­ral. It becomes a waste of energy. Where atten­tion goes, energy flows. Since we only can focus on one thing at a time we should spend our energy on our per­sonal well being and not con­sume it with angry thoughts. Neg­a­tiv­ity spreads like wild fires…Once I have let neg­a­tiv­ity come into one area of my life it starts to sub­tly bleed into other areas as well. When we are hold­ing a grudge against some­one, we don’t feel good, we lose sight of the clar­ity and even end up get­ting sick. I can say with­out a doubt that it also affects my health! My blood pres­sure has been perfect…so per­fect that I have had many doc­tors com­ment on how great it was pre­vi­ously for years and years now…and now I am hav­ing to take med­i­cine. I have not been able to focus, I haven’t been able to sleep….yes the grudge has con­trolled my inner being. The more I think about it the more my life becomes more chaotic.
Peo­ple are enti­tled to their opin­ions, I should let them express how they feel and let it be. Some peo­ple may have a less than elo­quent way of express­ing them­selves, they may even be offen­sive, but they are still enti­tled to do so.
I need for this to be resolved…I need to be able to for­give. Wait it out…while I may feel com­pelled to instantly send a text or an email defend­ing myself. I have learned that emo­tion­ally charged emails never get us the result we want and only add oil to the fire. Does it really mat­ter if I am right? Should I just not respond…we we react we are giv­ing them what they want. Stop the cycle of neg­a­tive snow­balling. Stop talk­ing about it — When you have a prob­lem or a con­flict in your life, we just love talk­ing about it? We end up repeat­ing the story to any­one who’ll lis­ten. We express how much we hate the sit­u­a­tion or per­son. What we fail to rec­og­nize in these moments is that the more we talk about some­thing, the more we talk about how much we dis­like a per­son, the more hate we will feel towards them and the more we’ll notice things about them that we dis­like. Stop giv­ing it energy, stop think­ing about it, and stop talk­ing about it. Do your best to not repeat the story to oth­ers. Try putting your­self in their shoes. This under­stand­ing will give you a new per­spec­tive on becom­ing ratio­nal again, and may help you develop com­pas­sion for the other per­son. Find the lesson…in all of this there has to be some­thing that God is try­ing to teach me. If an agree­ment can­not come out of this limit the time I inter­act or spend energy on. Remem­ber that you have the choice to com­mit to being sur­rounded by peo­ple who have the qual­i­ties you admire: opti­mistic, pos­i­tive, peace­ful and encour­ag­ing peo­ple. Don’t just be the change you want to see in this world be around those who will help you.