Learning to Let it Go

I remember reading somewhere that holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting to kill someone else! Now, I have been an expert at holding grudges throughout my life. Many of the people I have held grudges against for decades, those I went to school with, have almost certainly not bestowed one thought on me in the intervening years but I have been carrying around hatred for many of them. Has it affected them? Of course not. Has it affected me? You bet it has!

So, the message for me was clear for a long time but I could never internalise it until I started using the Calm App. Now that I am more present, these long standing grudges have assumed less importance. I have gone on with my own life and I have a wife and family I love. They will have gone on with their own lives, no doubt continuing to bully co workers because bullying is hard wired into them and bullies hardly ever apologise or change. There in that last sentence is the major part of my problem, a view of humans as basically bad with goodness being the exception.

So, I am a work in progress, but I know that only I can affect my mindset and I can only do that with hard work, psychologically speaking. I am putting in that work day by day and I am seeing some progress, but take it from me, grudges are a waste of time.