“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.“
-Carl Jung
Quieting Resentment: Nurture What You Want To Grow
Just released!
My book will guide you to free yourself from the inner struggle of resentment.
Category: Unhappy
When To Say You’re Sorry
On occasion, you lead yourself astray by saying or doing something that is unacceptably hurtful. It is human nature to make mistakes. When is it appropriate to express your regret for upsetting someone’s feelings? Undoubtedly, while you can’t go back and undo or redo the past, you can take action to repair the harm you caused.
The ideal approach in most situations is to respond in a good positive manner. There are times, though, that you may feel stressed, insecure, overwhelmed, or conflicted and because of this, without realizing you enter into a reactive mode. Unfortunately, in that moment, you speak sharply in a defensive or insulting manner. Your unstable reaction becomes exaggerated and it results in a frustrating aftermath not only for you, but also, for the recipient.
While your intention may not have been to hurt this person on purpose, you recognize that your action nevertheless did hurt or inconvenience them. Without too much delay, if you genuinely feel bad, this regret needs to be communicated. In order to regain your equilibrium you need to deal with your lapse of carelessness.
It has nothing to do with right or wrong but with how you made a person feel. Hurtful feelings need to be respected and validated, especially, if you care about the other person. An apology simply means that you made someone feel bad with your words or actions and you are sorry about that.
Continue reading “When To Say You’re Sorry”
Wanting Something Different
As the Buddhist teachings say, “to live you must experience suffering.” Throughout life, it’s natural to endure sickness, injury, tiredness, and old age. However, when we look at our emotional suffering, such as loneliness, doubt, frustration, fear, embarrassment, anger, jealousy, disappointment, etc., these feelings are more difficult to accept. When we feel upset we often get impatient and want to rid ourselves of these unpleasant feelings.
Many personal troubles involve being preoccupied with wanting something different.
Listen to Your Discontent
“Discontent is the first necessity of progress.”
Thomas Edison
Don’t let discontent linger for too long!
Muhammad Ali said, “Often it isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe.” Imagine you are walking down a pathway enjoying the beautiful scenery. At some point along the way, a little pebble gets in your shoe. After walking a few feet you realize it has become very uncomfortable. In order to continue your walk untroubled, you decide to stop a moment to remove the aggravating pebble. The discomfort was your signal to pause and adjust yourself. When you listen to your feelings of discontent, “your unhappy can make you a little bit wiser”.
Some people pay attention to that gnawing feeling, which then, motivates them to do something different about their situation. At the same time, some people get stuck in discontent. They may feel it’s a comfort zone because it’s familiar, but in reality, it’s not very comforting.
In addition, there are people that are discontent and choose to let it be acceptable. For instance, discontent with their work might feel acceptable because they have to earn an income to pay for their standard of living. Or, perhaps they are in a time-invested relationship, and they accept the discontent in order to wait for things to settle, pass over, or eventually get resolved. In these ways, they choose to learn to manage the discontent by accepting the obligation or commitment. However, the feeling of frustration, sadness or boredom is still calling for their attention to evaluate the situation.
Discontent can provide a reason to stay right where you are, or it nudges you to do something different. Remember, when you move away from the familiar, it takes some courage to adapt. This is when you need to rally your strengths, discover meaning and what fulfills your aliveness.
Take a step back. Listen. If the discontent could speak, what would it say?
Pause Stress 