In this six-part series on the prescriptions to being miserable, we discuss the final prescription which is to have resentment.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe where I combine financial planning with self-development coaching for Latino professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about part 6 of the six-part series on the prescriptions to be miserable. It’s the final prescription to becoming miserable. Hopefully, you haven’t been taken these doses over the past five days but it allows you to have the self-awareness to stop being miserable with your life. My goal is to give you the ability to know more, so you can be more as a person and don’t have to be miserable and have a better life with your career, relationships, and personal finances.
So the final prescription to becoming miserable in life is to have resentment. Resentment is similar to having envy but instead of not having something, it’s being upset at what has already has happened in the past. You can have resentment about the decisions you made in the past or against someone who has done something against you or someone that you cared about.
The key thing is that when you put your time and mental focus on things that you can’t control, you won’t be able to change anything and things will stay the same. You just have to let that stuff go and go focus on stuff that matters.
With resentment, you’re looking for justice at what happened or some type of closure. And you want that other person to begin that healing process. But you have to realize that success is something that you go towards, it doesn’t come to you. So you can either instruct or endure. So if you can’t instruct, you must endure and just stop focusing on the thing that is bringing you resentment.
I could have easily resented my time in the Marines, the Federal Government, and other past jobs, but I just took them as learning lessons to become a better person in the future. When I was a Federal Employee, I was miserable and I was resenting the people that I was working for. I thought it was an inefficient system that didn’t work for my personality. I wanted to make a change but I found that making change was going to be difficult because that would mean that I would have to change the culture of the Pentagon and I don’t think I could do that.
So I decided to quit and move on to something else. So when that happens, a lot of mental stress went away. I just started to focus on getting my economics degree and to start a personal training business that didn’t work out. You can resent a lot of things that didn’t work out for you but then that just means that you’re living in the past and not in the present.
You will have some losses in life, so one of the goals is to have a life that gives you more wins than losses. We all have losses but we want to make sure that we have a buffer in place to handle those loses. And a great way to have a buffer is to learn to let go of resentment as fast as you can. Every second that you have resentment is a second that you won’t get back and a second that you can’t use to build the future that you want. Hence, this is why you will become miserable if you have resentment because you’re still stuck with the unsatisfying life that you don’t want to have any more.
A great way to get over resentment is to use the Abraham Lincoln technique where you write a letter to the person you have resentment against. Just let everything go but the idea is that you don’t send that person that letter for how you feel. I did this for a relationship that turned sour and I used it for my last firm. I don’t think it would have been helpful to send those letters to those folks because they don’t really want to change but it allowed me to express my feelings and gave me the opportunity to move on with my life.
And that is the key, how can you quickly move on from that resentment and feel freer as a person. I feel great now because I spend all my time on the things I want to work on and it is so much better than constantly thinking about the injustices I had in the past.
So you have to take an active approach with your healing process. If you can’t get away from the person, then you need to address the other person and figure out a solution for the two of you. Otherwise, the other person is going to continue to do what they do to cause you to have resentment. So you have to communicate the issue. I live with my parents again to start this business and my mom finally said something about me and the dishes, and now I don’t leave the dishes in the sink. My mom doesn’t like dishes to sit in the sink for a long period of time so they pretty much have to get done right away.
But if my mom never would have said something to me, then she would continue to have resentment towards me and that would hurt the relationship. But we’re good now and I’m glad she said something. People can’t read our minds so we have to express our desires, needs, and wants. I know I had a lot of resentment in the past because I would express myself for what I wanted and just expected people to know what I want but it’s a good way to be miserable because then people are not meeting your expectations and this will just cause you to be miserable. So say something or get out of the situation as fast as possible. Life is too short to be miserable longer than you have to.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, the final prescription to becoming miserable is having resentment. To overcome resentment, you can use the Abraham Lincoln letter technique and you can either instruct the person that is giving you resentment or you can find an escape route and take that. You have the six prescriptions to becoming miserable so hopefully, you’re now more prepared to avoid being miserable in life. These are not easy things to avoid, it is very easy to take any one of the six prescriptions, but by having the self-awareness and courage to be the person you want to be in life, you can overcome these things that can make you miserable.
Being miserable sucks, and I don’t want to be miserable for longer than I have to. I don’t want to have my day filled with complaining because complaining is inefficient and doesn’t change anything. If you want a better life, then you have to change as a person and do the things required to give you your good life and you’re going to need tools to help along the way. You have six tools to add to your toolbox and you’re going to need more tools. So continue to listen to the daily cup of joe and get more tools to handle life.
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