What is Resentment?

Before we can deal with resentment, we need to understand what it is and how it affects us. Resentment is a feeling of displeasure or indignation that stems from an incident, real or perceived, that is hurtful. When you resent someone it will color all your future interactions, no matter how trivial, with that person.

Resentment can be open or concealed, immediate or delayed.

Sometimes resentment sits right on the surface. You may resent a coworker who gets ahead by taking undo credit for your work. You may resent a friend’s patronizing attitude toward your hobby or maybe your ex’s new beau.

There is no end to the number of issues, large and small, that have fired a sense of resentment in people. Resentment can sneak up on the best prepared of all of us. It is how we handle it that matters – how and how soon. The longer we let resentment linger, the more powerful it becomes.

The Cure for Resentment

The cure for resentment, as with many other negative emotions, is forgiveness. The only way to get past resenting someone for something is to forgive that one for that thing. As devastating as resentment is, if it is open and on the surface then resentment is usually a relatively easy cure once the resent-er acknowledges his need to forgive and deal honestly with the resent-ee.

Hidden, or unrecognized resentment is a thornier issue. Resentment can be a subtle but devastating obstacle on the road to happiness and self-fulfillment. Unlike outright anger or contempt, resentment can linger in our thoughts and on our hearts without us realizing that it is there.

Because it is harder to spot, some people will harbor deep resentment toward others without any conscious knowledge that there is a problem. But when situations become tense, those old resentments find their way to the surface, impeding resolution and fueling the fires of conflict.

If left unchecked, resentment can linger after the situation is seemingly resolved. Often resentment will still fester long after apologies are exchanged and all is superficially forgiven. This concealed resentment poses a real danger to our happiness. The first step to releasing the negative emotion and moving toward happiness is recognizing that there is a problem. There are three common signs of concealed resentment: distrust, questioning motives, and bitterness.

Someone holding on to resentment will often demonstrate an unfounded distrust and suspicion of the other person, sometimes without consciously realizing it. It may be in matters completely unrelated to the initial incident.

Resolving a Conflict between Two Teenagers

Say two teenagers, Janie and Susie, have a conflict over who misplaced Susie’s favorite hairbrush. They may make up. They may apologize. They may appear to move on completely.

But if Susie holds on to her resentment, believing deep down that Janie really did take her hairbrush, that resentment may boil over into other matters altogether. She may hold Janie accountable for more than her fair share of their homework project; she may think Janie is making advances on Susie’s boyfriend.

If there is a lingering resentment, it could show up in any interaction between the two, even if it is completely unrelated to the original issue. In fact, many times it is more likely to come up elsewhere because Susie feels secretly ashamed for still resenting Janie after they made up.

Releasing Fixed Attention

Another common sign of unsettled resentment is an unusual level of attention to the other person’s motives in mundane actions. This is really a manifestation of projecting one’s own feelings of displeasure onto the other person. Going back to the previous example of Susie and Janie, Susie may think that Janie is suddenly acting “fake”. Susie finds herself questioning if Janie really meant it when she said she liked her earrings, or the real reason that Janie offered to drive them to the mall.

The motive behind the other person’s actions becomes more and more suspect as time goes on. Soon, the offender is simply assumed to be duplicitous in everything. Resentment like this can ruin a relationship quickly if it is not dealt with properly.

The Signs of Bitterness

The third sign is simply a bitterness that shows itself whenever the other person is around, though it may not necessarily be overtly directed at that person. Many times resentment couples with the previously mentioned sense of shame when a person knows that they should not feel that way.

The result can be an unfocused, unproductive sense of bitterness every time the other person is around. Because the bitterness has become detached from the real issue that sparked the resentment, it has no real focus and we tend to lash out at anyone in the vicinity.

This presents a great danger to our happiness because it affects not only our already troubled relationship, but our other relationships as well. This can begin a downward spiral, or domino effect, that works its way through the resentful person’s entire life.

Resentment does not always focus on a person. We can resent a pet, a company, a religion, even our own bodies. In order to get past the feeling of resentment we need to look at the root cause of our resentment.

Do I really resent the dog, or do I resent my wife for buying the dog without consulting me? Is it the church, or the gossipy neighbor who goes there? Not always, but usually, there is a person on the other end of our resentment, a person who needs our forgiveness just as much as we need to forgive them.

The remedy for resentment: The Choice of Forgiveness

Only when we allow ourselves to forgive do we move beyond the feelings of bitterness and back to our natural, intended state of happiness.

How Anger Turns Into Bitterness

Anger can be debilitating. Not in the moment – we all get angry sometimes. But when we hold onto our anger, it turns to bitterness and poisons our thoughts, relationships, and our lives. By refusing to let go of a hurt, we actually increase the hurt to ourselves. Bitterness has never given even a small measure of satisfaction to a wronged party.

No amount of prayer, meditation, or good thoughts will prevent us from ever getting angry. The potential to get angry is part of the human condition, as is the potential to make others angry. It is what we do with our anger that makes all the difference.

When you are wronged, you have a decision to make. You must choose between holding onto the hurt and becoming bitter or moving on by forgiving the offense. The first step in moving from bitterness to happiness through forgiveness is being conscious of the choice.

No One Would Deliberately Choose Bitterness Over Happiness

Yet so often, indirectly and unknowingly, that is exactly the choice that we make. The biggest obstacle to getting past the hurt is that most people do not recognize the choice in front of them. The easy thing is to wallow in our resentment, never seeing where that path leads. Even though it is obviously in our best interest to be happy, in the moment it is often far harder to choose the path that ultimately leads to happiness.

The connection does not seem altogether obvious. In fact, it seems somewhat insensible that the path to your personal happiness is through forgiving the person who, whether intentionally or unintentionally, caused your current state of misery.

On the surface, it appears that would lead only to restoring the happiness of the offender, not the offendee. But in truth, your anger imprisons you and you alone in a cell of bitterness and despair. And no matter how much you want to blame the person who hurt you, no matter how much they may have been at fault, it is a cell of your own making.

Consider that your bitterness does no harm to the person who offended you. None at all. In fact, if you don’t act out toward that person, they may not even know of the bitterness that has taken root in you. It certainly won’t cause them any ill. Only the actions you take to lash out as an extension of your anger will even be felt by the offender.

All too often, those actions will also be felt, and all the more acutely, by your friends and loved ones as well, though they had no part in the offense. So not only will your anger primarily impact only yourself, the secondary effects will be on those you care about, and your enemy will be merely the tertiary recipient of your pent up wrath.

Truly Forgive Your Offender – From Bitterness to Happiness

It does not have to be that way. There is another path, and you just need to recognize it to seize upon the opportunity to escape you cell of despair. If you forgive the person that hurt you, you will find yourself quickly and entirely relieved of the bitterness that grips your heart.

The key is that in order for the cathartic effect to take root, you must truly forgive your offender. Mere lip service, repeating the words of forgiveness like some sort of mantra will do nothing but add an additional layer of guilt and disappointment on top of your anger and bitterness.

True forgiveness has little to do with words. Forgiveness what is known as a ‘heart attitude’. Heart attitudes are internal attitudes that radiate outward expressions. Although many people feel a sense of closure in forgiving a person face to face, it isn’t always necessary.

While offering your forgiveness to the offender is usually the ideal, you could truly forgive someone in your heart even if you never saw or spoke to that person again. In some cases the offender may be deceased, unreceptive, or simply inaccessible to you. That person’s disposition or attitude toward you does not dictate your ability to forgive. It is your heart; it is your choice.

There Is No Instant Karma in this World

You cannot expect all ill feelings to flee your mind and an immediate sense of peace to wash over you upon forgiving someone. Though it may not happen that moment, it will come. The bitterness in your soul that stems from the hurt will go away. It will. Truly, it won’t take very long. Very soon after you stop clinging to the anger, it will stop clinging to you.

Remember that no one else can take your happiness away from you.

No matter how circumstances may buffet you, no matter what anyone else does to you; happiness, like forgiveness, is a choice. If you make a conscious decision to choose to forgive, the choice to be happy will follow easily.

How to Get From Bitterness to Happiness: The Choice of Forgiveness Mini-Course

We’ve all heard the expression “I can forgive, but I won’t forget“. What that really translates to is “I’m forgiving you for now, but I reserve the right to un-forgive at some point in the future.” Forgiving without forgetting is not truly forgiving. You cannot sincerely and completely forgive someone if you continue to blame the person for the offense.

To truly forgive a thing, you need to let go of the offense as if it never happened. Obviously, we cannot force ourselves to literally forget a hurtful incident, at least not without a rock and a sharp blow to the head, which is not an advisable strategy. But we can “forget” the offense in that we act and think as if it had never occurred.

There are many different kinds of situations that can lead to a conflict necessitating forgiveness. Oft times, a story has two sides. You are hurt, he is hurt. Out of an incident arose anger and resentment. Each of you is convinced that you are right, but you know deep down that there is enough blame to go around.

In those cases, we still tend to want to affix the blame to the other person. But we cannot completely forgive if we are still clinging to the idea that it was all his fault. Or even mostly his fault. All blame must be released before we can move past a superficial forgiveness to a true and genuine forgiveness.

A good litmus test to check whether or not you are ready and able to forgive without blame is to apologize to the other person. If you can’t bring yourself to apologize for your role, even if you think it was small, you aren’t ready to forgive. A heartfelt apology for your part, coupled with a genuine offer of forgiveness for his part is generally an outward sign of true forgiveness without blame. When that happens, the healing can begin.

There are other times when the actions of the other party are simply indefensible. Sometimes the issue is black and white: you are all right and she is all wrong. In those times it becomes all the more difficult, but even more important, to resist the temptation to fix the blame on the other party.

That is when the “forgive but don’t forget” doctrine seems the most appealing. But that refusal to forget equates to a reservoir of bitterness and distrust. We find ourselves giving lip service to forgiveness, but lying in wait for the offender to slip up again and justify our suspicions.

This point was driven home in the real life situation of Jon and Sheila (not their real life names). 5 years into their marriage, Jon had an affair. It wasn’t a one time thing; it was an on going affair with a woman in his office that went on for months. Eventually Jon got caught. It was devastating to Sheila, who thought that all was well in their marriage. The affair nearly destroyed their marriage then and there. But, with significant assurances from Jon and the support of her friends and family, Sheila made a difficult choice. Despite the damage that his actions had caused to their relationship, Sheila chose to forgive Jon.

Jon repented, truly repented in a way that you seldom see. He never saw the woman again. He quit his job and took another closer to home. They went to counseling. He accepted full blame and did everything he could to make amends. At the time, it looked like they were going to be one of the truly rare couples who overcomes a marital infidelity.

Sheila blamed Jon for the strain on their marriage. How could she not? He was the contemptible adulterer; she was the dutiful wife. As part of Jon’s commitment to fix what he had broken, he changed jobs. With the new job came a significant cut in pay. Money quickly got tight, and Sheila then blamed him for their financial distress. After all, he had been making good money until he screwed it all up by having an affair. She blamed him when their daughter had trouble in school. Surely that, too, was the result of the affair he had carried on three years prior.

Within a few years, everything that went wrong with their family, their home, and their careers was Jon’s fault. Sheila, although she made the right choice in forgiving Jon, held onto the right to blame him for the incident and for everything that followed. Ultimately, it was her bitterness and distrust that doomed the marriage, not the actual affair.

That story is just one of many similar tales that illustrate just how poisonous blame can be to a relationship. Whether you recognize it or not, holding on to blame obstructs your ability to completely forgive. The full extent of the problem may not become evident right away but it will remain, seething beneath the surface, until circumstances create a window to bring it back out again. It will come back around unless you release the blame and move on.

It is a daunting goal to forgive an offense to such a degree that we can let go all blame and allow the incident to lie in the past. If we are able to forgive completely, we need to five the other person tabula raza, a clean slate with no baggage of past indiscretions to cloud our future interactions. Forgiveness means that you look upon the offender as if that person had done no wrong. True forgiveness casts aside blame, recrimination, and guilt until only love remains.

End the blame game: The Choice of Forgiveness Mini-Course

“The purpose of life needs to be positive. We weren’t born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others. For our life to be of value, I think we must develop basic good qualities – warmth, kindness, compassion. Then our life becomes meaningful and more peaceful and happier.”

“Fry those Bastards! I want Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols hanged no trials necessary.”  These were the words of Bud Welch whose 23 year old daughter was killed in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. “From the moment I learned it was a bomb I survived on hate.”
Bud’s anger was focused on Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and like so many others, Bud wished for their speedy conviction and execution. When he saw McVeigh’s father on television a few months after the bombing, however, his emotions began to change. He realized that “this man has lost a child too.”

Not all of us could come to this conclusion so quickly. What did Bud Welch know that most of us might not if we found ourselves in a similar situation? Yet before he could get to this place of recognizing that both fathers were dealing with a painful lose Bud had to deal with his personal healing.

“I was opposed to the death penalty all my life until my daughter Julie Marie was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. For many months after the bombing I could have killed Timothy McVeigh myself. Temporary insanity is real, and I have lived it. You can’t think of enough adjectives to describe the revenge, and hate I felt. But after time, I was able to examine my conscience, and I realized that if McVeigh is put to death, it won’t help me in the healing process. People talk about executions bringing closure. But how can there be closure when my little girl is never coming back. I finally realized that the death penalty is all about revenge and hate, and revenge and hate are why Julie Marie and 167 others are died.”

Bud eventually arranged to meet with Timothy McVeigh’s father, Bill. “I saw a deep pain in a father’s eye, but also an incredible love for his son.” Bud says, “I was able to tell him that I truly understood the pain that he was going through, and that he – as I – was a victim of what happened in Oklahoma City.”
What Bud was able to accomplish you too will be able to do, if you choose. Don’t worry; don’t be afraid of what this book will tell you.

It will NOT tell you that what people have done wrong to you is okay.  It will NOT tell you that you must excuse someone who has treated you vilely.  It will NOT tell you that you have no right to vengeance or to the anger that fires it.  It will tell you something quite different.

What this book does is expose the complexities of forgiveness – a misunderstood process that frequently hides in robes of morality, self-righteousness and woundedness. It will tell you that you have a right to that anger and that your desire for justice and retribution are perfectly normal and recognizable human emotions.  It will also tell you that you have a right NOT to excuse someone who has wronged you.

But it will also tell you that the path to freedom requires you to shed the baggage caused by the persons, circumstances, fortunes, fate and bad experience, so that you are light and limber enough to travel that road.  There is a process to shedding that baggage, and this book will tell you how to develop that technique.

Shedding that burden is what I call the process of forgiveness, not in the sense of excusing or ignoring a wrong done to you, or of being passive in it’s wake, as you may have been taught by religion.  It is forgiveness in the sense of forgiving debt, of recognizing that full repayment may not always be possible, even at the cost of someone’s life and that justice may be better done more practically through the process of forgiveness.

To learn more about Dr. Eileen R. Borris go to: globalpeaceinitiatives.com

The Lack of Responsibility

Victims feel they can shirk responsibilities because those fall on the shoulders of the victimizers. Victims feel like they have no control over their own lives. Have a drug problem? It’s your parents’ faults. Uneducated? It’s not your fault. You had to take care of your kid. Single parent? That’s the fault of that no good boyfriend that hit the road as soon as you gave birth.

Paying alimony? Yeah, you decided to get married to that person, but you didn’t know they were going to divorce you and make you pay them. These excuses really do seem to make things easier. No reason to feel guilt or self-doubt. You did your best. Life happened to you.

Life happened to everyone. Your sister. Your friends. They all tell you the same thing. That no good mother is such you-know-what she wouldn’t let me keep living in her house, they say. Why do all of these various people do these horrible things to everyone? They’re just mean. They have grudges. They’re jealous. They are “haters.” They hate me because I’m beautiful. When viewed through an objective lens, most of these motives would seem flimsy, even silly, but through the eyes of a victim, these motivations seem to make perfect sense.

Victims Only Think About Themselves

When feel you are constantly being victimized in your life, you are actually being selfish. All you can think about is how terrible you’ve been wronged and how you are going to show those that victimized you.

Victim-hood leads to many negative emotions, pushing out any positive emotions that might have overtaken the victim. When you are so focused on yourself, you don’t think of other people and whether or not they are doing okay. You don’t think about how you can help them. Why would you? You’re the victim. You have problems. It slips your mind that everyone has problems. If you helped another person with their problems, it might actually cheer you up a little and give you some confidence. Can’t have that.

Helplessness Leads to Hopelessness

Victims are helpless. Someone that feels victimized typically feels no responsibility for the unpleasantness that has befallen them. With no responsibility in creating your own personal disaster, you were helpless to do anything to stop it. Therefore, you’re still helpless. You want, no, you need for someone to help you, to make everything better.

The longer this goes on, the less in control of your own life you feel. You’re completely helpless to do anything. There’s absolutely no hope for you, anymore. When there’s no hope, nothing matters. You get reckless. You do things just to make yourself happy for a few ephemeral moments. You spend money you don’t have. Your mind runs on and on with nonsense. You have nothing left. There’s no joy in your life. There’s no more reason to live. You have no future.

Why Has This Become Popular?

Victimhood has become the default state of a great many people around the globe. Why would so many choose a state of such utter sadness and disappointment? No one can say for sure. A popular view is that the the rise of the welfare state, shows like Jerry Springer, shifting cultural norms, and media in general are to blame.

Many victims would say it’s not a choice to be a victim. Once you are victimized, you have no choice, but to be a victim. That is the victim mentality in a nutshell. You have no choice. Anyone can, all of a sudden wrong you. Sure, this happens, but most of the time, you share some responsibility. If you were beaten and mugged, there’s no reason for that, but you were in that area at that time for a reason. You chose to be there. You didn’t know you’d be mugged, but you willfully decided to go to that place at that time.

Random bad things do, of course, happen, from time to time, where you don’t have much responsibility. But part of the responsibility of being alive is knowing that bad things are going to happen to you and that you are going to have to deal with them and move on. Say you’re laid off from a job do really well. Not fun, but there’s no reason to dwell on it. Yes, you were wronged by the company to which you contributed so much effort, but all you can do is move on and find another job.

If you can’t find another job, like so many Americans and others in today’s challenging times, take the opportunity to do your own thing and become one of the liberated self-employed. The freedom of never again answering to a condescending abusive boss is a blessing that is many times only facilitated when one loses the perceived safety and security of steady employment. Hardships are meant to provide the catalyst for positive change, but change scares most people. That’s why hardships are required to facilitate these changes.

Self-employment seems iffy to most people, but when you have no other choice, it’s a pretty good option. Once you’re confident in your ability to make money without depending on a boss, you’d be insane to ever want to go back to your old way of life. However, would you ever have really quit your well-paying job to strike out on your own? Probably not. Getting laid off, might have been the best thing that ever happened to you.

If you recede into victim-hood, asking why something so terrible ever happened to you and wondering why no one will help, you’re not going to realize the positive developments that will come from your trouble. Life isn’t an exciting challenge, anymore, it’s a monster springing out from behind a tree to slice you and dice you! You’re stuck. You’re a deer in the headlights. The car is going to kill you, and you can’t move a muscle. You aren’t going to figure out a way to become self-employed. You’ll get a minimum wage working for a boss who no one can stand.

You Have A Choice

Humans aren’t naturally victims for very long. Why is this such a pervasive attitude in today’s culture? People in power want you to feel helpless so they can control you. That’s why. Plain and simple. Who would work a low-paying, disrespectful service or outgoing call job, otherwise? But, have hope. No one can be a victim forever.

Keep Hope Alive

Sooner or later, everyone realizes they are the only ones with control over their own lives. Once you realize that you are never a victim, you can do incredible things. All of these people will have this epiphany after dealing with the bleak consequences of feeling helpless. They will take control of their own lives, and the world will be a wonderful place. A place full of confident, loving people doing everything they can to help other people to be as happy as they are.

Foremost, it’s imperative that you view forgiveness as a self-empowering tool – a liberating act done for your enduring benefit. Forgiving another human being allows you to unfetter an emotional ball and chain that you’ve been dragging around for all too long a time.

So, exactly where do you begin your forgiveness voyage? There are seven simple, but nonetheless profound, steps you can walk through to realize the rich benefits of genuine forgiveness. The journey starts with basic recognition:

What Is It That You Want to Forgive?
Before you can forgive another human being, it’s essential that you clearly identify the offense against you. Exactly what was it that hurt you? And why, until now, have you been unable, or unwilling, to forgive the transgressor? There are times in our lives when we may feel tremendous anger and loathing towards an individual, but cannot articulate exactly why we feel the way we do.

Honestly answer these three questions: Who hurt you? What hurt you? And why did this action offend you as it did? This kind of probing personal inquest is the all-important first step in the act of forgiving.

Find a Non-Judgmental Ear
Now comes the time to speak freely about this matter, and precisely what you’re trying to accomplish, with close persons in your life circle. An empathetic and non-judgmental pair of ears is what you need here. These individuals could be friends, family members, spiritual leaders, or even trained therapists. Unburdening yourself is an indispensable catharsis on the road to forgiveness – and a very welcome step two.

Don’t Suppress the Pain
Pain – physical and emotional – is a life one-two punch that we all have to parry every now and then. Like so many of us, you may be in the habit of suppressing your emotional pains – your deepest hurts – because, frankly, that degree of pain is often too much to bear. But while this course of inaction might assist you in existing in the short-term, it’s very detrimental to the long-term.

When you fully own up to, and clearly vocalize, how another person has hurt you, forgiveness is possible. On the other hand, if you opt to merely wallow in anger – in lieu of serious reflection – you will be incapable of forgiving. And, on top of everything else, this anger will wend itself deeper and deeper in your psyche, precluding you from ever knowing what it’s like to be truly emancipated.

The Truth Will Set You Free
Sometimes it’s the way we’ve been raised. Society also sends a barrage of mixed messages. You know how it goes. You feel guilty for feeling this way or that way. But the truth is that you have every right to feel the way you do, even if your feelings are unattractive and less than edifying.

You are a unique individual – a true original. It’s not for others to tell you that your feelings of anger and hurt are off base, silly, or irrational. By accepting the depths of your genuine feelings, you allow yourself to forgive others. If you deny your bona fide feelings, forgiveness will never be possible.

Honestly Assess Your Role in the Transgression
Life is a far cry from a seamless odyssey. Often it’s a misadventure. It’s therefore critical that you painstakingly appraise your role in the offense committed against you – the one that has so seared your heart and soul. You might uncover that you were anything but an innocent bystander.

By allowing yourself to see the big picture – the rest of the story, as it were – you immediately reap a greater understanding as to why you’ve been offended, and how you may have contributed to your own wound. In being totally honest with yourself concerning what happened and why it happened, the act of forgiveness automatically becomes more sincere and heartfelt.

The Decision
There will ultimately come a moment when you must decide whether or not to face the person with whom you want to forgive. Very often, this decision is clear-cut. That is, if it’s a relationship of legitimate value to you – one that you want to save or make better – meeting and forgiving the person in question is the obvious road to travel down. If, however, the individual does not fit into this category, there is nothing wrong with forgiving him or her in your heart of hearts, and getting on with your life.

Forgiveness is in essence a release – an act of conscience. The fact that you’ve found it in yourself to unconditionally forgive a person is an uplifting experience in and of itself – enriching to your immediate circumstances as well as to your future days and nights.

Forgiveness Is a Process
We live in an age of instant gratification. Nowadays, it seems like everything’s got to be faster than fast, from Internet speeds to communicating via tweets. But there’s no such thing as high-speed forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness takes time.

It’s a healing process. And depending on the gravity of the transgression against you, it could take a very long time at that. Allow the seven steps to forgiveness to unfold at a pace that’s right for you and what you want to accomplish. There are absolutely no time constraints.

When all is said and done, we are all imperfect human beings who need to both forgive and be forgiven. The seven steps to forgiveness is a beneficial roadmap. Its directions lead to a much better place – a healthier and happier place.

Emotion Seems to Have a Life of its Own
In most cases, you can only experience them and not control them. You are no longer in control – the emotions are! They act collectively as a kind of psychic clone of the more complete, more human you.

That’s the reason why we have emotional reactions to things that we sometimes later regret. We scream at our partners, we leave our friends, and we smash things until they break. Mostly, this emotional clone is reactive, uncontrollable, and seemingly independent from our core selves.

The Wolf Story
A sage once said that each person has both a white and a black wolf inside himself that constantly fight each other. The black wolf is aggressive and reactive and the white wolf is calm and social. The winner of this battle is simply decided by which wolf we feed. Most of the time we are not aware that, more often than not, we feed the black wolf and not the white one.

What can be done about this?

The black wolf can only live inside when you create it in the first place. A black wolf is a black hole that sucks up your energy.

1. The Black Wolf Called Anger
Anger is the result of not taking 100% responsibility for your life. You created the this wolf by reacting to an experience. Then you forgot that you created it. If you decide to take ownership of your creation, you must simply feel your way through the original experience. That feeling could be sadness, for example, but not anger. Sadness is the original feeling and an angry black wolf is the emotional result.

Perhaps you blame someone else for your anger. By doing so, you make another person responsible for the wolf creation that is yours and yours alone! It’s important to remember that everything in this world is a creation of yours in one form or another, even things that seem to have nothing to do with you directly.

2. The Black Wolf Called Resentment
Resentment is very close to anger. When you harbor resentment, you limit the spectrum of your feeling nature and a major part of you closes down. When you resent someone, you are saying very forcefully that the other person is the problem, the cause and the fault, not you. You forcefully blame the other person so you don’t have to look within.

You are declaring the other person, group or institution to be your enemy.

The problem is that resenting your enemy creates a dilemma that centers around the conflict that come from not taking full responsibility for the the situation. Ultimately, it is you who has the conflict, you who faces the dilemma, and you who began to harbor resentment.

3. The Black Wolf Called Blame
Like resentment, blame is not much different from anger. In both cases, you attempt to make someone else responsible for what you feel by creating an emotional reaction. Resentment and blame are different faces of this type of emotional reaction.

Resentment is a form of disappointment that seems to have its source on the outside. For example, should you get fired it seems logical that the cause is your employer. If such a calamity happened, there probably wouldn’t be much you could do about it. The cause seems to be external (your boss) even though your emotional reaction is generated within.

Everything changes when you accept that the cause is always you. You created it (you took the job), you experienced and accepted the situation (you created a positive or negative environment in which to work), and you reaped the results (you got rewarded or fired). You alone are responsible for this wolf. Why did you create a black wolf when you could have just as easily created a white one?

4. The Black Wolf Called Guilt
Guilt is much like blame of others, but turned back on yourself. When you’re guilty, you actually take ownership of what you did. So why would you feel bad about it? Because you judge yourself as having taken the wrong action in a given situation.

You did it and now you are convinced it was wrong.

With a little introspection, you’ll realize that guilt does not come from the original situation or action itself, but from the self-imposed judgment after the action. This judgment is, in fact, an emotional reaction that questions the original action you took in a given situation. When things fall apart afterwards, you tell yourself, “I made a mistake; I did not want to cause this.” You blame yourself.

5. The Black Wolf Called Betrayal
This is one of the hardest beasts to tame. The emotion of betrayal runs deeply. Betrayal occurs mostly after you have trusted someone close who then fails to satisfy that trust in some fashion. By trusting someone, you opened yourself up to be in a vulnerable state.

At some point, your trust is betrayed or even used against you. You thought that you had correctly judged your confidant as trustworthy, but now you are being punished in some way. It just makes no sense – it hurts! Betrayal is the emotional reaction to this (perhaps completely justified) feeling of being hurt by another.

Negative Emotions are a Pack of Black Wolves

This pack is vicious, fast, and can be deadly. They hunt you from the outside, circling closer until they can attack within. They may stalk you for days, months, or even years. This pack follows some people to their graves, snapping and snarling all the way. The pack is energetic and invincible. Like black wolves, e-motions are negative energy in motion.

It’s part of your creative manifesting power used against yourself!

You can eliminate them in a very short time – given the correct understanding of their nature and the techniques to vanquish them. The most potent weapon against them involves a miraculous inner process few practice completely, let alone fully understand.

The magic word here is ‘forgiveness’. We’ve just released a new mini course on CD – called The Choice of Forgiveness, and I would like you to be the first to get your hands on it.

Click here to learn a quick method to release any negative emotions.