Limitless Monday: Grudges

Limitless Monday – Grudges

I am not someone who generally holds grudges. Time and some rationalizing tends to take the pain away. However, the other day I was discussing grudges with my friend,  and it got me thinking…

I have had a lot of people do a lot of bad things to me over the years, involving taking money, relieving me of a girlfriend, wife, staff, or customers, stealing client lists, or handing over personal information to government agencies to name a few. After all these acts of disloyalty, from numerous people, I would still go out for a drink with every one of them apart from perhaps two.

I don’t usually bear grudges. There are three approaches I take to achieve this. The first is revenge, the second, success, and the third, I move on fast.

Let’s look at my favorite of these three approaches. Revenge. It’s only my favorite as it gives me so much pleasure. It’s definitely not the most effective approach of the three.

I’ll give you an example of Revenge in action. When I was in prison there was a guy we nicknamed “menor” which in Spanish means younger. He was a short, stocky drug dealer from Central America who would spend most of his time shouting and screaming. When it came time to lock the doors and get some respite from his and other inmates’ constant inane chatter and shouting he would continue. His cell was adjacent to mine. One evening I just couldn’t handle his noise any longer and at about 12.30am after being abruptly woken by another outburst from this idiot I shouted “Shut the f*** up!” He shouted back “You shut the f*** up!” I couldn’t control myself. I resorted to threatening him. “When we step out of here at 6am we will see if you are so f***ing brave!”.

He continued with the noise until he finally fell asleep at 2am. The next morning I jumped off my bunk as soon as the officers opened the doors and headed to Menor’s cell. He looked shocked and started to apologize profusely. I let it go. I didn’t really want to beat this moron to an inch of his life. It would have led me to a stint in the box, and I would be no better than him and the other violent offenders. But I couldn’t let it go. I had a better plan.

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Menor would often leave his sneakers outside his cell. A few days later he exited his cell and put his sneakers on. The next words were music to my ears. “Mother f***er! What’s this in my shoe!” Then, “Mother f***er, someone’s put moldy milk in my sneakers, they’re f***ed!”. I slept like a baby that night despite the noise around me.

While this is my favorite course of action, it’s not the most effective. Results are only short term. The recipient does not learn a valuable lesson, and is unlikely to change his ways; that means you will continue harboring a grudge unless you follow one or both of the next two approaches…

Frank Sinatra once said the best form of revenge is massive success. It’s very hard to remain vengeful when you are flying high, checking off your goals, and living the life you dreamed of.

If you still find yourself harboring a grudge when you are experiencing such success, you have some deeper issues to deal with, and deal with them you must. That is why I constantly talk about living your best life. When you are looking down from a great height on the people who are wishing you ill will, those people and the issues they have with you will appear insignificant and will warrant only a few seconds of thought at most.

The final way of how to avoid grudges is by moving on fast. What I mean by that is you don’t give negative thoughts and opinions the time of day. Most importantly, you don’t question your own model of yourself because some moron has made an observation about you which has the potential of being hurtful. You pay no mind to the many negative people you will come across in your life, and focus on spending time with positive influences. This way you waste little energy and productive thinking time on what I call time wasters.

One final point about grudges. When I say I don’t hold grudges, I am not saying things go back to normal with the people who have done something potentially hurtful to me. They don’t. I will never trust them again. Having a beer with someone and trusting them are two separate matters. I will qualify the definition of having a beer. Maximum of three beers; they definitely don’t deserve a whole evening of my time.

Today, drop any grudges you may have, and focus solely on achieving your goals and dreams. You will soon find that grudges sap your energy – energy better spent on achieving massive success.

Happy Monday!

Banner Image: Revenge. Image Credit – Peter Forster