My ears have been hearing over and over recently how much resentment people are feeling.
So let me offer up a new view on resentment right now.
By being resentful you are only really hurting yourself because the person or people you are resentful to don’t feel anything.
Resentment is more often than not something someone hasn’t done or said or acted upon its unfilled expectation.
And more often than not that other person doesn’t even know that we have had those expectations of them.
We hold these ideals of how someone is supposed to show up and how they are supposed to act just expecting them to naturally do it and fit in line with our expectations instead of actually sitting down and having a conversation with them about what we actually desire from them or if we do have that conversation and they don’t act upon it we get resentful.
Now if it’s the latter then this is another topic to be looked at but more often than not it’s because we have these hushed expectations that another is not fulfilling and this can be a person, several people or the world.
Now we expect what we want to be important to be as important to other people as ourselves and when it’s not there is this disbelief, we think people are selfish, they don't care, and the monkey mind tells all these stories that's not necessarily true.
So I want to go back, asking yourself:
➡️ Why do you feel resentful?
Ok someone didn't meet my expectation, my unspoken expectation.
➡️ Why do you need someone to show up that way?
➡️ How would that make me feel?
Maybe you want to be respected, appreciated, seen, and worthy. Loveable?
➡️ Do you need that or could you give that to yourself?
Could you say, great job to yourself, you were fucking awesome?
Can you give yourself that recognition?
Are you giving yourself that in your life?
Because your outer relationships mirror your internal world.
We often outsource that from someone else.
Then when you have given that to yourself, how's the resentment?
So we place expectations on how someone else should be acting, and what we make that mean a lot of the time is something like, they don’t value me.
Because somebody else is not acting or doing or saying what I think they should be doing or acting like, or saying.
And is that their fault? Or is this my expectation to manage?
What am I expecting? And is it actually their job? To fulfil that expectation?
And now some of you might say, yes, it's that person's job to fill my expectation to read my mind. To know what I need and to meet those needs.
And maybe that is true.
Maybe you do think that but I just want you to flip that for a minute.
How you would feel if someone thought of you and that it's your job to meet all their needs, fulfil their expectations, know what they need, and try to make them happy.
How would you feel if someone else thought that that was your role is to be doing all those things for them, fulfilling all their expectations?
It's an important thing that we think about because so often we put expectations on other people and think other people have to fulfil our expectations.
But then if someone else puts an expectation on us, we're like, How fucking dare you? That's not my job, Your happiness isn’t my job.
And think about it where that other person is at, have they had the opportunities to do the work you have, are they even aware of this deeper work, what their level of emotional maturity, are they acting from their emotionally empowered adult self of are they still living from their wounded child.
So this takes us to see if we can find that inner compassion for where they are meeting us at.
And I’m not saying let people walk all over and treat you badly, if that’s the case protect your energy and don’t have those people in your life or if they are family put your boundaries in.
So thinking about that a little bit, taking more responsibility for our own expectations, taking more responsibility for our own needs, instead of outsourcing our happiness to other people and stepping down from a triggered space into more compassionate understanding.