that just might be the one that would launch her. When Gwen wasn’t auditioning, networking, or exercising (to keep herself camera-ready), she was writing material, making videos, and submitting them.  And when she wasn’t doing that, she was waitressing and bartending to pay rent on her tiny studio apartment in a bad neighborhood.

Gwen was tough on herself, too.  If she ever wanted to take a day off or just skip an exercise class, she would attack herself: How do you expect to get there if you’re not willing to do everything it takes? You’ll get a day off when you make it.  In her mind, unless she chased every carrot, no matter what it did to her in the process, she would never make it to the top, and worse, she would blame herself for not being willing to do what it took to get there.  But living this way was difficult and painful; Gwen was not only utterly exhausted and overwhelmed with shoulds, but also suffering at the hands of her own internal critic.

After a decade of pushing, her career had stayed at basically the same level.  And yet, her level of exhaustion and suffering had gotten far worse.  Ten years of never saying no had left her weary and bordering on bitter.  And deeply disappointed.  The story she had always told herself, that her time would come, was wearing thin and feeling less believable.  Most importantly, she was growing tired of the life she was actually living — her real one, not the imaginary one that would happen when she was famous.

With a lot of hard work and tears, Gwen was finally able to admit to herself that she didn’t want to keep living such a grueling life, under the whip of an internal slave-driver, or to keep living it on the fumes of a dream.  She wanted a life that she wanted to be living—now.  Her present experience had finally become something that mattered; she had become someone who mattered.  At last, Gwen chose to hang up her comedian’s hat and enter graduate school.

For the first time in Gwen’s life, she wasn’t striving every minute to try to get somewhere else, to become someone else who was more important.  She liked herself and felt at peace for the first time.  She even discovered that she positively loved puttering around doing very little, which, in her previous incarnation, was something she had never known or allowed herself.  Mostly, she was deeply proud of herself for having had the courage to step off the treadmill of striving for success.

And then she met Brendon.  Her new boyfriend was a jet-setter, a successful entrepreneur on the fast track to big things.  Filled with ambition and talent, he also never missed an opportunity to attend an event, network, or just go the extra mile, whatever was needed to score the deal.  He was always chasing after something and usually getting it.  As Gwen described it, Brendon was the male version of her old self, but a winning one.

Shortly into their relationship, Gwen started talking about needing to get back into comedy.  She began making casual references to herself as boring.  Her coursework, which had been fascinating just weeks before, was now dull and mediocre.  For the first time since she had left comedy, she was feeling disappointed in herself.  She felt inadequate, a failure.  The life that had been enjoyable, hard-earned, and courageous, and most importantly, one that finally belonged to her, was now empty and unexciting—far too average for Brendon.  And indeed, she imagined that she herself was far too average for Brendon.

Just two months into her new relationship, the self-worth and pride she had earned in the very difficult process of changing careers, letting go of a dream, and building a new identity, had, for the most part, slipped away.  Gwen had lost connection with what her life meant through her eyes and was now seeing it through the lens of what it would look like to her boyfriend.  How she felt about herself was now defined by how she imagined Brendon would perceive her.  The respect Gwen had built for her own journey was gone, reduced to a few judgments by which her new boyfriend would label it.

As women, this is sometimes what we do—to ourselves.  We ignore, dismiss, and throw away our own experience, what our journey means to us, what we know to be true about ourselves, and replace it with other people’s definitions and perceptions of our life.  We do this habitually, without even knowing we’re doing it.

If we want to break this self-abandoning habit, we have to first become aware of it.  We have to become conscious of our willingness and compulsion to sacrifice our own experience in favor of others people’s versions of it.  Once we can see ourselves giving away our truth, see the suffering it causes us, and see the absurdity of it, then we can stop doing it.  But first, we have to get good and fed up with giving ourselves away.  With awareness and a lot of practice, we can learn to stay connected to our own experience, to stand in our own truth, to define our own journey, even in the face of other people’s opinions, and those who see us differently than who we know ourselves to be.  For now, start paying attention to how and when you give away your own story, and let others write it for you.  Practice taking back your own authority, whatever that means to you.

The post How We, as Women, Give Away Our Power appeared first on Nancy Colier.

For a long time, I worked like hell to provide what she wanted, what she was demanding, not necessarily because I wanted to, but because I felt I should.  But no matter how much I gave, it was never enough and I was never acknowledged or experienced by her as the person who was offering what she needed.  I was constantly arguing my case for why she was wrong about me, wrong for blaming me; I continued telling her how much I was doing, why she should appreciate me.  But it never made a difference.  I was forever stuck in the role of the one who wouldn’t provide what she really needed.

After what felt like eons of giving and giving and continually being told and experienced as the one that wasn’t giving, I started to feel differently.  I started to feel like I shouldn’t have to provide these things that she demanded from me and felt entitled to.  I started to argue with my own sense of should and rethink what I should be willing to offer.  I also started to argue with her about whether or not it was right or fair for her to expect this service from me.

And so, for the next few years, we remained locked in a new battle, namely, who was right about whether or not I should have to offer the kind of help she required.  I said I shouldn’t have to and she said I should.  What was the truth?

More time passed but we both held our ground, each of us growing more stuck in our positions, convinced of our rightness.  Resentment infiltrated our relationship from top to bottom.

But then something truly unexpected happened, for me.  Something simple but utterly profound.  I don’t know what it will mean for the relationship, but I know that it’s opened up infinite space inside me, a deep okayness and strength, and thoroughly changed my reality.

What happened was this: I realized that at the bottom of this lifelong battle with this woman was a simple truth, a truth that had been shunned, stepped over, stepped around, ignored, and never allowed to the table.  I can say it out loud now, scream it from the rooftops, and here’s what it sounds like: I do not want to be responsible for providing what she needs.  It’s not that I shouldn’t have to (that’s a truth that depends on one’s inner universe), it’s not that I have been responsible and it’s gone unacknowledged; it’s far simpler than all that.  I don’t want it—that’s the whole story.  I don’t want to requires no further dialogue, explanation, or justification.  It sounds like a small turn, like something I already knew, but it was a revelation.  It was a truth that for decades had been forced to hide in the shadows of should and shouldn’t; buried under all the effort, the thousands of words, arguments, and tsunamis of fear and guilt. This truth had been denied permission to be heard or even to exist.

As long as I was still relying on the argument that I shouldn’t have to, I was still dependent on her and everyone else to feel solid in my choice.  The strength of my own truth didn’t yet belong to me.  It was still a truth of consensus, one that had to be agreed upon, and thus something that her rejection was able to undermine.  That I could never be validated in the idea that it wasn’t fair to ask this of me, that I shouldn’t have to, meant that I could never really stand in my own shoes. I could never not feel guilty for my choice even with the awareness that all the doing in the world would still not earn me the place of the one who was doing it.

What freed me was that simple but awe-inspiring shift in awareness and perspective, the appearing of the real truth, the I don’t want to reality.  In that moment of awakening to my own not wanting, I realized that this truth more than any other had been the unacknowledged, unsafe to acknowledge key to unraveling the whole knot.  It wasn’t about not being appreciated for it; it wasn’t about winning the fight that I shouldn’t have to.  It was just about discovering the plain and simple “I don’t want to.”

Remarkably, “I don’t want to” is not up for dialogue, discussion, or agreement.  This truth is not a truth by consensus.  It’s mine wholly, and to some degree, non-negotiable.  When I found my I don’t want to, I found my own two feet planted firmly on the ground, weighted and strong.  I found clarity and with it, freedom.  This other person no longer held the power to allow or deny me my truth.

What I’ve noticed since this awakening is that I am far more able to look at this other person without resentment.  What is is and I don’t have to defend it anymore.  And simultaneously, I don’t feel the same fear, fear of the guilt inspired by her belief about what I should be willing to offer, fear of being accused of being bad.  Oddly, it actually feels like I can enjoy her a whole lot more as well.  The truth, awakened in me, allows me to look at this other person in the eyes, and stand in the light of what’s true, for me.  Where it will take us in the relationship, I have no idea, but whatever happens, I don’t want to has, for me, turned out to be the get out of jail key to freedom.

The post When the Truth Sets You Free appeared first on Nancy Colier.

On a recent Friday afternoon, I was having a conversation with this person and she casually mentioned another symptom that she experiences. She had never brought this to my attention because she just assumed everybody felt the same thing.

In that moment, I was slightly alarmed by the symptom she mentioned as it was definitely not a sensation most people have and certainly not one that people get on a regular basis.  It was also, I knew, a symptom associated with some pretty terrible things.  I said nothing about my concern but calmly inquired more into her experience, When does she get this sensation and what if anything brings it on and other questions.  On the outside, I probably appeared quite nonchalant, but on the inside, a small tsunami was forming in my chest.

Immediately following our conversation, I made a beeline to hell, otherwise known as Google.  I feverishly punched in her symptoms.  What I found was, not surprisingly, both horrifying and terrifying.  Her symptoms happened to be the first two on every list for one particularly dreadful and life-destroying condition.  And, as luck would have it, the third most common symptom listed as evidence of this particular disease turned out to be another symptom that my loved one had in fact mentioned experiencing over the last couple years, but which I had also dismissed and assumed would disappear on its own.

Within three hours of our initial conversation, I was disabled with enough information to be utterly consumed with fear.  I had three symptoms to work with now, and three symptoms which were the first three on every list describing the early signs of one particular horrifying fate.  Fear had not only arrived at my front door but had broken the door down and taken me hostage.

The more afraid I became, the more frantically I researched the internet, reading everything available on the condition I had diagnosed, looking for anything that would give me a different list of symptoms or at least a list where her symptoms were further down from the top.  I read about treatments, now and future, trial studies, ways that people self-care once diagnosed, the psychological effects of the disease, how early one should start taking the medication, and what the final stages look like. I read testimonials from people living with the disease, everything I could get my hands on.  By Sunday night I had five Ph.D.’s in this condition.

I was in a state of panic, heartbroken, and truly unable to get okay.  If a moment of serenity appeared, I would remember the shock of what I knew, that this person I love beyond anything, beyond everything, had no future.  I would remember that I could never be happy again.  Each moment I spent with my family member that weekend felt like the last, weighted with melancholy and finality.

I was living a narrative of fear and despair, a narrative I had written in less than 48 hours.  I was sure that the worst thing I could ever imagine happening was happening. I wondered, how was it possible that I had spent my whole life working on getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, okay with the not okay of life, accepting reality as it is, and yet here I was screaming, No, this reality is the one reality that’s not okay!  This reality I cannot bear.  I was in a thought-constructed hell, which felt real, inarguable, and true.

I was the only one who knew that she had all three symptoms.  Other family members knew of one or another, but I was the keeper of the full truth, the only one who knew the whole of it.  When I did finally break and tell another family member, he dismissed my fears as ridiculous, irritating, a case of bad hypochondria. I was to blame for my fear.  His impatience felt like an abandonment of sorts. I felt not only terrified but also deeply alone in my fear.  I couldn’t share my fears with the person whom they were about because I did want to frighten her; I couldn’t speak with anyone else in the family because they were angered by my fear; I couldn’t speak with her doctor about it because I didn’t want to set off further testing and thus speed the road to the eventual diagnosis. I was totally isolated; my thoughts had built a bubble of terror in which I was trapped and alone.

Source: robert zunicoff/unsplash

And then something miraculous happened, perhaps because I couldn’t bear another moment of being so afraid, or perhaps just because. Grace appeared and I heard the following: Your mind is inflicting violence on you!  And what followed from there was simply, Stop! Stop! Stop! Something in me stood up for me.  I knew that probability was still on my side and the fear I was living might well be false evidence appearing as real.

As a result of this realization, I was able to halt my mind’s projections into the future, to stop re-inventing and re-experiencing a reality that didn’t and might never exist.  I recognized that I knew nothing other than three facts and didn’t need to go one day or even five minutes into the future. I could decide to live right here, now, and construct no storyline at all.  Discomfort remained, a mild anxiety, but without the narrative connecting the dots, I was remarkably okay. With the sudden awareness of how I was torturing myself, believing my thoughts, I was able to disembark from my mind’s terror train.  I refused to participate in terrifying myself; I chose the freedom and self-compassion that comes with saying, and believing, I simply don’t know. That’s the truth.

For organizing and generating ideas, there’s no match for the human mind.  And simultaneously, for whipping up fear and creating frightening storylines that appear indisputable, there’s also no match for the human mind.  The tragic part is that by creating its narratives of terror, the mind is at some level trying to calm us down, to make sense of and know the unknown, solidify the impermanent.  The mind tries to protect us from the fear of what could happen by creating a certainty of what will happen, which paradoxically can feel less frightening.

In this recent episode, my mind was desperately searching to find proof for its wrongness, evidence that showed its thoughts were mistaken. And yet, the more my imagined storyline was confirmed, the more frantically I searched to find something else to explain the unknown.

Our mind is often the perpetrator of unimaginable violence—on ourselves.  Our thoughts are the great instigator of terror, yelling fire over and over again when a hint of smoke is detected.  At some point, the suffering that we self-inflict can become too much and an act of grace or self-compassion occurs, when we say, Stop, stop torturing me.  Stop creating stories of terror… The truth is I don’t know, that’s all.  Life is challenging enough without adding any of our own terrifying storyline to it.  We can in fact choose to live in the questions, to not know, and not fill in the blanks.  When we leave the dots not-connected and sit with the fear that may or may not exist with what is, we feel a great relief.  Not only a relief from the self-inflicted violence of the terrifying storyline, but also from the need to close up reality and know—everything—even if it’s nothing we want to know.

The post FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real: When Our Thoughts Scare Us appeared first on Nancy Colier.

There is no doubt that people and situations can be the cause of our discontent. If someone swings a baseball bat into my knee, the pain I feel is directly caused by that action. If a friend speaks unkindly to me, I feel hurt, a direct result of his choice of words. We impact one another; there are people and situations—infinite ones it seems—that can cause our suffering. That said, there is nothing wrong with trying to change a situation that we don’t like or that makes us unhappy. Such efforts are wise and adaptive and a way of taking agency in our lives. We need to try to change what’s not working, if we can. But this is not a post about how to more skillfully change those around us so that they can better fit into how we want them to be. This is about what happens when we are not successful at changing those around us, and cannot change the situation that is causing us pain.

I guess you could call it Plan B.

When we cannot change the cause of our suffering, many of us continue to blame the other person or situation. This may provide us with some relief, at least for a while. But what happens when trying to change the other has failed and continuing to blame is not actually making us feel better either?

Where do we go when we have run out of moves?

Freedom from the whole blaming/fixing cycle, ironically, comes from moving our attention away from the other person/problem that is to blame/fix, and turning that attention onto ourselves. When you hear that it’s time to look into yourself, you may assume (as most people do) that someone is telling you to discover how you are also to blame for the suffering you are experiencing.

This assumption would be false.

I am not suggesting that you are to blame for anything, nor am I suggesting that you search yourself for fault. This step in the process—self-investigation, the step that creates real freedom from suffering—has nothing to do with blame.

To turn your attention into yourself is to ask the question: What does this situation or person’s behavior trigger in me? What pain is generated in me when I am confronted with this behavior or reality?

The post You Can’t Change Someone Else But You Can Do This appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Let me say first that in some situations blaming is helpful and healthy—it’s not always a dysfunctional reaction. Assigning blame where it is appropriate can empower and protect you, and stop harm in its tracks. But the kind of blaming that I am addressing here is the unhealthy and chronic kind. It is the habitual and reactive sort that blocks your personal growth, damages your relationships, and gets in the way of your own well-being.

Try the following test:

1. Would it be normal for you to respond to someone with a problem by telling him why he is to blame for his problem?
2. In relationships with friends and family, do you often find yourself pointing the finger? Do you tell others how and why they are wrong, using phrases such as You did it, or, It’s your fault?
3. When you confront difficulties or inconveniences, is it common for you to identify and ruminate over who or what is to blame?
4. When you are upset or in a difficult situation, do you frequently blame someone for making you feel the way you do?

If you answered yes to any one of these questions, you are a blamer. If you answered yes to multiple questions, then your blaming behavior may very well be compromising your relationships, your well-being, and your personal evolution. That said, keep reading: Blaming is a habit and awareness is the first step toward breaking it.

First, I want to congratulate you on your willingness to look honestly at your behavior, and to address what may not be working in your life. It’s hard to investigate the parts of yourself that need improvement; such awareness takes courage. In addition, I congratulate you on the aspiration to grow and improve, which comes from your highest self. The intention to evolve is already evolved—just by continuing to read, you are doing something remarkable.

Your blaming, when it began, was probably an innocent defense mechanism meant to protect you from harm. If your sister was to blame for eating the cookies, then she would be punished—not you. But sometimes, blaming takes a turn toward the dysfunctional, when blaming becomes your default reaction to life, causing harm to you and others.

The post 4 Steps to Stop Blaming appeared first on Nancy Colier.

This is a meditation to help you remember where home is.  You are always here, in your heart, closer than a breath away.  Your heart is always awaiting your presence, awaiting your attention, awaiting you.  Know that your refuge is always available to and inside you.  Come home to you.

The post Meditation: Coming Home to Your Heart appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The problem is that anyone with a brain who knew anything about Manhattan would also know that the street the GPS was telling us to cross was a terrible option and the last street on earth one would want to choose in good conditions, much less the conditions on that particular day.  A human brain with intelligence and life experience, that could factor in the context of rush hour, pouring rain, construction, and a bridge set at the east end of exactly that street, would know that any other path would be a better option to get to where I was going.  But alas, technology told us to go that way—and so we did.

After sitting in entirely stopped traffic for ten minutes and then crawling bumper to bumper for another ten, just to travel half a city block, I asked the driver if he could get off this particular street and take a different route, to which he replied, “But the GPS tells me that this is my path,” “But what happens if we know better than what it tells you to do?” I asked.  While I don’t remember his exact words, the message was that regardless of what we in the car know to be true, he has to follow the directions of the computer.  If the computer chirps it, we do it.

The fact that this path might be the shortest physical distance between the two points was irrelevant at this time of day, with this particular weather, and with the reality of urban planning.  Nonetheless, we honored the computer’s determinant, geographical distance, as if it were the only important element in making this decision.

Five minutes later, still moving an inch at a time, I asked the driver if would be possible for him to text the company and tell them that unforeseen (by the computer) conditions had rendered its usual genius inaccurate, and to inquire whether we humans could override its intelligence and take another route.  He told me at this point, 25 minutes into the street crossing, that only the passenger could text the office to tell them that real life dictated a route other than what the computer indicated. But he certainly couldn’t do that.  When I then asked him why he had not suggested that I text the company earlier, when we were talking about the traffic, he looked confused and reiterated that he had to do what the computer told him to do.

I didn’t say anything after that, but I did get out of the van and walk in the pouring rain the rest of the way.  What I knew about traffic and my city didn’t matter, but what I knew about myself did matter, and that was that I needed to be out of that black Suburban as soon as possible.

Have we gone mad as a species?  Are we so anxious to surrender our authority, to not have to think, not be in charge, that we will follow any computer that tells us what to do—even when we know better?  Do we really want to be passive lab rats?  What has happened to our respect for and trust in our own intelligence, and our ability to figure things out for ourselves?

While algorithms can decide a lot of things, they cannot substitute for human intelligence, which can factor in the wisdom of experience, context, circumstance, psychology and a whole lot of other factors too, all at once.  To make wise decisions we need a lot more than just facts, and yet, we are behaving as if data is the central key to a good life.

In truth, the expression on my driver’s face when I asked him if he could take another route, was the spookiest thing I encountered, and what made me feel most hopeless.  This grown man, who I am sure has lived a life filled with experience, and who probably has a tremendous amount of wisdom, looked like someone who had been vacuumed of his own life force, his basic humanness.  He looked, dare I say it, like a robot.

How can we regain authority in our own lives?’ This is the question that is not just interesting, but existentially urgent.  How can we stop ourselves from becoming robots, handing over our intelligence and life force to the computer?  How far are we from a time when the computer chirps us a message that is not just inconvenient, but actually destructive?

The human brain has the capacity not just to gather, store, and link data, but also to bring to that data an intelligence and wisdom of experience that is not just profoundly important, but also changes that data into something else.  We need more than information to live a good life, we need the ability to process and to make meaning, which (still) only humans can provide.

In the meanwhile, use the computer to text the head office and tell them that the human on board knows better.  Grab the reins back in your own life.  And remember, we humans, at least for now, are still the ones in charge—if we decide to be.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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And then I went home.

I love my family, my work, and so much about my life.  I am so lucky and I know it.  But as re-entries go, the instant I walked in the door on Sunday afternoon, I was immediately catapulted back into the “normal” world.   Tasks, responsibilities, groceries, broken cell phones, dishes… all the usual stuff that is modern life, hit me like a major league pitch to the head.  And with that too came the always present (blessed) need for my attention, from everyone.  I needed to be caught up on what I had missed while away.  The overpowering truth that I had lived over the past three days, on the other hand, was unsharable, at least in language.  And certainly I could not expect those who had not experienced it to “get” it in any real way or, for that matter, be particularly interested in it.  Life at home, regular as it is, needed my attention—now.  In an instant, I had left the place for bathing in the ineffable profundity and meaning of existence, stoking awe for this human experience, and steeping in gratitude for getting to be alive.  Back in everyday life, it was no longer about the meaning of life, it was about the doing of that life.

It was a painful re-entry, not because I wasn’t thrilled to be with those I love, but because it felt like a loss, like in order to re-enter life, I had to give up my beautiful connection with the Divine, as if I had to come back up and swim at the surface when I had been down deep in the beauty of the timeless.

The experience got me thinking a lot about whether it’s indeed possible to feel awe and gratitude for being alive—all the time?  Can we stay connected to the profound when living the mundane?  Can we hold onto the sacred in the midst of the regular, stressful world of living—stay tethered to what really matters when doing what needs to be done?

It turns out that there’s good news and bad news.  The bad news first: it is not possible (unless perhaps you’re enlightened and I’m not so I can’t vouch for it) to feel wonder and awe all the time.  While self-help gurus tell us that we should be in a continual state of astonishment that we can walk, or bliss because we can experience the color blue, in truth, if we have always walked and always seen blue, it isn’t always possible to see these experiences as mind-blowing or particularly fabulous.  There is nothing wrong with you if the activities of normal life do not evoke a sense of great reverence.  Sometimes, after someone has died or we have lived through a trauma of some kind, we, for a time, crack through the window of the sacred.  We get what it means to be alive, and to have this gift of incarnation.  And then, usually, that sense of awe at being alive closes and we return to the everyday with perhaps just a slight scent of the sacred left behind.  The truth is, we have only ever known ourselves to be alive, and so the fact that we are alive doesn’t always feel like the incredible coup it’s supposed to feel like.  And really, how could it?

The good news: we need contrast to feel what we feel.  We need to live without a sense of the unbelievable-ness of life so that when it does appear, we can really experience it.  If it were here all the time, we wouldn’t recognize it as something remarkable.  More good news: gratitude does show up when we stop demanding that it appear; grace does present itself when we stop expecting it to be present all the time.

While our connection with the sacred is not something that must be or can be be front and center all the time, and not something that we can control, nonetheless, there are certain things that we can do to encourage it to appear—to invite awe into our everyday life.  And, since most of us want to feel a sense of wonder at being alive and gratitude for the opportunity to have experiences at all, to “get” to live, it is worth laying the internal groundwork from which awe can grow.

In order to feel gratitude, we need, first and foremost, to be in our life, that is, to be present now.  The surest way to feel gratitude is to pay attention to how we are and where we are at this moment, so that when gratitude does appear, we are here to notice and feel it.  While some experiences contain a beauty that can render irrelevant any tangle of thoughts in which we are lost, for the most part, noticing grace when it arises relies on our being awake and aware to what we are living inside and out.

As we cultivate our own presence, we can also, consciously, move our attention and point of reference from the contents of our life, the thoughts feelings and sensations that are appearing, to the presence that notices the contents.  That is, we can make it a practice to not just focus on what is happening in the relative world, the dishes we are washing, as the determinate of wonder, but rather on who or what is aware that it is all happening, who or what is inside the lens we call awareness. This slight but enormous paradigm shift, from what is perceived to what is perceiving, can instantly put us in touch with a sense of the miraculous.

It is also worth reminding ourselves that all experiences appear and disappear without exception.  While it is human nature to grasp onto those experiences we enjoy, like awe and gratitude, to try and make them stay, these too are subject to unending change.  Imagining that awe could or should be permanent is like imagining that we ourselves could be permanent.  And to remember, as a final paradox, that it is precisely in its impermanence that its grace exists.  One without the other could not be.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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These people are not isolated examples or peculiar in any way. Many people hold grudges, deep ones, that can last a lifetime. Many are unable to let go of the anger they feel towards those who “wronged” them in the past, even though they may have a strong desire and put in a concerted effort to do so.

Often we hold onto our grudges unwillingly, while wishing we could drop them and live freshly in the present, without the injustices of the past occupying so much psychic space.

Why do we hold grudges when they are in fact quite painful to maintain, and often seem to work against what we really want? Why do we keep wounds open and active, living in past experiences of pain which prevent new experiences from being able to happen? What keeps us stuck when we want to move on and let go? Most important, how can we let go?

To begin with, grudges come with an identity. With our grudge intact, we know who we are—a person who was “wronged.”  As much as we don’t like it, there also exists a kind of rightness and strength in this identity. We have something that defines us—our anger and victimhood—which gives us a sense of solidness and purpose. We have definition and a grievance that carries weight. To let go of our grudge, we have to be willing to let go of our identity as the “wronged” one, and whatever strength, solidity, or possible sympathy and understanding we receive through that “wronged” identity. We have to be willing to drop the “I” who was mistreated and step into a new version of ourselves, one we don’t know yet, that allows the present moment to determine who we are, not past injustice.

But what are we really trying to get at, get to, or just get by holding onto a grudge and strengthening our identity as the one who was “wronged”? In truth, our grudge, and the identity that accompanies it, is an attempt to get the comfort and compassion we didn’t get in the past, the empathy for what happened to us at the hands of this “other,” the experience that our suffering matters  As a somebody who was victimized, we are announcing that we are deserving of extra kindness and special treatment. Our indignation and anger is a cry to be cared about and treated differently—because of what we have endured.

The problem with grudges, besides the fact that they are a drag to carry around (like a bag of sedimentized toxic waste that keeps us stuck in anger) is that they don’t serve the purpose that they are there to serve. They don’t make us feel better or heal our hurt. At the end of the day, we end up as proud owners of our grudges but still without the experience of comfort that we ultimately crave, that we have craved since the original wounding. We turn our grudge into an object and hold it out at arm’s length—proof of what we have suffered, a badge of honor, a way to remind others and ourselves of our pain and deserving-ness. But in fact our grudge is disconnected from our own heart; while born out of our pain, it becomes a construction of the mind, a story of what happened to us. Our grudge morphs into a boulder that blocks the light of kindness from reaching our heart, and thus is an obstacle to true healing. Sadly, in its effort to garner us empathy, our grudge ends up depriving us of the very empathy that we need to release it.

The path to freedom from a grudge is not so much through forgiveness of the “other” (although this can be helpful), but rather through loving our own self. To bring our own loving presence to the suffering that crystallized into the grudge, the pain that was caused by this “other,” is what ultimately heals the suffering and allows the grudge to melt. If it feels like too much to go directly into the pain of a grudge, we can move toward it with the help of someone we trust, or bring a loving presence to our wound, but from a safe place inside. The idea is not to re-traumatize ourselves by diving into the original pain but rather to attend to it with the compassion that we didn’t receive, that our grudge is screaming for, and bring it directly into the center of the storm. Our heart contains both our pain and the elixir for our pain.

To let go of a grudge we need to move the focus off of the one who “wronged” us, off of the story of our suffering, and into the felt experience of what we actually lived. When we move our attention inside, into our heart, our pain shifts from being a “something” that happened to us, another part of our narrative, to a sensation that we know intimately, a felt sense that we are one with from the inside.

In re-focusing our attention, we find the soothing kindness and compassion that the grudge itself desires. In addition, we take responsibility for caring about our own suffering, and for knowing that our suffering matters, which can never be achieved through our grudge, no matter how fiercely we believe in it. We can then let go of the identity of the one who was “wronged,” because it no longer serves us and because our own presence is now righting that wrong. Without the need for our grudge, it often simply drops away without our knowing how. What becomes clear is that we are where we need to be, in our own heart’s company.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

The post Why We Hold Grudges and How to Let Them Go: It’s Not About the Person Who Wronged You, It’s About Who You Want to Be appeared first on Nancy Colier.