You tell yourself it doesn’t affect you. That you’ve moved on. That you don’t care.
But if just hearing their name stirs something in you—if the past still dictates how you show up—you haven’t let go.
You’ve just gotten used to carrying it.
I was having tacos with a buddy, and we started talking about resentment—how it shapes us, fuels us, and whether it actually serves us.
For him, it was his father. Years of anger→resentment. The feeling of being let down. And every time that pain came up, he had ways of getting it out—punching bags, chopping wood, venting.
And yeah, it helped.
But I asked him: If you always need an outlet to “feel better”, isn’t that exhausting and make you worry you’re always going to have to wrestle with it?
Are you really letting it go? Or are you just managing—keeping it alive because it’s the only fuel you’ve known?
Your resentment isn’t protecting you. It’s controlling you.
And it will continue to control you until you decide to stop feeding it.
A lot of people resist forgiveness because they think it means letting someone off the hook. That it excuses what happened.
But forgiveness isn’t about them—it’s about you. It’s about accepting what happened so it no longer has power over you.
If you don’t, it will shape your choices, your habits, and points of view. It dictates your relationships. It builds a version of you that exists in reaction to the past, instead of being fully present in who you actually are (now).
Maybe your anger has driven you. Maybe it made you independent, successful, and stronger than you might have been without it.
But here’s what I want you to consider:
What (could) happen when you don’t need it anymore?
If resentment has been your only fuel source, you’re going to have to find a different. And that’s terrifying (I feel you), because for a long time, it’s probably felt like the only thing keeping you going.
But I promise you—when you finally stop carrying it, when you stop feeding it, you’ll realize something:
You never actually needed it.
I break this all down in the video. Watch it, and tell me—what would happen if you let go of the thing that’s been controlling you?
Mentioned in this Video
Laying on your sword…
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