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Gemma Spaeg (3:47)

Okay, let's get right into it. It is time to explore this week's mantra. I Release Grudges this mantra feels very, I would say, delicate to me. It feels quite sensitive. I'm very aware of the fact that people will have different views on grudges, especially because of how they relate to forgiveness, accountability, revenge, even boundaries, self protection, and all very important things to talk about. It feels like grudges are part of a much bigger conversation that we still haven't gotten to the bottom of as a society. Is it better to forgive and forget? Is better to forgive and remember or to not forgive at all and just let yourself feel whatever emotion you want towards someone who has wronged you or hurt you or crossed you? I have one opinion which will become very clear. I'm sure people have many others, but for me, when we're talking about grudges, I personally see them as being smaller offenses rather than large wrongs that require deep forgiveness. Grudges to me, sit a little bit lower on the ladder of things that have hurt us. And they typically cover things like disagreements, poor choices by someone else, poor words. Moments. They were unfair, inattentive, dismissive, rude. Not necessarily moments where someone set out to fully harm you. And when we categorize them this way, I think we can more clearly see why it is perhaps in our best interest to release them. Grudges are like tiny little rocks compared to like the big, heavy, weighty stones that are major hurts. Thing is though, if your pockets are full of a lot of little rocks, they can still really weigh you down. And choosing to empty our pockets leads to such a profound lightness and it just makes our lives easier. Once you start experiencing that, you'll think, how did I ever live before with the heaviness of everyone else's mistakes? So before we get too ahead of ourselves, let's ask a crucial question, which is why do we hold Grudges in the first place. And why do we continue to hold them even when we know that it is hurting us? Because surely our minds don't want to cause us more pain and suffering, right? Surely. The thing is, they don't always have a direct choice in the matter. We hold grudges because on a psychological level, they somewhat serve as an emotional defense mechanism, a way to protect ourselves from further harm. When someone wrongs us and there's no resolution, our sense of safety is really naturally disrupted. The brain responds to this threat by going into kind of like a protective overdrive, rehearsing what happened over and over again in order to avoid similar future pain. This process, it's called rumination, and it keeps the emotional wound attached to this moment very much active. In some ways, it's also this sense of hypervigilance. If I stay angry, if I stay guarded, I stay protected. From a cognitive perspective, grudges are also tied to a very innate desire that we each have in us for fairness and justice. Psychologists refer to this as the just world hypothesis. Basically, the belief that people should get what. What they deserve, that the world is, at the end of the day, a just and fair place. We want to believe that when that belief is violated. So when someone hurts us and seems to get away with it, seems to not face any consequences for their actions, we really struggle to reconcile that injustice. And it makes us see the world as perhaps a much more unfair and dark place. When we hold onto a grudge, though, that becomes a way of asserting kind of moral order or of saying, you know, this was wrong by me not forgetting, that's your punishment. The world is just. The world is fair. Even if there's no external consequences. Maintaining the grudge kind of gives us an internal sense of control that maybe we lost when that person initially did that thing. It can feel like a substitute for justice, even though it rarely brings about real closure. This hurt that we've experienced can also become woven into how we see ourselves as betrayed, as someone who was mistreated, as someone who was misunderstood. And the more we revisit that narrative, the more emotionally charged and justified the grudge feels, because we feel like it's just another in a long line of offenses like this. Over time, this can distort our perception, not just of the person who hurt us, but of ourselves and of the world around us. We may become more mistrustful, more cynical, much less open to connection, resentment. Therefore, to conclude this kind of feels like emotional armor. It becomes a shield. It also, if we're not careful can really harden our natural softness and our kindness and convince us that everyone is like this. Everyone will hurt us at some point. From that can also stem our own cruel desire to get back at someone, to kind of right the wrongs yourself, find some closure to the situation by making them feel your pain. I get that a lot of us don't always want to acknowledge this part of us because it feels very ugly and it feels very sour and it feels just like nasty. And we don't want to feel that way about ourselves. So we push it down and we pretend that it isn't there. But this is your safe space. We can say it out loud There are times when you think you want to hurt someone and when you think you want them to know how you feel and you think you want to get back at them. Thinking that and doing something about it are very, very different things. And the very fact that you are catching yourself in that moment and kind of recoiling or pulling back shows that you know it is either not the right thing to do or it's not going to make it better. I read this quote the other day on Reddit of all places, actually, that said revenge is always twice as hard and only half as sweet compared to letting something go. And it's true. Because you know what's worse than being hurt by someone? I think what's worse is being pulled down to their level and having to live their reality, the reality that made them careless enough to hurt you. You don't want to go about doing that to other people. And I think when we seek revenge, that's a step in that direction also. And this might be hard to kind of swallow, are we just not giving someone the grace they deserve? This question might sting a little bit, but in our desire to hold onto a grudge, do you think that sometimes maybe we've forgotten that we're not perfect either? There are probably things that you have done that people have had to let go of. How much of holding your grudge is also just ego? Kind of thinking, I could never do anything like that, or I'm perfect and I'm faultless? They are not. And so they deserve this? I don't think that's always the case, but just something to consider in this discussion. Something I always ask myself as well when I'm struggling to release resentment, is would I want someone to forgive me if I did this? Would I want someone to understand why I did this and what led me to this moment? Would I want grace? And if my answer is yes, it's kind of annoying, but now I kind of have to find a way to move forward. I have to act upon that and give to them what I would like to receive. I think when you hold tight to things that don't serve serve you, especially events and situations that are highly emotional, you're the one who pays the price. It's been written about over and over again. I'm sure it's not surprising you that I'm gonna say this, but in psychological and medical journals, books, publications, resentment has been proven to sit in your body and cause harm. It affects not just our mental health, but also our physical wellbeing. It creates things like chronic pain, like immune responses, like issues with blood pressure, sleep, digestion. The other person isn't experiencing that you are. And yet we think that they are somehow hurting just as much as us, that it's some kind of like weird emotional voodoo. That's why we continue to hold onto the grudge. And that's why forgiveness and letting go of grudges and moving on in silence sometimes and with your own peace in mind is to me, kind of like an underrated form of self care. An important thing to remember before we get too ahead of ourselves is that releasing a grudge doesn't mean erasing what happened to you or pretending that it didn't hurt. You can still hold onto the memory of someone's behavior and learn from it and use it to set boundaries and protect yourself in the future without carrying the emotional weight of resentment all on your own. Releasing the grudge, it's not about forgetting the facts. It's about letting go of the bitterness, the anger, the desire for revenge that often keeps us very much emotionally stuck. And it's the difference between remembering with clarity versus just simply reliving the pain. In fact, this kind of release, I think, really allows you to be more grounded. I think it actually lets you be more discerning in the long run. When you are not overwhelmed by the emotional charge and the pain of a grudge, you can actually assess people more clearly. Who they've been, whether they've changed, what they're capable of. You're not acting from a place of hurt, which kind of blinds you to their true character, but from a place of wisdom. And so, yes, holding onto a grudge might feel safest, but it often really distorts your judgment. It keeps you locked in this loop of past pain that's not doing you any favors. Letting it go allows you to see things more clearly. It also allows you to fully honour the lesson that you've learned. So yes, you can remember what someone did and still choose to release the grip that it has on your mind and your body. You can forgive without having to re enter the same dynamic. You can protect yourself whilst not being consumed by the past. And this emotional maturity, this nuanced form of forgiveness, I think is one that we really need to include in this narrative around whether to keep a grudge or whether to let it go. Okay, now that we have talked about this mantra quite extensively and what it means, I'm going to share how this has shown up in my own life and also some strategies for really moving through the pain right after this short break.

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Gemma Spaeg (16:09)

Welcome back. Now that we've looked at the meaning behind this week's mantra, it's time to get personal with you guys and just share share some of my own insights and reflections about this phrase. I release grudges. I think I always obviously have known that grudges were somewhat Bad. But I don't think I realized how easily they could spoil a perfectly good day and in fact a perfectly good life until I recently moved house. I'm going to explain why that is. Bear with me for a second. I promise it will make sense. So I moved house maybe six months ago. And where I live is on like a very tricky and busy road. It has a lot of traffic. It has one lane of traffic going one way, two lanes going the other. Now to get into my driveway, like to get into my house, I have to stop in that one lane of traffic and I have to hold up that lane. And it's right after a traffic light. So people are really prepared to like whiz through. But this is the only way I can really get into my house. Like there's no other possible way. I didn't build the house like it just is the way it's designed. Every single day, the amount of people who will beat me, who will honk me, who will yell at me, who will like get so annoyed, is honestly ridiculous. And when I first moved here, I would get so stressed and so angry, and for the rest of the day I would be thinking about that driver and I would hold such a grudge against this person. And I would think about it all day, like, what would I say if I could just explain it to them? If I could just go up to them, what would I say about how aggressive they were being and how I wasn't doing anything and how this is just how it is and I'm whatever. You can see where my mind was going. You know, I obviously have to park my car at my house, I have to go home. And every time it would happen, I would just have this sour taste in my mouth and it would put me in such a bad mood. The anger, the grudge between me and the stranger, like it was only hurting me. I'm never going to see this person again. But I couldn't let it go. Obviously this is a very minute and micro example, but it has made me see so many other grudges in my past differently. It's made me see them as two people without the full information, encountering each other on like the road of life. One person speeds away and never thinks about it again. The other is left furious and bitter and suffering. And that was me. I think about a grudge I held for years against one of my, like, childhood bullies. It sat with me like a poison. But, you know, we were nine years old, kids do stupid things, you know, more pain was being caused by me holding onto it than was ever done by this person who was a child. And, you know, I saw her once in the street, and I had this immediate reaction of, like, being angry and being like, should I say something? And I was like, wait, why? This is like, 16 years ago. Like, she has changed so much in those years. She has lived almost two other lives. She's probably a very lovely adult who probably wouldn't even remember this small moment. I'm the one who's letting it hurt me. Or the grudge, you know, I once held against an ex boyfriend that was getting in the way of me meeting someone better. He'd moved on. My grudge against him was keeping me away from healthy love patterns. I think in a lot of these moments, I confused resentment with perhaps a sense of moral power. And I did some research into this, and I discovered that resentment is actually what we would call a moral emotion. It's similar to outrage, to indignation, to contempt. They're meant to help us kind of navigate and respond to perceived social violations. And these emotions aren't inherently bad. They're meant to help us uphold fairness and protect our boundaries and do all these important things. But when we cling to them for too long, especially without resolution, they can morph into a chronic grudge, into chronic resentment, into a chronic emotional weight that we are carrying on our backs that we could very easily just put down. We begin to mistake anger for power, when in reality, it's just keeping us emotionally entangled with someone we'd rather move on from. True power, paradoxically, often comes not from holding the grudge, but choosing to let it go. Because that means that this person no longer controls how you feel. So let's talk about how to truly do this. Even when it's hard, even when you don't feel like it's time or that you're ready yet, that's okay. Just save this information for a rainy day. Come back to it when you feel like you really do need it and you want to put it kind of into action. The first thing you want to do when you want to let go of a grudge is just be completely upfront and acknowledge it honestly. Start by admitting to yourself, like, oh, I'm resenting this person for this thing. I haven't been able to move on. I am actively holding a grudge against this individual, Whether it's someone from 15 years ago or five days ago or five minutes ago, bringing it into conscious awareness and not being afraid to say, I'm angry and I'm Upset, that doesn't mean anything about who I am. It's just a natural human response. It's definitely the first thing you need to do. You cannot address anything without firstly acknowledging that it exists and secondly, acknowledge that your emotions exist. And not just that they exist, but they are really valid. Allow yourself to feel everything. Anger, betrayal, sadness, disappointment, maybe even the desire to hurt this person. These feelings are valid responses to hurt, as we've discussed. They are rooted in your psychology, in your neurobiology, in your DNA. Suppressing them will just cause it to sit and linger longer. It will not help you move on. Acknowledging I am angry and I am mad and I want to hurt you and I am frustrated and I am disappointed in you. That's important. Then we want to identify the need beneath the grudge. Ask yourself, what do I feel like I didn't get from this person? What do I feel like really injured me and hurt me in this interaction that links to a previous hurt or a previous insecurity or a previous situation. Often grudges are prolonged because we are also still waiting for someone to say something or offer something, or do something that's never going to come. Whether it's accountability, an apology, recognition, closure. Recognizing that there is something here that you have not received and that that is really hurting you can help you meet that need yourself next. And this one might not be for everyone. Shift from blame to understanding. Again, it's optional. But this isn't about excusing the behavior, it's about releasing yourself from the emotional loop. Try and see the situation from a zoomed out lens. What patterns or pain may have led them to act this way? What misunderstanding, miscommunication, lack of information you don't have to reconcile. It might just be able to offer you peace and see this individual not as purely evil and awful, but as a human who would make mistakes the same way that you would. The next step is to choose a boundary. You know, we have acknowledged that they have hurt us. Doesn't mean we can't do anything about it. Is there something that you need to put in place to feel safe? Do you find that you actually need to limit contact with this person? Do you need to completely remove them from your life? Do you only need to see them every three months? Do you need to move to a different team rather than working with them? What do you need to do? What change is going to be necessary so that you are not continuously hurt? At this stage is when we are really going to start pursuing peace for ourselves. We've dealt with the offense we've dealt with, the other person and the issue of their psyche and the issue of their actions and the issue of their access to us. Now, I need you to let go of your pain, and it needs to be symbolic. It needs to have some kind of visual, tactile, tangible relationship to you and what you're going through. So writing down all your pain, writing down all your hurt, and then burning the letter, getting rid of things that represent the chapter of you who was really hurt by that person, getting rid of those things, removing them from your life, something to really tell your brain, we're releasing this. The repetition is done. The loop is going to be closed. I also think you need to focus on now what you're gaining, not what you're losing. Grudges feel like control, but they cost you peace, they cost you presence, they cost you joy, and they cost you future relationships because you continue to see people through a lens that is perhaps not accurate. So focus on what you could gain by letting go of this grudge rather than what you could lose. What would you have space for in your life if you let this go? What do you think your brain would feel like if you let this go? There'd be a lot more energy, there'd be a lot more softness, right? A lot more love. I think it's also important to say, what's the narrative that I have around this grudge? Is it that this thing happened and it ruined me and now I can never get back to where I was? Is it that this thing happened and I can never forgive this person, and so I have to live with this forever? Is it that it changed me, or is it just that this was part of life and I'm going to grow through this? And I understand humanity better and I understand my emotions better and my needs better. And that is not necessarily a positive, but something that is a plus in the learning department. So when you've done all these steps, just revisit the grudge and recommit to how you actually want to see this thing. Change the narrative, change the rhetoric around what you think about this person, what you think about their actions, what you think the consequence has to be for you. Okay, let's take all of this reflection. Let's talk about how to apply it to your real everyday life. When we come back, I'm going to share some journal prompts and, of course, our weekly challenge. So stick around. We will be returning shortly after this little break.

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Gemma Spaeg (27:44)

Welcome back. Whilst I love talking about our mantras in like, a general sense and what they mean to me, I do really love this part of the episode where I can just slow down with you guys and show us where we get to explore this further and how we can bring this into our daily life. So let's take a few minutes to really ground this week's mantra. I release grudges. We're going to start off, of course, with our deep thought of the day this quote is attributed to Buddha. I think the exact origin of it is actually unknown. It's one that is very, very common. And when I say this quote, you're probably going to be like, oh, I've heard that a million times. Just sit with it a little bit longer. Today, holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. The poison I think we're talking about here obviously isn't literal. I actually think it's anger, the poison of anger in our bodies. When we hold onto anger for too long, our nervous system stays in this heightened state on Alert, tense, defensive longer than it needs to. We replay the hurt. We relive the offense. And in doing so again, we reinforce the emotional pain in our body and in our mind. And it becomes a form of sometimes self punishment. The person we resent isn't feeling any of our tension. They're not having sleepless nights. They're not having that tight chest of anger. We're having that consuming something toxic and hoping it's going to harm someone else. It never will. The damage stays within us. But there's something deeper here. Holding onto anger. It often does feel productive. And maybe that's why you convinced yourself it's a good thing to do. You think it's going to hold someone accountable. But what this quote is really challenging you to see is that, yeah, maybe it is gonna hold them accountable. Maybe they will one day understand what they've done, but you're gonna pay a very much more heavier price for that than they are if you hold onto it. Okay, let's shift into our journal practice. I know that the act of journaling isn't for everyone, but really, these prompts are just an invitation just to pause and think about something else and listen inwardly to what your body and your mind is saying. See what this is bringing up for you? So if you don't actually journal or you don't have your journal on you, that's okay. Just take a moment to think about what these might mean to you and your answers to these questions. Maybe even hit pause on this episode between the questions just so that you can explore them further. First, is there someone from your past you haven't fully forgiven? And what is keeping you tethered to that story? Secondly, what unspoken resentment are you carrying right now that's taking up space in your thoughts or relationships? What would it take for you to start really letting that go? And finally, if you released a lingering grudge, how might your future relationships and your future decisions look different or even look better? Now that you've made the space to reflect, let's give your mind a moment to rest. In just a moment, you're going to hear a music track. I encourage you just to take this opportunity to process this week's reflections, maybe even think further about those journal prompts. With no pressure, no expectations on yourself, nothing distracting, you just listen to the music. And if it isn't something you connect with, of course you can always Skip ahead about 30 seconds. But as you settle in for this practice, keep our mantra in mind. I release grudges. As the music plays. Just let this mantra shape your thoughts. Let it take its time to connect you with whatever it is that it's bringing up for you. Beautiful. Before we go, it's time for our weekly challenge. I'd love to hear how this challenge works for you. You can reach out to me at my Mantra Open Mind. Like I mentioned, at the top of the episode each month, I also get the opportunity to respond to your questions and comments in a special bonus episode. So if you have questions for me dilemmas relating to this mantra or any others, DM me at Mantra openmind. And remember that those episodes are available exclusively on Open Mind. Plus, let me know your thoughts. All right, this week, your challenge is to notice and name your your triggers each time you feel bitterness, resentment or tension. This week, pause and ask, what story am I telling myself right now? Keep a running note in your phone or in your journal to track recurring emotional patterns. And at the end of the week, revisit what you've written and just look for patterns. Get really curious about what this means for you, like what keeps showing up, what emotions are driving these tense reactions, and most importantly, are these stories helping you heal or are they keeping you stuck? This practice is about becoming more aware of what you're carrying so that you actually get to decide what you're going to hold on to and what you're going to release. You know, releasing your grudge doesn't have to be one massive moment. Often it's just a quiet decision that you want better for yourself. It's just the pause before you react and the active choice you make to engage with this differently, to not replay the story in your mind for the millionth time, to not necessarily forget, but start to forgive and write a different story around what this means for your life. It's really about, I think, reclaiming your energy. And over time, these small choices really add up to something that is liberating. Energizing, brings you a whole lot of peace.

Gemma Spaeg (Closing) (33:54)

Thank you for joining Mantra, an exclusive Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios at OpenMind. We value your support, so share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show for ad free listening and early access to Mantra with me, Jemma Speg. We invite you to subscribe to Open Mind plus on Apple Podcasts. I'll share another insightful and introspective Mantra with you next Monday. Until then, keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Gemma Spaeg.

Gemma Spaeg (34:29)

See you next week. Mantra is hosted by me, Gemma Spegg. It is an open mind original. Powered by Pai Studios, this episode was.

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