Why You Should Never Hold a Grudge

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast. This is Chris Albert. Today, I want to talk to you about something that I think is extremely important to living a happy life. That is getting hate out of your heart.

And the reason why I think it's so important is because when you can when you have hate in your heart, when you are putting energy into just detesting somebody else, right, hating somebody else, wishing that that bad things happen to somebody else. It is not something that's likely affecting that person. Right? When you hate somebody, you're actively thinking about that person a lot. In fact, you're probably thinking about that person a lot more than that person's thinking about you.

This is something I discovered a while ago when I was going through a divorce Because I realized part of the way through that I was getting dragged into this kind of never ending cycle of, okay, I'm gonna hurt you and okay, I'm gonna hurt you worse. And it really didn't do anything. It didn't solve anything. It didn't make me feel better. I know it didn't make her feel better.

And at the end of the day, all it did was really just destroy a bunch of financial assets that we'd worked hard to build up. Right? And all we were doing was putting energy into ripping each other down. But I also had a bit of lifelong hate in my heart that I carried around for a long time too. And that's because I never knew my father.

Never knew the man. Never saw a picture of him. My mom refused to talk about him. And it was a, an interesting situation growing up. And because I never knew this person, I developed this story in my mind, and I still don't know who he is.

I still don't. But I just developed this story in my mind of a man who walked out on his family, who never got to know his son, never got to know his daughter, and who just gave up on everything. And I consider that weakness. I considered that the worst thing a person could do, and I hated that person for a long, long time. And I would constantly think about it.

I'd lie awake at night, hoping, wishing my father could see me where I was. When I graduated from boot camp in the Marine Corps, remember my first thing in my mind was saying, you know what? I wish that my father could see me right now because he'd see what a real man looks like. Right? And those those are my thoughts.

And yeah, you know, it pushed me to try hard. It pushed me to to do a lot of different things. But at the same time, I was wasting a lot of energy on it. And it really wasn't until I hit my thirties when I took a good look at my life. And I realized that a lot of the things I was doing with my life were just to try to prove something to a father that had never existed.

You know, I I I got myself into a PhD program, and I was working hard at that PhD program, and I had to be the best graduate student. I had to be all these things. And I woke up one day and I said, you know, I really don't like doing anything that I'm doing right now. You know, I was lonely. I was, you know, doing work that was pretty boring.

And I was basically patterning my life along this kind of false degree of achievement, simply to try to get back at my father. And at that point, I had to tell myself, you know what? I got to forgive this man. I gotta forgive this person who I never knew. Why?

Because I didn't know what was going on with him. I don't know him. I don't know what his life was like. My mom's never told me anything about it. So I pushed myself to forgive him.

And it was at that point where I started to realize things. I started to realize what I actually wanted to do. I started to realize that, you know what? I have other things that I could do with my life that are gonna make me happy, and I deserve to be happy. I don't have to constantly fight this ghost.

I don't have to constantly, you know, chase this false image of revenge because it's not really revenge because guess what? My father's never gonna know about it. And at that point, that's when I made the decision to live my life the way I wanted to live it. That's what pushed me into business. That's what pushed me into doing what I'm doing now.

And that's when my life was able to really take a turn. And so what I would say to all of you is this. If you're carrying around some notion that you're going to get back at somebody, that you're gonna get revenge upon somebody, and you're spending most of your time thinking about that, and your choices in life are centered around that. Well, guess what? You're playing a trick on yourself.

Because no matter what you're doing, you're not living for yourself. You're not living for your own dreams. You're not trying to fulfill your purpose here on this earth. So you gotta get rid of that. Grudges, no matter how big or small, are not productive.

And I'm not telling you to let anybody walk all over you. I'm not telling you to to lie down on the ground. What I'm telling you to do is to let it go so that you could be the person you're supposed to be, so that you can make your dreams come true, so that you can go after what you want. Because otherwise, and that's the great irony in this, that person who you are carrying hate for will have eternal power over you. They'll be able to help, you know, influence you and your choices.

They'll be able to push you toward things that that you probably wouldn't have wanted to do otherwise. And it's really important that you get that out of yourself, and you allow yourself to forgive. And I hope that makes sense. Because I know that when you do feel like that, it's one of the hardest things to get over. It's one of the hardest, most difficult things to push out of yourself.

But you need to. You need to for yourself. If you've got children, you can hate to do it for them. And you need to do it because your time here on this earth is not forever. And you got to figure it out before the end.

Because otherwise, the course of your life is going to be determined by a bunch of BS. That's all I got for this week, guys. I hope that this makes sense. I'm always here and available to talk. If you guys have issues, just head over to the Warrior Soul Agoge Fitness and Apparel page and put your comments up.

And, you know, let me know what you think. Are you having hate in your heart that that you just can't get out? Are you have you forgiven somebody? How does that feel? You know, let us know.

I want to say thank you for listening to the Warrior Soul podcast. The reason why we do this podcast is for US military veterans. I served in the Marine Corps. I had an easy time in the Marine Corps. I'm not gonna never gonna pose myself as some hero or anything like that.

You guys are the heroes. And this is my service to you. This is my service to help my brothers and sisters in arms to achieve everything that they can in this life. And if you're not a veteran, stick around, because obviously, everything we talk about here can can apply to you as well. But all we ask in return is that you spread word about the show, that you let others know about what we're doing here, and that you share an episode out with with somebody who can use this advice, or you write us a review up on iTunes.

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So I want to thank you guys. With that, we will back be back at you next week with another edition of the Warrior Soul podcast. And this is Chris Albert out.