As Featured on News Cult: How to Not Hold a Grudge

I mean, there’s nothing more tempting than holding a grudge. Why? Because people are the worst, and when they display that with their idiotic, insensitive, narcissistic behavior, they should be cut out of your life like Jim Bob Duggar’s vas deferens needs clipping, and forever haunted by your vengeance. But—holding a grudge takes a lot of time and energy and we don’t have either of those (well, we have time, but we need to spend it on exerting no energy whatsoever). So we’re just gonna let it go like it’s our baby and we’re Michael Jackson on a balcony. Or Eric Clapton.

Here’s how to not hold a grudge.

Remember that people are their own undoing

People will get what’s coming to them—you don’t have to be the one to give it to them. That is the job of a little something we call karma. (Actually I think we totally co-opted that term and have misused it since, but whatever (as white Westerners do)). In the words of Justin Timberlake, “What goes around, goes around, goes around, comes all the way back around.” Pure poetry.

Breathe a sigh of relief

If you don’t hold a grudge, you get to let go of so much anger. And I know anger is, like, our favorite hobby, but its negative impact mainly manifests in you, not the other person. If it were the other way around, I’d totally say go for it, but unfortunately, it really only eats away at your own well being. Unless you channel it. Which brings me to…

Get revenge

Ok I know I’m touting this whole zen take the high road crap, but if there’s a way of exacting swift revenge, just do it, as Nike would say. Get it over with so you’ll be able to rid yourself of the burden of whoever or whatever was grudge-worthy, and move on with your life like you’re Tonya Harding (because she just glides gracefully. On the ice. Or at least up until 1994. Ok bad example but in my defense I don’t know the names of any other professional ice skaters. So what if she wore a diaper on her cross-country kill trip? Or wait that was Lisa Nowak—who, interestingly enough, also bounced around weightlessly—one might even say without any burden—in space. But seriously don’t follow either of their examples when it comes to revenge).

Take pity

On the person you want to hold a grudge against. Clearly, as their actions have already proven, they’re a pitiful person. They’re just pathetic—you actually feel a little sorry for them. As Gandhi would probably say, “Don’t swallow that haterade, yo.”

Vent

Make sure to just bitch a lot about the person who done you wrong to your friends and family. Just get it out of your system. If this means having them on rotating shifts 24/7, then so be it. Hey, you didn’t choose to be born—consequently, your parents always have to be there for you 100% even if it’s in the middle of the night or during one of the two times a year they have sex, or, as they called it when you walked in on them at 16, “hugging.”

Featured on News Cult: http://newscult.com/fuggedaboutit-not-hold-grudge/