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How?
Be Aware of the Priming
Be mindful of factors that stimulate your sympathetic nervous systems – such as stress, pain, worry, or hunger – and thus prime you for ill will. Try to defuse this priming early on: eat dinner before talking, take a shower, read something inspiring, or talk with a friend.
Regard Ill Will as an Affliction
Approach your own ill will as an affliction upon yourself so that you’ll be motivated to drop it. Ill will feels bad and has negative health consequences; for example, regular hostility increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Your ill will always harm you, but often it has no effect on the other person; as they say in twelve-step programs: Resentment is when I take poison and wait for you to die.
Investigate the Triggers
Inspect the underlying trigger of your ill will, such as a sense of threat or alarm. Look at it realistically. Are you exaggerating what happened in any way? Are you focusing on a single negative thing amidst a dozen good ones?
Study Ill Will
Take a day and really examine even the least bit of ill will you experience. See what causes it and what its effects are.
Settle Into Awareness
Settle into awareness, observing ill will but not identifying with it, watching it arise and disappear like any other experience.
Accept the Wound
Life includes getting wounded. Accept as a fact that people will sometimes mistreat you, whether accidentally or deliberately. Of course, this doesn’t mean enabling others to harm you or failing to assert yourself. You’re just accepting the facts on the ground. Feel the hurt, the anger, the fear, but let them flow through you. Ill will can become a way to avoid facing your deep feelings and pain.
Relax the Sense of Self
Relax the sense of self. Experiment with letting go of the idea that there was actually an “I” or “me” who was affronted or wounded.
Have Faith in Justice
Have faith that others will pay their own price one day for what they’ve done. You don’t have to be the justice system.
Don’t Teach Lessons in Anger
Realize that some people won’t get the lesson no matter how much you try. So why create problems for yourself in a pointless effort to teach them?
Forgive
Forgiveness doesn’t mean changing your view that wrongs have been done. But it does mean letting go of the emotional charge around feeling wronged. The greatest beneficiary of your forgiveness is usually you.
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