Five stages
(1) Get to the truth
Explain why you're so resentful to someone with considerable
sobriety, a sense of humour, and their feet on the ground. Ask them to help you
get to the truth of the situation in question. In particular follow two of the
'four agreements': take nothing personally and make no assumptions.
To what extent are you making assumptions, by speculating
about what might have happened or be happening? For instance: do you know for sure 'they' are talking about
you behind your back?
To what extent are you taking things personally that are
nothing to do with you? For instance: how do you know the angry person is angry
at you? Is it possible they're just angry generally, and it's not about you at
all?
Consider generalisation, also:
Let's say you're angry because someone is selfish. What's
the truth? Are they selfish 100% of the time, or are they selfish 3% of the
time, but you're only looking at that 3%?
(2) Adjust your reality
Don't like the Wednesday meeting? Go to one on Thursday.
Don't like Jennifer, because she's rude and gossipy? Hang
out with Susan.
Don't like the noisy neighbours? Buy earplugs.
Don't like being poor? Get a job.
Don't like your job? Get a new one.
Don't like being bored? Get a hobby.
Don't like yourself? Go and find someone else to help.
Don't like being single? Join a dating website.
Etc.
A lot of resentments are invited by the decisions we make
about how we spend our time and who we hang out with.
(3) Let go of egoic demands
If you're resentful because your image, reputation, and
prestige are tarnished, because you're not getting enough respect, attention,
validation, and approval, because you don't get enough sex, because you're short
on money or power, you are on a hiding to
nothing.
None of these things will make you consistently happy, and the
price of such demands (fear, frustration, disappointment, and despair) is never
worth paying, in the long run.
Trusting God and getting on with being useful, cheerful, and
kind, whatever your circumstances, will make you far happier than filling your
head with tinsel dreams and bauble ambitions and scowling grumpily at a world
that never got the memo.
Don't believe it? Try it for a year, then decide.
(4) Forget comfort and thrills
Overrated. See above, re egoic demands.
(5) With the rest …
This is where you put on your big girl's panties: s**t ain't
gonna stop happening just because you're in recovery and nominated for God's Little
Ray of Sunshine 2014. Take your lumps as they come, and forgive everyone for
everything (cf. page 67 of the Big Book), unless you particularly want to spend
the rest of your life feeling guilty for everything you have done. Might as well forgive them—it's not as though their
defects are going to go away any more briskly than yours.
Finally: ask God for courage; be grateful for what is good; stop
fighting reality—it really is the easier, softer way.