Using self-focus to reduce our resentment of others June 3, 2014
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.Tags: Confucius, ego management, personal growth, philosophy, resentment, self-focus, self-improvement
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In working our personal growth programs, one of our goals might be to minimize the negativity produced by the component of resentment in our emotional makeup.
Disapproval, envy, jealousy, and irritation with the actions, achievements and/or general behaviour of other people are all subsets of the general emotion of resentment.
Because we are doing a lot of tough internal work with trying to improve our own lives, lifestyle, and overall behaviour, it can be easy to fall into the trap of resenting others who are not following a path similar to ours.
This tendency can be the result of transferring the expectations we have for ourselves onto our expectations about other people.
To avoid this, the ancient Chinese sage Confucius suggests we focus primarily on managing our own individual personal actions and emotions:
“If you expect great things from yourself and demand little of others, you’ll keep resentment far away.” (1)
(1) Confucius, The Analects, as translated by David Hinton in his book The Four Chinese Classics
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