Resistance, Resentment, & Regret
As hard as it can be to let go, we must, in order to open ourselves to marvellous experiences.
Sometimes the ‘law of assumption’, ‘law of attraction’, or ‘manifestation’ space can get a bad reputation for overpromoting the notion of positivity as the key to manifestation. It is made out to be so easy and that everyone would be able to manifest whatever they want whenever they want simply by just ‘being happy’. But let’s think about this a little more deeply for a second. Let’s think about what it means to ‘be happy’ and why many of us may find this initially to be such a difficult leap to make.
When I discovered the ‘new thought’ and ‘metaphysical movement’ and started to read the works by Neville Goddard, Florence Scovel Shinn, Gabrielle Behrand and so on, I was struck by how different the lessons were than what I had been taught growing up. Lessons about faith and self-belief, focussing on imagining wonderful things rather than dwelling on negative experiences, learning to forgive ourselves and other people to allow us to move on, and understanding that we are worthy, all of us are worthy, of whatever it is that we desire. I came to realise how much of my mindset had been rooted in such deeply negative thought patterns for so long, even though I had always considered myself to be an optimistic person.
In my case negative self talk was my worst enemy and the first habit I worked on breaking, and although my awareness of what I needed to change was immediate, it took me a while to re-train my brain. I had to consciously catch myself anytime my train of thought was slipping and then implement little tips and tricks to help me get back on track, until one day, I could do it naturally. What I am trying to illustrate here is that often when we get advice- whether it is to try to stop worrying about the future, dwelling on the past, or to ‘just be happy’- it can take a while to actually take the steps to make that internal change. We have all lived a certain amount of life until we reach this information, and in that time we have developed bad habits, limiting beliefs and deep-seated paradigms that can take a little bit of effort to eliminate or transform.
When we are told to ‘be happy’ we are not being told to be superficial or fake about it. Pretending we feel right as rain when really inside we are tormenting ourselves is never going to put us in the right vibration or state to receive our desires. Instead it is more important that we can do the internal work to help us remove the blockages that are making us unhappy. This is where I come to the title of this article- resistance, resentment, & regret, (or should I say ‘the three R’s’) Holding onto feelings of anger, bitterness, or hatred, towards ourselves, another person, or even a circumstance or experience does nothing to help us in the long term. Neither does being burdened by remorse for a past mistake, or allowing resistance caused by limiting beliefs to prevent us make the necessary steps towards our future.
If we really believe that words, thoughts and feelings are energy, then we understand that holding onto negative emotions can make us ill and can even continually ‘re-infect’ us with the negative energy, keeping us within the confines of what it is we are trying to escape, or attracting similar situations towards us. It is imperative we learn and work to break this cycle. It can be a hard pill to swallow, however, I should emphasise, it is not a blame game. I want no-one to go away from reading this article feeling huge amounts of guilt for having ‘caused’ their situation. As I mentioned earlier, we have all lived a certain amount of life before we come to this information. therefore, how were we to know? And when it comes to childhood, much of what we learnt was based on those who surrounded us. The best we can do is set ourselves on a better path for the future.
I do believe that a huge part of manifestation is working to ‘heal’ ourselves of our resistance, resentment, and regret. Maybe not all at once, perhaps there are things we will only discover that we have limiting beliefs about or internalised pain through committing to this journey, that won’t be clear to us now. But, we can’t forget this aspect of the process, especially when we are starting to see so many positive changes within our reality, since it is so important for our continual growth.
I don’t want to leave you without some help regarding how to overcome any of ‘the three R’s’, so I’ll briefly let you know what helped me, even though I may write in more detail about it later on:
Identify the key ‘pain points’ of your past, be it situation, relationship or environment.
Write out everything you feel about these experiences. Everything you wish you could have said or done, everything that makes you feel bad. Depending on how much you have to say, you could do each ‘pain point’ one by one overtime. I often like to burn or destroy what I write as a symbolic way to be rid of it- though do it safely!
Then, focus on the now, the present moment and what you can do with your words, thoughts and imagination to feel the best you can. Train yourself to daydream about the most amazing scenarios, or as I recommended in my last post to take an affirmation that makes you feel wonderful and repeat it to yourself over and over again (not necessarily out loud) until it impresses into your subconscious.
Those have been the three main tips that have helped me rid myself of resistance, resentment and regret, and I still use them whenever I notice something else I need to work on. I do hope they will help you too.