Most people have had a time where someone has hurt their feelings at work. Whether it was intentional doesn’t seem to matter the angrier you get. Sometimes you can hold onto that anger for weeks or even months. This is when it becomes a grudge. Holding onto a grudge is not only bad for work relationships, but it can be detrimental to your physical health, mental health, and home relationships. Even though it can be hard to let go of a grudge, there are some ways to make it easier.
Evaluate Your Feelings
You can’t simply ignore your feelings, at least not for long. Recognizing your feelings for what they are can help you to move on more easily. Take time to evaluate how you are feeling and why. Write your feelings down if that helps.
Focus on the Present
Living in the past makes it hard for you to move on from a grudge. Instead of focusing on what someone has done to hurt you, focus on what you can do to build a positive relationship moving forward.
Be Aware of How Your Grudge Affects Others
If you don’t care about how holding a grudge affects you, you should know that you’re not the only one affected. Your family, friends, and coworkers suffer from you holding grudges. Moving past it will help you to maintain important relationships. Think about this the next time you want to stew in what someone did to you.
Face the Person Who Hurt You
A good way to move past an issue is to confront it head on. However, you need to make sure you aren’t aggressive or too angry when confronting the person. Stay in control of your emotions. Create a goal for the conversation and say things that move towards that goal. For example, let’s say that somebody said something that offended you and you want to let them know that. You might want to say something like, “what you said in the meeting yesterday was disrespectful”. Don’t go off on any tangents and stay respectful.
Use this advice and share it with your employees when they are having trouble letting go of a grudge at work.