OftheSoul: Transcending Grudges with "The 10 Good Things Exercise"

"Double Happiness" char-
acters in Chinese script.

        This is a great exercise to help start the new year on a positive note. The main purpose of this exercise is to help you clear your mind and emotions of negativity toward someone. It has a multiplicity of applications, as you could probably imagine. What you're doing here is reframing your perception of a person, rewriting the script in your mind about him or her. It could be a person you've wronged, or a person who's wronged you (or both). Either way, you are ready to move on, tired of carrying the weight of the negativity that the thought of this person inspires within you. I have tried it. It works. It can be a very liberating experience.

        You may or may not realize it, but harboring grudges seeps energy from your soul, slowly. Like a fire needs logs placed into it occasionally to keep it burning, in order for a grudge to stay vibrant and charged it feeds on your soul's emotional energy. A grudge is a slow, but powerful, life-sapping leak.

        This exercise has nothing to do with whether what transpired between you and the other person was right or wrong, who was at fault, and so forth. That is an entirely separate issue. That may have to be handled concurrently or later. In some cases it may even need to be handled legally. No, this exercise is solely a personal thing, for your own mental health, to help you to "lighten" the energy around your perception of this person.

        And if you have several grudges against several people, well you've better get working on this ASAP!

It's a deceptively simple exercise:

Step 1


A soul is weighed on a scale in the afterlife.

        On a 3x5 card write one good thing you could think of about this person. One good thing ...there's got to be something. OK now, here's the problem. If you don't think of good things about this person, and by doing so break the negativity-charged cord of energy currently binding you to this person, chances are you're going to reincarnate with this person and do it all over again. Yeah, the circumstance might be totally different, but that bitter energy you'll feel will be exactly the same, if not worse. It's best to diffuse this energetic cord, and heal the situation now.

       You don't believe in reincarnation? That's fine. But what if it does exist?   What if I was right? That would really stink. I think it's better, therefore, to err on the side of thoroughness and just do this exercise. OK, that probably wasn't a very convincing argument if you don't believe in reincarnation, but it's the best I had at the moment.

        Think of it this way: it'll just make you feel better to do this exercise. You'll feel like a weight's been lifted (or several depending on how many grudges you'd like to free yourself from, and how vigorously you pursue this exercise).

        Still can't think of anything? Maybe this will help: If the person is really two-faced, acts one way behind the scenes, and then is Mr./Mrs. Nice Person publically, that makes this exercise even easier. Just think of one good thing about his or her pleasant, albeit phony, public persona (not the horrific Mr./Mrs. Hyde you have to deal with privately). What is one thing that other people really enjoy about him or her? Phony as it may seem, it really is an authentic part of his or her personality. So it counts just as well for the purposes of this exercise. Remember, when you first met this person, you too were attracted to the same thing everyone else likes about him/her now.

        There. At least you've put something on the card now. Great.

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Step 2


Spend some time with your list. You might cry, and walk down some dark memories. That's OK. Now's a great time to release all that pent up energy.

        Now write nine other good things about the person, one per card. I understand ...this step might take more than one sitting.   While there's no time limit on this exercise, it is important to complete this step so you could move on to Step 3. From my experience with this, the first card is always the hardest to write. After that, it gets incredibly easier. You might even find yourself seeing him or her in a new light. That doesn't mean you have to talk to him or her again. It just means you've changed your energy, and achieved peace of mind.

        If you have to, for now just rubberband the cards together and put them in your purse or wallet. When you do finally think of another good thing, and you will because your subconscious mind is now hard at work on this, pull the cards out and write it down on a card. Nine more things. You can do it.

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Step 3

        In a course called College Success that I had to take many years ago, we were taught that learning material, laying the information down in our brains, was only the first step toward getting an A on a test. The next and most important step was reinforcing the information. There are what's called "memory traces" in our brains, little pathways where our thought impulses fire. Like a pathway through a field where the more people walk on it, the more entrenched into the ground it gets, the more we review the information we've laid down in our neural pathways deeper our memory traces get. This makes the information just spring to mind right away, and it makes acing a test easy. Reinforcement is the key.

        Therefore, when you reinforce The 10 Good Things about a person again and again in your mind, after a while they will pop into your mind right away anytime you think of the person. Your old, bitter script will lose its power. You will not be able to call it to mind as easily, if at all. The best thing is, since you won't be "feeding" it your life force anymore, the strong energetic cord your thoughts and emotions once supported will slowly disintegrate. You will feel no emotion about the past and this issue after a while. You'll have "moved on," transcended it, and you will feel free to devote the energy you were wasting on this on something positive and productive in your life.

        Because they were so highly charged, your negative emotions about someone probably are pretty well-entrenched. It will take a lot of work to reframe those thoughts. So give yourself plenty of time for the Step 3 of this exercise. Devote at least six months to repeating Step 3. Keep the 3x5 cards in your purse or wallet, and look at them once a day, at least --when you're sitting at a stop light, when you're standing in a bank line, right before falling asleep, etc. And read them out loud if you can. This activates the parts of your brain used for speaking and hearing, creating even more memory traces. The more, the merrier.

You might think of other areas in your life where this exercise would be helpful to you, an event that happened where the outcome was to your disadvantage, for instance. Or you may use it to help you forgive yourself for a mistake you made that's still bothering you. Think of 10 Good Things that came from the event, or about yourself.

Good luck!

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