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    How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment—The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life
    How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment—The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life
    How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment—The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life
    Audiobook8 hours

    How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment—The Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life

    Written by Sophie Hannah

    Narrated by Sophie Hannah

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    NAMED ONE OF THE 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME MAGAZINE

    The first and only comprehensive examination of the universal but widely misunderstood practice of grudge-holding that will show you how to use grudges to be your happiest, most optimistic, and most forgiving self.

    Secretly, we all hold grudges, but most of us probably think we shouldn’t, and many of us deny that we do. To bear a grudge is too negative, right? Shouldn’t we just forgive and move on? Wrong, says self-appointed grudge guru Sophie Hannah, in her groundbreaking and irreverent self-help guide. Yes, it’s essential to think positively if we want to live happy lives, but even more crucial is how we get to the positive. Denying our negative emotions and experiences is likely to lead only to more pain, conflict, and stress.

    What if our grudges are good for us? What if we could embrace them, and use them to help ourselves and others, instead of feeling ashamed of our inability to banish negative emotions and memories from our lives? With contributions from expert psychotherapists as well as extracts from her own extensive catalog of grudges, Sophie Hannah investigates the psychological origins of grudges and also offers not-so-obvious insights into how we should acknowledge—and embrace—them in order to improve the quality of our interpersonal relationships and senses of self. Grudges do not have to fill us with hate or make us toxic, bitter, and miserable. If we approach the practice of grudge-holding in an enlightened way, it will do the opposite—we will become more forgiving.

    Practical, compassionate, and downright funny, How to Hold a Grudge reveals everything we need to know about the many different forms of grudge, the difference between a grudge and not-a-grudge (not as obvious as it seems), when we should let a grudge go, and how to honor a grudge and distill lessons from it that will turn us into better, happier people—for our own benefit and for the sake of spreading good and limiting harm in the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJan 1, 2019
    ISBN9781508277484
    Author

    Sophie Hannah

    Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling writer of psychological crime fiction, published in forty-nine languages and fifty-one territories. Her thrillers are award-winning and have been adapted for television. Her poetry has been studied across the UK and has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Award. How to Hold a Grudge is Sophie’s first nonfiction book.

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    Reviews for How to Hold a Grudge

    4.5/5

    26 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      How to hold a grudge and learn from your experiences without burning bridges... not as catching as a title, and still not an apt summary of this work, which I found engaging, entertaining, and with a much-appreciated perspective. The author’s humor provided a healthy dose of fun, which in retrospect, i believe I’d been deprived of for a while. The author’s narration was terrific for the duration of this audio presentation.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Useful tool to work on yourself and your grudges! And funny too
    • 4/5
      I love the idea of being healthier with my grudges and am happy to know that there are people like me who keep grudges for various reasons.
    • 5/5
      I loved it!

      Thanks Sofie!

      I’m thinking of buying a copy.
    • 3/5
      Amusing. I'm not much of a grudge-holder (although I do have a few), but I have someone in mind who NEEDS to read this. It was cute and I found the writing style amusing.
    • 5/5
      Hannah approaches the topic in a breezy, conversational and often laugh-out-loud style. She serves up a number of news-you-use-can-use strategies for “tackling negativism head-on” in a way that forms a “pessimism of strength.” Following the edict that vivid storytelling is the most effective journalism, the author presents a smorgasbord of relatable anecdotes and even helps readers to rank the intensity and types of grudges. She helps us with the task of “maintaining a balanced and enlightening grudge cabinet full of stories you’ve learned valuable lessons from.” It could be argued that the book borders on being self-centric in some spots. Nevertheless, it offers a valuable takeaway: By recognizing grudges and processing them, we can turn these otherwise negative experiences “into positive, enlightening insights.” I hope to see you on the Grudge-Fold Path...
    • 4/5
      I think that this book contains some real wisdom, something more important for being unusual and often suppressed. "It's better to be realistic and find a way to cope with the negative stuff. Don't sugarcoat anything – recognize the problem and deal with it." Consider Hannah's explanation of a grudge: "A grudge is a true story from your past, involving a negative, hurtful, or suboptimal experience that it feels important to remember now and into the future. A grudge doesn't have to be vengeful, all-consuming, and bitter." Precisely!So often, when I am urged to forgive so that I'm not "swallowing poison in hopes that someone else will die," I'm actually not angry, resentful, or brooding. I may not have even thought about it in years. I've decided what I am going to do to deal with the situation, and so it's resolved. It may be deciding that the other person isn't going to change, so I'm just going to avoid the points of conflict, if I think the relationship is worth it. In Hannah's case, she remained friends with, but no longer stayed with, a very inconsiderate host. If I don't value the relationship, I may simply end it and treat the person civilly when we interact. This isn't good enough for two types of people, people who regard instant forgiveness and reconciliation as a religious duty (which is one reason I like being an atheist), and people think they are entitled to organize other people's lives and don't understand the phrase, "it is none of your business." A former friend, spent 5 or 6 years trying to get me to "forgive" her other friend, whom she admitted routinely behaved badly. ,She refused to understand that her hectoring on the subject was annoying and alienating to me. When she finally did recognize how I felt about her unsolicited harangues, she announced she is never going to speak to me again because I hold grudges.Quoting Hannah again, "For many of us, being told to forgive and move on for our own sake, while still reeling from whatever it is that some rotter has done to us, feels like a new and separate insult." It is, at best, a failure to show us the compassion that they demand we show the offender. A friend of mine was quoting a book she'd read about the importance of compassion. That's only good if it extends to everyone, not if it's a form of taking sides.Otherwise, as Hannah says, "When someone tells you, 'Move on, it's not worth holding a grudge' [. . .] what they're actually saying is 'The fact that you've been treated atrociously doesn't matter to me at all, and I'd like if you'd agree that it doesn't matter to you either, because then we can both stop thinking about your needs, rights, and feelings.'” I was once so upset that I was crying, which is unusual for me. My real friend simply stood with her arms around my shoulders. My insensitive "friend" announced that there are people in the world who are worse off than I am, and smiled smugly, having resolved my problems to her own satisfaction. She was really surprised when I asked her if she thought I was such a mean person that I rejoiced in the misfortunes of others. Perspective and a sense of proportion are wonderful things, but we have to come to these realizations ourselves. They certainly cannot be imposed by someone else, especially when we're distraught.I would also take platitudes better if the people handing them out took their own advice, but everything is different when it's their problem. Many of the people who tell me not to complain, complain endlessly themselves. I think another way of reading the quote in the previous paragraph ("Move on, it's not worth holding a grudge") is that the person is saying enough about you, let's talk about me.At first I thought that Hannah's idea of a grudge box was a silly idea, as likely to rekindle grudges as overcome them, it's better to let them die quietly. I am rethinking that. Perhaps being reminded of a grudge, I would decide that it's so in the past, the situation has changed, that I would reflect on the grudgee's good qualities and decided to reach out.Food for thought here, and for people tired of being told to forgive, when that means, be a doormat, some comfort and support.Added 9/25/2021 I was reading an article that said that saying, "don't take it personally" is a technique often used by gaslighters. It got me thinking. I mentioned a former friend several times in my original review, the one who decided that she is never talking to me. She had such a gift for saying things that were supposed to be soothing, or at least shut me down, that only made me angrier instead. The final argument was when I took exception to an email she had sent me giving a list of things that I was ordered to do to support a political position of hers; she never bothered to ask my opinion. She tried to fob me off by saying "don't take it personally," to which my response was, "you sent it to me personally." I have been thinking that a lot of the platitudes and advice people give us when we are upset, are rather like gaslighting. That is they tell us that our judgement is poor, that we have no right to our feelings, we're just being foolish. In other words, they diminish us, whether the person means to do that or not. That's supposed to make us feel better?? When someone does it a lot, I have to think that either they are trying to gaslight us, or else they are trying to build themselves up by tearing us down,
    • 4/5
      Interesting book on the benefits of holding grudges. Written in a conversational style, this is the kind of topic discussed over several bottles of wine around a campfire with friends at the beach. A new idea is that grudges are beneficial if handled correctly, with analysis and inspection. Grudges can be kept in a "grudge cabinet" and pulled out to be re-inspected periodically, and good ones kept and bad ones discarded. The purpose of inspecting and analysing the grudge is to increase wisdom, justice and satisfaction. Grudges should not be kept to harm yourself or others. Revenge is never allowed, although revenge fantasies are acceptable. The author has developed the "Grudge Fold Path", where a processed grudge should alleviate suffering, and not increase it. By denying grudges, pain and injury result. By processing them, analysing them and putting them into a mental "Grudge Cabinet", they no longer do harm. Since humans are justice seeking animals, processing a grudge and storing it in the mental grudge cabinet removes the sting to some degree, but allows you to discharge some of the anger and rage.In addition to the mental grudge cabinet for storing old grudges until you are ready to discharge them, a "Gratitude Grudge" cabinet can store processed and analysed "Happy Thing" done to you or to others, that you want to remember.An interesting book and recommended for vacation reading, library collections, and how to improve yourself type of people. Something new to think about and to mull over. However, if you are not the sort of person who analyses their human conversations and reactions with others, it might not make as much sense. Also, if you keep murderous grudges or are an angry sort of person, this book is not really for you either. But if you keep grudges because of slights, insults, impositions and all the other things people keep grudges for, this is a good book. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      I picked this book on a whim. I am so glad I did. Hannah makes some great arguments for the benefits of acknowledging that grudges are not always the wrong thing to have, it is how we handle them that matters. There is much we can learn from having them as often they serve to protect us. She also points out that we can be the subject of other people's grudges, something we should all keep in mind. There is a great deal to think about pertaining to grudges so I can see where referring back to this book will be something I do in the future. Thank you Sophie Hannah for writing a great book about a topic that we all can learn from.
    • 5/5
      I found this book to be a lovely real world view of how real people react to crazy and hurtful situations. It was great to know that I'm not the only one that harbors Secret resentments. The real life situations are easy to put yourself in and relate to.