Here are some tips to help you quell resentment and anger:

1. Avoid holding grudges altogether. If someone has offended you, confront the person if you have to, or use legal measures to ensure that justice is served.

If these two options are inapplicable because the offense to your personal being is so small, then the offender is not worth your time and energy. Forget about the offense, learn from your mistakes, and continue with your goal of continuous personal growth.

2. Before you fly off the handle with blinding rage, take a deep breath and count to ten. After ten counts, ask yourself: do you still need to be angry with the situation or the other person?

If the answer is yes, count to ten once again and ask yourself the same question. Perform this cyclical relaxation exercise until the urge to explode at someone or something has been dissipated and you feel calm enough to just ignore what happened or to just leave.

This exercise may sound strange at first but it does help dissipate anger. If you are easily provoked, make sure to keep this exercise in your back pocket so you don’t fly off the handle in the future. Remember: in the end, you’re hurting only yourself with your rage.

Even if you say hurtful things to people, at the end of it all, you were the one who was being hurt the most -- physically, emotionally, and mentally. Remember that anger hurts the originator.

3. We can learn a lot from the world’s major religions when it comes to ending worry. For example, the Christian denominations are taught to “love your enemies.” I know this is a strange request, but trust me. “Loving your enemies” is one of the best ways to avoid being resentful.

You don’t have to literally love your enemies. If someone has done you wrong, it’s pointless (and maybe a little dangerous) to come to that person with open arms. We can’t all be extremely tolerant of abusive people. But you know what you can do instead?

You can learn to forgive and forget. This may sound too commonplace, but really, this old adage is worth applying every day.

You can choose not to talk to specific people, but in your mind and in your heart, you can forgive them. You can forgive them so that you don’t have to carry the emotional baggage anymore.

You can forgive them now so that you won’t feel awful when you remember what they have done to you. And finally, you must learn to forgive your enemies because this is the only way that you can truly have a worry-free, peaceful, and happy life.

A life led by forgiveness and tolerance is worth more than all of the wealth in the world. A life of peace, as a result of being forgiving and tolerant, can give you what wealth cannot – peace of mind and complete harmony with yourself and the world that you tread.

4. Love is a powerful force that can defeat even the fieriest of tempers. And the first kind of love that you should learn is self-love.

Self-love is not narcissism, nor do I suggest that you start practicing unrestrained hedonism. Self-love is centered on putting yourself before your decisions and actions.

Chronic risk-takers probably scoff at this suggestion, but really, what do you gain from putting yourself at risk when you become so angry that every vein in your neck feels like exploding? What do you gain from feeling so resentful that you mutter darkly even in your sleep?

You gain nothing, of course. All you have in the end are your hurtful emotions and thoughts that eat you up from the inside.

If you allow yourself to disintegrate emotionally because of the long-standing grudges you hold, you’re not upholding personal principles or fighting for justice at all. You’re just being resentful, and that’s it.

But if you love yourself, you’ll know deep down that you don’t deserve to feel resentful toward someone. You’ll feel that you do not deserve to feel the negative impacts of anger and hate.

And so, you will choose not to be resentful or angry because you know these emotional experiences harm you and not your enemies.

Think about this for one moment: what would your enemies feel if they knew they had such a strong negative impact on you? What would your enemies feel if they discovered that you were losing sleep because of what they did? Do you think they would feel repentant or unhappy, at all?

5. Some people say that if other people didn’t offend them so much, they wouldn’t be so angry or worried all the time. Well, that’s precisely the problem. People allow other people to have a negative impact on them.

You see, you don’t become angry or worried about something unless you make a conscious choice to become angry or worried. You won’t be disturbed or annoyed by anything at all if you just choose to let whatever it is that happened pass you by.

It is always a choice and unfortunately, many people have made it an automatic choice to be angry at the slightest provocation. Remember, the angrier you become, the more worried you tend to become too, because you feel that your world is filled with unpleasant characters that are out to get you.

6. Remember our little talk about keeping busy so that worry won’t have a chance to bother you? Well, the same technique works when you are trying to filter out hate, anger, or resentment.

The mind can only focus on one thing only, so no matter how hard you may try, you can’t really stay angry if you’re busy. Idle hands have nothing else to do, so folks who don’t keep themselves busy in any way are often content with being resentful and angry at anyone who seems offensive or disagreeable. As you can already imagine, this is no way to live at all, so I’m going to leave the rest of the puzzle for you to solve.

This is the puzzle: if you get so angry that you feel you are going to die from a heart attack, will you continue being angry, or will you find something to do so your anger is displaced by something more productive?