While I am working on accepting that it is a normal human reaction to have apprehension and resentment towards a boss who routinely degrades me, I am also working towards accepting that I need to feel kindheartedness towards her to genuinely reflect a positive attitude. My entrenched response is to push aside unpleasant feelings of hurt, grief, and shame, so it is a tall order to welcome into my body the sensations that these emotions carry and invite their pain into my mind. At the same time, I’m challenged to develop empathy for the boss who dislikes me and has persecuted me.
I can do it with the help of St. Francis’ prayer, which reminds me that my ego permeates my mind with selfish grasping and aversion, neither of which makes for peace, joy, and love. In an anxious state or when I feel the absence of peace, joy, or love, I often use the following portion of his prayer as a mantra. Repeating it to myself restores calm and brings truth to my perspective.
“Let me not so much seek to be consoled, as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”