The Weight of Holding Grudges

Vishen Lakhiani uses a word that stopped me the first time I heard it: brules. Short for “bullshit rules.” These are the inherited beliefs we follow without ever questioning where they came from. Rules about how life should work, how relationships should function, how the past should be handled.

One of the most entrenched brules most people carry is this: if someone wrongs you, you keep score.

It sounds reasonable. It sounds like self-preservation. And it is woven so deeply into how we operate that questioning it feels like questioning gravity. Of course you keep score. Of course you remember who let you down. Of course you track the debts, the slights, the moments when someone took more than they gave.

But what if keeping score is the very thing exhausting you?

Think about the ledger you carry in your mind. Not a literal one, but the running tally. The friend who did not show up when it mattered. The family member who chose themselves over you. The partner who said something that landed so hard it left a mark years later. Each entry in the ledger is a weight, and the ledger never closes. It only gets longer.

Lakhiani’s insight is that we did not choose these rules. We inherited them. We absorbed them from families that kept score, from cultures that valued retribution, from systems that taught us justice means making sure the balance sheet is even. Nobody sat us down and said, “Here is how you will manage your relationships: by tracking every debt and holding it until it is repaid.” But that is exactly what most of us learned.

The problem with the ledger is that the debts it records can never truly be repaid. How does someone repay a betrayal? How do they give back the years of trust that were broken? The ledger demands payment in a currency that does not exist. And so the account stays open, accumulating interest, growing heavier with each passing year.

Meanwhile, you are the one carrying it.

Not them. You.

The person who wronged you is not staying up at night reviewing the balance. They are not losing sleep over the debt they owe. In many cases, they do not even know the ledger exists. The weight of the grudge falls entirely on the one keeping it.

What if the debt was never real?

Not the pain. The pain was real. The hurt was real. What happened, happened. But the idea that someone owes you something for it, that justice requires a balancing of accounts, that you cannot be at peace until the score is settled, that is the brule. That is the inherited rule running in the background, burning energy, consuming your attention, keeping you locked into a transaction that will never close.

Putting down the ledger does not mean approving of what happened. It does not mean the other person was right or that their behavior was acceptable. It means you stop organizing your inner life around a debt that cannot be collected.

It means choosing your own peace over the maintenance of a record no one else is reading.

Lakhiani encourages examining every rule you follow and asking a simple question: did I choose this, or did I inherit it? When it comes to grudges, the answer is almost always inheritance. You were taught to keep score. You were shown, by example, that resentment is a form of loyalty to yourself.

But loyalty to yourself does not require suffering. It requires honesty. And the honest truth is that the ledger has been costing you more than anything recorded in it.

What happens when you stop keeping score? You do not become foolish. You do not become vulnerable. You become lighter. And in that lightness, you discover something the ledger was blocking all along: the space to actually live.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do we hold grudges?

Grudges feel like protection. They create the illusion that as long as you remember what someone did, they cannot hurt you again. But the grudge does not protect you. It keeps you anchored to the pain.

What are brules?

Vishen Lakhiani coined the term ‘brules’ for bullshit rules, beliefs we inherit from society that we follow without questioning. The belief that you must hold grudges to protect yourself is one of these brules.

How do you let go of resentment?

Letting go begins with recognizing that resentment is not protecting you. It is punishing you. Ask yourself what the grudge is costing you in energy, health, and relationships, and decide if the price is still worth paying.