If you’re a leader, it’s inevitable that you will have to make an unpopular decision. People may get angry with you, gossip about you, slander you. The most natural thing ever is a desire to defend yourself, get even, or seethe in bitter resentment. Or, in today’s culture, to simply cancel them.

This is no good. Revenge will get you nowhere. Bitterness is toxic–and if you’re going to make it for the long haul, you’ll have to learn how to forgive, stay the course, and move on. Learning how to admit you were wrong and ask for forgiveness is also a critical growth curve.

The following quote from Marcus Aurelius makes this point eloquently. Great leaders have to stay the course when making unpopular decisions–they also have to be genuinely magnanimous to their detractors.

“Though men may hinder you from following the paths of reason, they can never succeed in deflecting you from sound action; but make sure that they are equally unsuccessful in destroying your charitable feelings towards them. You must defend both positions alike: your firmness in decision and action, and at the same time your gentleness to those who try to obstruct or otherwise molest you. It would be as great a weakness to give way to your exasperation with them as it would be to abandon your course of action and be browbeaten into surrender. In either event the post of duty is deserted; in the one case through lack of courage, and in the other through alienation from men who are your natural brothers and friends.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book XI, 9 (169).

If you’re struggling with this–particularly with the bit about defending ‘your gentleness’–I find the most helpful thing to do is to lean into the prayers of Christ. First, there’s a line in The Lord’s Prayer that says: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. This petition reminds us all that the problem is often with ourselves–we all need to be forgiven by others and to have the humility to ask for and receive forgiveness. Second, The Lord also prayed (while on the cross!): “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” This is another extremely powerful prayer for cooling exasperation or melting bitterness. You may have to pray it a million times–but it will definitely help fight the temptations of exasperation, bitterness, and resentment.