Success Quote by Barbara Sher

Resentment isn’t framed here as a righteous alarm bell; it’s framed as a bad business strategy for the self. Barbara Sher’s line works because it refuses the flattering story resentment tells: that it’s proof you’ve been wronged and therefore morally ahead. Instead, she demotes it to weakness, a leak in your psychological budget that compounds interest. That’s classic Sher: pragmatic, coaching-oriented language that treats emotions as choices with consequences, not sacred truths.

The specific intent is behavioral. Sher isn’t diagnosing resentment; she’s trying to make it unattractive. By tying it to self-esteem, she links an outward-facing grievance to an inward cost. The subtext: resentment feels like strength because it keeps the other person on trial in your head, but the person actually doing time is you. You keep replaying the offense, keep outsourcing your mood to someone else’s actions, and the longer you do it, the more you confirm a private belief that you’re powerless to change your situation.

There’s also an entrepreneurial morality embedded in the phrasing: “lowers” implies a measurable decline, like a stock price. Sher built a career in self-help and career design, where agency is the prized asset. In that context, resentment is not just an emotion; it’s a refusal to renegotiate boundaries, ask for what you need, or exit a bad deal. Calling it “weak” is less an insult than a provocation: stop spending your identity on a debt you’re not collecting.