One of the qualities resilient people share is the ability to keep moving forward no matter the circumstances. In that respect, the story of Whitney Wolfe Herd is instructive. Wolfe Herd co-founded the dating app Tinder. You may have heard of Tinder. In 2014 she left the company, filed a very public sexual harassment and discrimination suit against it and reportedly settled for $1 million. She was then subjected to merciless trolling online. She has said that complete strangers said hideous things about her and the experience left her broken.
Wolfe Herd could have spent the next year railing against misogyny. Instead, she founded Bumble, the dating app where women make the first move. Bumble is now the fastest growing dating app in the US. Last year, the Match Group, a dating conglomerate, offered to buy Bumble for $450 million. Wolfe Herd (who is 29-years-old, by the way) rejected the deal. The Match Group sued Bumble. Bumble counter-sued. Since that legal battle began, Bumble has gained over 5 million users. Forbes has valued it at over $1 billion.
There are many takeaways from Wolfe Herd’s story, the most obvious of which is that success is the best revenge. But what interests me about success-is-the-best-revenge stories are the myriad ways people find to power forward after they’ve been knocked down. Refusing to feel sorry for herself seems to have worked well for Wolfe Herd. “I just don’t harbor resentment toward anything or anywhere or anyone,” she told a reporter. “I’m too busy.”
I’m sure she had her moments. But rather than indulge her resentments, it must have seemed like a better idea to create a dating app that empowered women.
Harboring resentment is toxic. That’s why you have to find a way to let it go. Either that, or find a way to tap into your anger and put that energy to good use — as in, “I’ll show them!” Otherwise your resentment will eat you alive. Much like self-doubt, if you give it free rein — even when it is one hundred per cent justified — it will only hurt you.
One of the ways I’ve found to deal with my resentments, be they personal or professional, is to become conscious of how I feel when I dwell on them. I know that feeling well: it’s a feeling of being stuck. Since it’s a feeling I abhor, I don’t want to stay in that place. Why would I? All it does is make me feel awful and rob me of control. Instead, I try to focus on something that will give me a sense of agency.
As we head into the fall, it’s a good time to take stock of any resentments you may be carrying and work on letting them go. Once you offload that excess baggage, I think you’ll find there’s no limit to how far and fast you can motor.