Coping with ingratitude

Did you ever go out of your way to do a favor for someone only to respond to your efforts with indifference or nastiness? And you mulled over the incident, telling yourself-people shouldn't be so unappreciative, and you will probably stew for days as you think it over and over. The more inflammatory your thoughts and fantasies become, the more disturbed and angry you will feel. Let me tell you about my neighbour. After getting less then passing percentage in the board exams, the daughter of my neighbour sought for a highly reputed tuition classes. As, she was a below average student, these people were very indifferent to her and instead of paying more attention to her, they all the time started demoralising her, which saddened her more, making the situation worse. She could not boost her moral and instead she felt totally down in the dumps. She began thinking her worthless and inadequate and she became frozen with doubts. And one day, she came to me With some doubts to be cleared, which she could not clear in her coachingCentre. I easily removed her doubts, and for the first time, her eyes sparkled, with a ray of some hope, which said as - "why, the hell I was afraid of such a minuscule problem"? And once she started loving English, she was now able to understand everything easily. She even now kept a pocket dictionary with her all the time and whenever she came across any new word she would find its meaning only to use the word again and again. And because of her hardworking effort, with my guidance she came out victorious. She got a very good percentage in her SSC boards. She even left her coaching centre midway, saying it as killing of time. She used to say that - "Auntie, why is it that all the subjects are related to our confidence, if we boost our confidence, we make it easy and when we are not confident, things seem so hard". And, she got admission in one of the best college and she also could decide easily, her area of interest. But, one thing was stewing me that my neighbour never showed gratitude to me. Whenever I see her, I would think.. People shouldn't be so unappreciative, and I would feel more angry and disturbed. "My God! How illogical can you get? I could turn mud into gold, and she wouldn't even notice! "My blood was boiling, so I decided to calm my spirits by writing it down. And then I was able to pinpoint the irrational assumption that caused me to get upset over her ingratitude. It was," If I do something to help someone, they are duty-bound to feel grateful and reward me for it. "It would be nice if things worked like this, but it's simply not the case. No one has a moral or legal obligation to credit me for my cleverness or praise my good efforts on their behalf. So why expect it or demand it? I decided to Tune in to reality and adopt a More realistic attitude :If I do something to help someone, the chances are the person*will*be appreciative, and that will feel good. But every now and then, someone will not respond the way I want. If the response is unreasonable, this is a reflection on that person, not me, so why get upset over it? "This attitude has made life much sweeter for me, and overall I have been blessed with as much gratitude from students, as, I could desire. Incidentally, my neighbour gave me a call just the other day. Her daughter had done well at junior college and was about to admitted in one of her favourite COLLEGE . May be that was her way of saying thank you!