Too often we let guilt guide, motivate and consume our lives, ruining our health and happiness and prosperity. Because it’s been a huge theme in my life, I’d like to share some thoughts on how I deal with guilt.
What is Guilt?
First, let’s talk about what guilt is and two different sides of guilt as I see it:
- the right, justified kind of guilt,
- the unjustified, unproductive kind of guilt
By definition, guilt is “a feeling of having done wrong or failed in an obligation.”
Wikipedia gives this definition: “Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse.”
Justified guilt means you actually did something wrong.
The baseless guilt I want to focus on today is the kind that has no substance. It’s merely someone else’s obligation projected upon you, or you the kind you project upon yourself.
Too many people I know (and love) deal with the chronic type of negative guilt that has no real meaning or use in their lives.
Baseless Guilt Typically Is Present When …
- You’re living someone else’s perceived responsibility of yourself, allowing how you believe someone else wants to control you, your life, your thoughts, feelings, and expectations
- You’re living someone’s actual projected responsibility of you, allowing someone else’s thoughts, opinions and feelings control you, your life, your thoughts, feelings, and expectations
- You’re forever trying to live in a state of perfection and failing miserably at it
- You’re living in the past, whether it’s a regret or mistake, beating yourself up for not doing “enough” or “more”
- You beat yourself up over things that really don’t matter
- You beat yourself up because you’re not Superman or Superwoman, or … God
- You hear yourself starting sentences like, “I shoulda,” “I coulda,” “I woulda.”
The reason I’m so terribly motivated about this particular topic to write in-depth about it is because of the consequences that unchecked, chronic, negative guilt can have on your life.
Baseless, unjustified guilt robs us of our joy, our enthusiasm, our energy, our health and our happiness.
Your health and happiness will suffer. I’ve seen it happen.
You’ll waste precious time and energy on needless and destructive feelings, instead of focusing on the good and right things like your true hopes and dreams and happiness.
Some Examples of Baseless Guilt
Here are some examples of times when I’ve felt the unjustified, unproductive guilt I’m referring to and how I’ve responded to it and think through it:
- Ending a relationship — from having to fire a team member to ending a friendship and going through a divorce even, I’ve been through all of these (multiple times in some instances). It never feels good to tell someone you care about (and even love) that you must end a relationship. These often deal with boundaries being crossed and expectations not being met for how I want to live my life … or what we won’t allow on our team. I finally came to the realization several years ago that I would draw a boundary line around my life and then be careful who or what I allowed in it. I now respect myself and love myself enough to honor those boundaries, which at some times has meant I end a relationship. For more background, my post and story on mental health has it all.
- Saying “No” — It always sucks when I have to tell someone flat out, “No.” Too often it’s meet with hurt feelings because other people think they are entitled to a “Yes,” when that is not the case. Often this deals with my time and how others think I should use it. I’ve gotten better at it, but no one gets to dictate how and where I spend my time anymore. Saying “No,” so often means saying “Yes” to my freedom and happiness though.
- Doing something others do not approve of or like — I choose long ago to claim my life as my own, and to live it by my own values and beliefs. But if I believe in what I am doing, that it is right and good, does not harm others, then it should not matter what others think. The older I’ve gotten, the better I’ve become at living this, yet I still struggle. (In fact, I admit, I’ve tried to live other’s lives too and realize it’s wrong.)
- Doing or having something others cannot — This includes any physical possession I’ve ever had from my house to my car, but it also includes being successful, being happy, making money and taking time off. In fact I wrote a post talking on how living your dreams is about choices (mainly in order to talk through my own baseless guilt).
How I Determine If It’s Baseless Guilt
Then with this honest, sobering self-assessment of my attitude and actions, I ask myself:
- Should I be on the hook for this?
- Is it really my responsibility or obligation?
- Is this something I need to change or make amends for? Or is it merely useless and baseless and I need to move on?
Sometimes it is in fact justified guilt. But most often, it doesn’t meet my criteria and I quickly label it “Unproductive” or “Baseless” and seek to move on.
How I Deal with Baseless Guilt
So in thoughtful reflection, I have a couple of ways I deal with baseless guilt that I want to share, hoping they may be useful to you. They are:
- Acknowledge the Guilt You Feel — The self-assessment above helps identify baseless guilt, but it’s important to take a moment to acknowledge the guilt you feel. Do you have any physical responses to it? By just saying or thinking “I feel guilty about this”—even if you don’t understand why—you can move on to release it, which leads me to …
- The Guilt Release Permission Statement — After my sobering self-assessment , I simply give myself permission to be released from my guilt. Many times this comes in the form of me saying to myself, “I release myself of this baseless guilt. And it’s time to move on from it.”
- Control Only What You can Control — Which is your attitude, your thoughts, your actions and reactions and your feelings. By saying this over to myself, reminding myself of this, I’m better able to understand that I cannot control what another person ultimately thinks or how they act in response to my decisions. “I can’t control that (something external), but I can control this (something internal).”
- Do a Values Review — Most of the time, these episodes of guilt, baseless or not, are times to review myself and my values alongside my attitude and actions. Sometimes, I need a minor adjustment. Sometimes they give me opportunities to assess my values in other areas of my life.
- The Bold Reminder that: “It’s MY life and mine only.” — and I get the freedom to choose what I do with it. So I say, “Hey Cory, no one gets to live my life for me, I choose to live it myself, and I choose to do it to the max.”
- Deliberate Practices Makes It Better — Over time, as you begin to practice feeling and then letting go of baseless guilt, you’ll better respond to it. As you start to feel guilt, then say No, or let go of those unproductive feelings, focus and be aware of your emotional and physical responses along the way, so you’ll better identify and respond to them as they come.
All of these things are the tools and self-talk I use to help me sort and filter out the unproductive guilt that weighed me down for so many years (and still affects me from time to time).
As I’ve learned to deal better with that unproductive guilt, I’ve felt an overwhelming amount of freedom and happiness that comes with it.
It’s like taking off a heavy backpack after a long hike.
So I’ll say this again:
Baseless, unjustified guilt robs us of our joy, our enthusiasm, our energy, our health and our happiness.
And thus, I CHOOSE, this day and every day, to live my life to the maximum … without the weight of useless, baseless guilt bearing down on me.
(Special thanks for my writing coach Kristen Wright for contributing to this post.)
Founder of iThemes.com
