6 THINGS YOU SHOULD STOP FEELING GUILTY ABOUT
By greatist.com - Susie Moore
In Mandarin Chinese, they have two words for selfish. One means doing that which is beneficial to you and the other means hoarding, greedy, and cruel. We, in English, have pushed those two words together.” — author Elizabeth Gilbert
“I hate myself. I mean, I not only had pasta last night, but bread and crème brûlée as well!”
“You think that’s bad? I had two cupcakes yesterday that a sales rep brought in. Two! I gotta get my butt to spin class tonight so I can live with myself.”
This was a conversation I recently overheard between two 20-something women in Starbucks. But as I rolled my eyes and shook my head, I had to catch myself. I was feeling guilty that morning too. I had just texted a friend to decline a girls’ dinner because of a pressing work deadline. In fact, I’ve had to decline quite a lot of stuff this year. It never feels good. I’m not just disappointed to miss out on the fun, I feel guilty for letting down my friends.
As a life coach, I help people across an ocean of occurrences, from starting a business to moving across the country to getting a divorce. No matter the life circumstances, guilt remains a huge, universal, and ugly part of our emotional existence. Guilt can serve you in one way only. If it’s truly recurring, it can highlight something that you need to change in your life: too much drinking, too much work, a bad relationship.
But guilt should not enslave you. You can use it as a trigger for change, to inspire action, like an apology to someone you hurt. Yet ongoing guilt is not productive. We apply it far too liberally upon innocent circumstances in our lives. By definition, guilt is “a cognitive or 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.”
If this accurately describes your guilt, take steps to correct it the best way you know how. But unless you have violated your standards or moral code in a serious way (cheating, stealing, hurting someone on purpose), guilt need not apply to all the crap you allow it to.
Here are six common guilt triggers (that violate no moral codes) that I hear regularly. Consider this permission to drop them entirely.
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