Feel Free to Live Guilt Free...
 I’ve recently returned from a cross-Canada
conference, where one of the break out sessions I was invited
to speak on; was all about guilt.
Here are a few very interesting items to note on “guilt”
before I begin giving you my two cents worth on the topic.
- Women seem to experience far more guilt than men.
- Not one person (throughout the two weeks that I spoke
about guilt in 8 different cities throughout Canada) could
actually define guilt.
- Not one person had actually considered how feeling “guilty”
was actually benefiting them.
Now I realize that last statement may seem a little strange
at first... give it a moment to tumble and then consider this:
Every single thing we do provides us with something…some
“benefit” or else we simply wouldn’t do
it. Sometimes the “benefit” isn’t obvious,
sometimes the “benefit” isn’t even useful,
and so we don’t always recognize it as a benefit.
“Benefits” to our ego consciousness are anything
that supports a current belief that we hold. You may have
heard the saying “ Life is a self fulfilling prophecy”
This statement holds true because every single thought we
have is generated based on a current belief or existing belief
system. From there the ego (the mind) continues on a perpetual
search for “evidence” to substantiate its beliefs.
Therefore what we believe to be true in fact becomes our truth
and each of us has plenty of evidence to substantiate our
beliefs.
These “benefits” on a consciousness level can
be something as simple as a validation of what you already
believe. This doesn’t mean that the benefit has to be
good; it just has to validate the belief. Hmm
With that said the one question that comes to my
mind is...
What the heck is the benefit of feeling guilty?
Here’s the way I see it…
When we choose to feel guilty we relinquish our personal
power to guilt. Therefore there is no requirement to be responsible
and ultimately accountable to whatever it is we’re feeling
guilty about it the first place.
Yeah, that’s it. That is precisely it.
“ I feel guilty if I don’t work late” Yes
and while I’m feeling guilty I don’t have to take
action by discussing my work hours with my boss, and step
up to the plate on what I would like or not like to do, and
finally not have to deal with how my empolyer may respond
to the fact that I don’t want to work late. So I’ll
just feel guilty if I don’t work late, and thus this
will be my motivation for working late and not deal with the
real issue.
“I feel guilty because I spend so much time at the
office and away from my family” Well if you really want
to spend time with your family then do so- even if someone
did have a gun to your head to stay at work…you always
have a choice, you could just take the bullet. But for most,
it’s just easier not to have to take action and just
feel guilty instead.
Or maybe you enjoy your work and your family is putting pressure
on you to come home, but you’re quite comfortable with
the amount of time you spend at work. Well then feeling guilty
(bad) is not really the best plan is it?. If you’re
doing what you enjoy why would you go and make yourself feel
bad just so you can continue to do it? You could just feel
“good” about your decision and speak openly and
directly with your family about your decision, trust in your
decisions and stand by them with power and confidence.
This brings me to my second observation about guilt. It seems
that sometimes by feeling guilty (as explained in the above
paragraph) it in some way gives us permission to do what we
really want to do and not do what were “suppose”
to be doing. Hmm
So with that the benefits of feeling guilty include:
- Getting to do what you want to do even though the “tribe”
says you shouldn’t.
- Not being responsible and ultimately accountable to do
what may be uncomfortable.
During this conference, I was offered from the various groups
at least 50 reasons why people choose to feel guilty... goodness
did we laugh about guilt! In each case the outcome was clear;
- Feeling guilty is a choice.
- Feeling guilty relinquishes our power.
- So long as we feel guilty (bad enough) we can do what
we really want to do
Imagine what would happen if instead we…
- Recognize that we always have choices, so always be on
purpose and choose wisely.
- Stop acting like helpless victims by owning everything
that happens to us and start using our personal power to
help ourselves...
 Here’s
to success
Be well,
Jackey Backman
P.s. Best Boss Certification 2006 is coming
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