Shift from guilt to “what can I do about it”, and delight in your good qualities.

Photo by Michele Guan on Unsplash

Hey, whatever speech, actions or thoughts we entertain, I always have a simple test.

 

“Is it kind and generous to the recipient?”

 

In the stories of guilt we tell ourselves, I would assert that it never passes this test: “Is it kind and generous to the recipient?”, and here we ourselves are the recipient.

 

Kindness and generosity is not only reserved to others. We have to be first kind and generous to ourselves FIRSTLY. Otherwise how can we be kind and generous to others, if we can’t be to ourselves?

 

It’s hardly rocket science. It’s just logic.

 

Generally we are programmed to go to the negatives. So we keep looking for ways to put ourselves down, find what’s wrong with us, whatever it is and tell ourselves:

 

“you did this, and you are a bad person”.

 

This is guilt and it’s extremely unhealthy.

 

Well, this is the same as when we direct the blame outwards to someone else “you did this, and you are a bad person”, which is called anger and blame. So directing it inwards the same sentence towards ourselves, is anger internalised towards ourselves. Also known as guilt.

 

When we have unpacked this and see what is happening, we can see that it’s extremely harmful and unproductive, we can take the action which is more healthy and liberating.

 

We can:

 

(1)Immediately tell ourselves:

 

“Yes, I did this, I regret it and WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT IT?”

 

This will immediately take us to a “bias for action” mode and move forward. Immediately liberating us from the guilt, which if we can see is really anger towards ourselves, which is totally ungenerous and unkind towards ourselves.

 

(2) Make it our job to delight in our own good qualities. Everytime we feel guilty about something (negative mental viewpoint!), we can immediately remind ourselves to look inside ourselves and find something good about our past actions that we are proud of, something that we did that has been kind and generous to ourselves and others.

 

Hey, in the space of the past 24 hours alone,

 

You haven’t gone out of your way to kill someone

You have probably got some friends you have been kind and generous to

You have probably done some work which has helped and benefited someone in need

You have probably made some choices (such as buying something) which leans towards the ethical

……………………………………………this list of your good virtues is longer than you realise!

 

I am curious, if you delight more in your good qualities, your good past actions and your virtues, and simply look at the “bad things” you have done and ask yourself what you can do to make it right next time instead of being angry at yourself (also known as guilt), wouldn’t you be a better version of yourself, and be able to send more kindness and generosity out to others and yourself?