The “G” Word…
OK – so there are lots of
“G” words, however for today we’ll focus on one particular word that has
created (I would have used the word “wreaked”, but I personally think it’s a
silly word that always seems to have an umbilical connection to the word
“havoc”) a bunch of havoc and confusion in our lives – and has been responsible
for severely damping our ability to really enjoy life. The word?
GUILT!
Here’s Gene’s
definition…Guilt: Our personal ability
to feel badly about something that did or did not happen – and to punish
ourselves accordingly for the dastardly deed(s). We are cads, inconsiderate slobs, unthinking
bastards, inattentive morons, uncaring imbeciles to be forever damned to a
self-imposed sentence of remorse and mental anguish! If that won’t take the fun out of a hog-calling contest, I don’t know what will.
So where’s all this guilt
coming from? Maybe Mom? She’s always been an expert at laying the
guilt trip on us. How about our spouse
or significant other? Oh man, forget one
little ol’ anniversary and we’re toast forever.
Maybe from our children? “We
never played catch in the back yard and that’s why I took drugs and went to
prison!” “You always liked Petey
best!” “You kicked me out of the house
when I was only 37 and because of that, I can never buy a new car!” Or maybe we managed to do something really
stupid that got ourselves – and other people in a heap of trouble.
What’s the common thread in
all of these situations – and in every other guilt-related event that we could
ever think of? These incidents all
happened in the past! OK – maybe that’s not much of a revelation,
but it’s the primary factor in our feelings (anguish, remorse, etc.) that we
keep ignoring. The past is gone, done,
history, bye-bye, hasta luego, and kaput!
Unfortunately, we have a tendency to exert entirely too much effort
dragging an event from the past back into our wee little brains where we can
examine it under a microscope to reinforce once again, how absolutely dumb and
unthoughtful we’ve been. Sometimes we’ll
even go to the trouble to contemplate a future situation and decide on a course of
action based on how guilty we may or may not feel depending on our actions. Eeeeewwww!
From here, it looks like we
need to take care of a couple of things.
First, we need to get rid of all the guilt crap that’s piled up in our
heads. And second, we need to keep from
throwing any more crap on the pile.
Hmmm, only two things. We can
handle that.
I’m pretty sure that at this
point, we all honestly know where our guilt is coming from. Yep – from right inside our devious little
minds. It’s all a personal response to a
given situation. A response that depends
almost entirely on our past experiences – and yep again, our mental/emotional
programming. So let’s take a look at our
guilt generator to see if there are at least a couple of switches we can flip.
First – the past. We can’t change it so we’ll just have to deal
with it – either by taking action to rectify a situation (if appropriate) or by
changing the way we’re thinking about it.
Sometimes, we really do need to do something. If we’ve called our best friend an butt-head and are now feeling guilty about it, we
probably need to re-establish contact and make our apologies. What he or she then does with that apology is
up to him/her, but at least we will have made a good effort to do the right thing. If our past
actions have caused major, major problems for someone, we may need to put
extra, extra effort into our attempts to rectify the situation.
The main thing here is doing
something to make things better.
One word (OK – more than
one) of caution. We probably shouldn’t
be doing “things” to make amends for our perceived transgressions strictly in
an attempt to make others think
better of us. It ain’t agonna work. Even
though we may desperately want other people to have a good opinion of us, what
they think is completely beyond our control.
Yes, we can influence the opinions of others, but we can never control
it. And – it really is a waste of effort
and emotion to even try. Too often, I
think we may work for these approvals to try to reinforce or even build up our
own feelings of self-worth. Pats on the
back are nice and approval is good, however they are meaningful only when they are
given spontaneously. Picture yourself
trying really hard and doing everything you can possibly think of to snag some
praise from a close friend. Picture
yourself not getting one smidgeon of acclaim.
Picture yourself getting royally ticked off at the stupidity of your
friend. It can be a vicious,
demoralizing cycle.
Doing “things” to rectify
misunderstandings or hardships we may have imposed upon someone is logical and will
likely be beneficial to everyone – ourselves included. And, once we’ve done what we think we need to
do, we need to let it go! We have done
all that we can do and no matter what the outcome is, it’s over. Let’s get on with life.
If we’re feeling guilty
about something that happened that we have no way in hell of ever doing anything
to repair the situation, all we can do is let it go. Remember, the past is the past – and it’s
gone forever. All we can do is admit
that we screwed up (if we really did), learn whatever it is we need to learn
from our mistake and press on. We’ll just
try to do better from now on. Maybe
we’ve already been doing better. Looks
like good progress to me!
Now the future. Guilt very often, is the result of our granting
others permission to control our thoughts, feelings and perhaps even our
actions. No one can control us in any
way without our consent. Folks, we have
enough trouble controlling our own thoughts and emotions. It just doesn’t make sense to grant anyone
else the privilege of doing that. Flip
the guilt consent switch to the off position. If this is a drastic change from your usual
approach, you can about bet that sooner or later, somebody is going to be very
unhappy. That’s the chance we take. Of course, other folks have a right to feel
any way they want about anything, don’t they?
It’s beyond our control.
Guilt can be good in that it
can give us an incentive to do things better.
It can on the other hand, be really oppressive and can severely limit
our ability to enjoy life and do those things we really want to do. All we can do is the best we can do. If we screw something up – and we will – we
can learn from it and then do even better.
Life’s like that. Cool!
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