People think that fear is their fiercest enemy. They think fear to be the biggest threat to their success in life. But fear comes only in situations we can’t handle properly. There is another feeling which is even worse than fear and grips us both in good & bad situations – Guilt! Guilt is a bigger threat to our success. Unfortunately, it receives negligible attention from us.
Guilt in Good Times
Guilt is a feeling that doesn’t give you any respite whatsoever. It is one of the most prominent feelings irrespective of the situation you are in. If you have come first in your class or you are chosen the employee of the year or you have been an achiever of any kind and you are happy about it, a sudden & strange feeling creeps into your mind. It says that what about other people’s happiness? What about the people who have lost to you? What about your friends who have not done too well? Also, there might be someone sick in your family, someone who is not happy in their lives. What about them? You start thinking that since so many people are not happy in their lives so you don’t have the right to be happy either! So, you curtail your happiness out of this feeling of guilt. To succeed at anything, the basic thing you need is happiness. But it is now hijacked by guilt. This curtailment of your happiness by guilt will prevent your success in future. It will restrict your life and make you miserable! This is how guilt works in situations that were initially in our favor. In situations which are against us, guilt is much more deadlier!
Guilt in Bad Times
In times when we are not doing too well, guilt drives people to sadness, depression and even to committing suicide! When you promise yourself that you will lose weight or to get good marks in exams or to get your dream job, but due to some reason you fail to do so, guilt causes havoc in your life! Guilt in times of failures gives us a feeling of worthlessness. It says that we are never going to improve and that our future holds nothing worthwhile to look forward to! Because this feeling is repeated & persistent, you actually start shaping your life exactly in the direction of this feeling. The guilt of not being able to achieve the desired results pushes you into a miserable state which is very difficult to come out of. And when the future seems dark, people see no point in actually living it.
Guilt : Some Important Questions
If guilt exists both in our good and bad times then several questions arise here. These are:
- Is guilt inherent to our mental system?, or
- Does it get created because of something?,
- Is there a way to overcome guilt?
- If yes, then what is it?
Guilt is Not Inherent To Our System
Anything that is bad for us can never be an inherent part of our mind or our body. Even the bacteria that are present in our body are beneficial to our system and are there to protect us from ‘outsiders’. So, either guilt is a good thing or it doesn’t belong to us. We have already seen that guilt is not good for us but it doesn’t mean that it cannot be used for our benefit! We will explore that dimension later. For now, taking cue from our preceding paragraphs we assume that guilt is bad. This means it’s not a part of our mind. It gets created there due to some reason. What is this reason?
Creation Of Guilt
We know that we are our doorway to the universe. The whole universe resides in our consciousness and in our mind & body. The stability of the universe is within us. But the universe and hence our consciousness, has a lot of empty spaces. There is ‘Absolute Nothingness’ in this empty space. This Nothingness can be left empty which would keep you absolutely stable from within. This is the state of ‘pure meditativeness’ or ‘pure consciousness’. This Nothingness can also be filled with joy, happiness & ecstasy if you choose them for yourself. But if you are not aware of this space and/or have not taken charge of it, then it can get filled with negative energies like guilt, fear, anxieties & stress! The problem is that, we have partially accepted the fact that fear, anxieties & stress are bad for us but guilt is still considered to be a totally positive emotion. So, guilt has become like a natural part of our consciousness in present times because it is residing alongside joy, happiness & ecstasy within us. Guilt has fooled us into creating & keeping it within us. It is an infiltrator disguising itself as a positive emotion. We think that by feeling guilty we are ‘being human’. That feeling guilty means we care about others. But actually, guilt is limiting our happiness & success and is pushing us into a deep state of anxiety, stress & depression. To summarize, we knowingly create guilt within our system because we have mistaken it for a positive emotion!
Guilt : The Beneficial Side
But guilt should not be put in a fixed bracket of ‘Negative Emotions’. This is because it can be put to some positive use riding on the fact that people think that it’s a positive emotion that lets them care about their fellow beings. The only problem that makes guilt bad is that it is not backed with responsibility & action. By ‘responsibility’ we mean that if you really feel bad about something, you should take the necessary actions to change that situation. If you feel guilty about your classmates not doing satisfactorily in an exam that you had topped, then you should help your classmates in improving their skills which will ultimately help them in getting better marks next time. Hence, guilt can be used for our and for the larger benefit of the masses if we take it as a responsibility. But if we get bogged-down by it then it will affect our lives negatively.
Preventing Creation Of Guilt : Know Guilt’s True Nature
The other way to tackle guilt is to prevent its creation. To do this, you first need to know that it is a negative emotion and not a positive one. It is not possible to prevent the creation of guilt in your mind if you consider it as a positive emotion. Even if you think of guilt as partially good, you will generate it sub-consciously and it will trouble you if you don’t take its full responsibility, as explained in the last paragraph.
Preventing Creation Of Guilt : Know Yourself Inside-Out
To know that guilt is bad, you first need to know yourself and the nature of the life that you are in totality! This will free your mind from any biases or prejudices and help you see things just the way they actually are. And this in turn will help you in knowing that guilt is not a positive emotion. And when you come to know this, you will stop creating it within yourself!
Eliminate Guilt, Succeed In Life!
If you know your reality, you will know the reality of every emotion that you create & experience. It will empower you with the ability to start/stop the creation of any emotion in your mind & body. Either categorize guilt as a good emotion and take full responsibility for it or treat it as a negative emotion to stop generating it. When you stop generating guilt for anything in your life, your life will become a series of successful endeavors that in turn will make your whole life successful and truly free & limitless!
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| How To Tackle Guilt |