It is impossible for us to live in the present moment while carrying around guilt from the past.
If we take a look at guilt through the lens of the criminal justice system, we convict a person who is guilty and we punish them for breaking a law. So, the label “guilty” has a deeply negative connotation.
Now, when it comes to letting guilt go, I want to be clear that the goal is not for you to arrive at the place where you have completely stopped your human brain from the process of creating guilt. My invitation is for you to get to a place where guilt is no longer preventing you from living a happy, joy-filled life.
It is absolutely possible for us to release the guilt we’ve been holding onto and diminish it’s power moving forward. But in order to do that, we first need to understand it.
Guilt is essentially a conviction. It is an assessment that we’ve done something wrong and therefore, should be punished.
We all have moral laws given to us by our culture, religion, parents, etc. We have boundaries around what a good person does or does not do, says or does not say, thinks or does not think.
It is from those sources that we create our good person laws and it is important for us to abide by these laws in order to keep our good person status.
So, here we are with our collection of laws that make us good people and if we break one of our laws, our brain decides there must be a conviction because that is what happens to people who break the law.
While a good person who breaks a moral law does not have the same judicial consequence as someone who has broken a criminal law, the internal process of punishment is very similar.
In order to retain our desire to be a good person, we decide that if we have broken one of our good person laws, we must be held accountable. If we were to break a good person law and not get punished for it, then we’re either not a good person or we don’t care about the law; which subsequently makes us not a good person.
Since the guilt most of us carry around is moral, not criminal; there is no criminal punishment. So, we decide there needs to be moral punishment and the moral punishment is the feeling of guilt.
And guilt is a perpetual punishment that ends up being much worse than the external punishment ever would have been.
There are only 2 components necessary for guilt to be created:
- The good person law
- The action that broke the law
In order to get to the place where guilt is no longer preventing us from living our lives, a shift needs to be made with either the law itself or with the action that broke the law.
Typically, guilt is associated with an action we’ve taken in the past. We are looking at something we did and punishing ourselves for not doing better. Since we cannot change the past and there is nothing we can do to change an action that has already been done, the only shift we can make is within the law that was broken.
Guilt is a simple process to understand. It is emotionally difficult, devastating, and heavy AND it is simple to solve.
It starts with compassion.
With compassion, we can begin to look for an exception to the law. No matter the law, there is an exception. We find the exception with compassion, we find the exception with the understanding that we are all doing the best we can do with the tools and resources we have at the time, we find the exception with the knowing that if we had different awareness at the time, we would have made different choices.
We know that there are a ton of variables and recognize that guilt can be complicated to untangle on your own. If you want any support in your individual journey, please book a FREE call with one of our certified coaches. We will help you however we can. There is no cost to you or commitment required. Visit https://www.coachseansmith.com/bookmycall to schedule your complimentary session or call 805-552-4423 or send an email to Info@CoachSeanSmith.com.
