|
Today's
quotation:
Chronic
remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most
undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent,
make what amends you can and address
yourself to the task
of behaving better next time. On no account brood
over
your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the
best way of getting clean.
Aldous Huxley
|
|
Today's
Meditation:
Many people have learned how to use guilt as a weapon,
and many other people have learned well how to feel guilty
when they do so. We all make mistakes-- some of us
atone for them and then move on with our lives, while
others of us continue to feel guilt for weeks, months, or
even years, and that's something that's not helpful to
anyone. If someone is trying to make us feel guilt
long after the mistake, then that someone is trying to
sabotage our lives and our happiness, and that person
needs to be dealt with, one way or another.
Carrying guilt does not help us. Recognizing our
mistakes and doing our best not to repeat them does help
us. The best thing that we can do for ourselves in
any situation in which we've done something wrong is to
learn from it and then move on to something else.
Many religions have learned to use guilt as a motivational
force, an idea that makes people feel they need a church's
blessings because they've done such awful things, while
the other people in the church of course haven't done anything
wrong at all.
Guilt is an extremely effective weapon on a large scale,
and we need to make sure that we don't use it as a weapon
ourselves. Our forgiveness can be a great tool for
helping others to achieve peace of mind and peace of
heart, but if our egos get in the way, we're going to want
the other person to pay dearly and pay long for what
they've done-- after all, how dare they do something
to us that we perceive as wrong? But if we try to
make them hang on to their guilt longer than is healthy,
if we refuse to forgive, then we're actively damaging
another person and his or her life.
I like Glenn's advice below. I remember feeling
guilty about certain things, but it's not a debilitating
guilt-- I use the memories of that guilt to help me to
avoid making certain decisions and do certain
things. After all, I don't want to feel that way
again, do I?
|
|
For further
thought:
Make
friends with guilt. Guilt is a beautiful emotion that alerts us when
something is wrong so that we may achieve peace with our conscience.
Without conscience there would be no morality. So we can greet guilt
cordially and with acceptance, just as we do all other emotions. After we respond to guilt, it has done its job and we can release it.
Glenn R. Schiraldi
10 Simple Solutions for Building Self-Esteem
|
