What’s Your Daily Guilt Scale?

Are you perfect?  If so, you can stop reading now because you and I have nothing in common.

If you’re like the rest of us, then you probably go through your day feeling bouts of both goodness and guilt.  You may look in the mirror in the early morning, give yourself a wink of self-approval, and yet at lunch you catch a glimpse of yourself  in the bathroom mirror and you feel like an inner tube in a blouse.  Goodness can be replaced with guilt in a matter of minutes based on the decisions we make.  If you are like me,  then you may decide to skip the gym because you almost fell asleep while driving home.  Or perhaps you are staring at an empty bottle of wine when you planned on having only one glass.  Or a cigarette came out of nowhere and lit itself up in front of you.

When such things happen to me, the guilt takes over and I could spiral down quickly into misery–because instead of following the straight and narrow of a freak of nature that traipses the path laid out by perfect vegan yogis, nuns and healthy triathlete doctors and have no history of risky behavior, there’s me.  I admit–even to myself–that I 0ccasionally stumble off the path, trampling the posies and stepping on  fuzzy bunnies in my failure to follow the directions of those who want me to live to be 117 so that I can buy their products.

And although I am a proponent of a guilt-free life, I experience a sense of guilt every day; yet I have remodeled my guilty inclinations into a useful scale to moderate my behavior.  My scale is represented by numbers from 1 through 10, with 1 being the absolutely most guilt-ridden and miserable a person could be, and 10 being the happiest bliss-infused rainbow-riding earth spirit that lights up the room she enters.

Now I start my morning with a rating of 10 if I’ve gotten enough sleep and I remember my wrinkle lotion.
If I eat relatively healthy food and avoid inhaling an entire pizza, my Guilt Scale stays on the high side, although other factors such as being rude to a colleague, not carrying my load at work, or flipping someone off in traffic can drag the scale down as the  day goes by. If I go to the gym rather than crapping out, the scale remains steady, because by doing so, I have contributed to my own health and happiness by my own doing.  No one forces me to go, and if I decide one day that I just don’t feel like exercising, and mentally I am OK with that, then it’s not necessary for me to reduce the guilt scale.

The whole premise behind the Guilt Scale is that we are in charge of our own lives.  We make decisions about how to treat ourselves and others, and we can use the Guilt Scale to self-assess our behavior and how we feel about who we are right now.  If we progress through our day and loosely rate the feelings and emotions related to our actions, we can reflect on whether or not we are living according to our values.  And if we live according to our values, then we show integrity.

Please let me know if this is helpful to you.

Guilt-Free Secret Keeping

As we age, one of the things we (hopefully) learn is how to keep a secret. When a friend confides in you, they are demonstrating their trust in you. Yet we love to show others how much we know, whether to gain status, recognition or prestige. In my twenties, this was the thing to do–to pass on my knowledge of another’s secret situation to show that I could be trusted. What lunacy!

Now that I have passed 40, I have learned to keep my mouth shut because NOT saying anything gets me much further in life with those I really care about. Case in point:

Once, in one of my early retail jobs, a friend confided in me that he would be leaving the company. Juicy information, no doubt, since management had no idea of his impending resignation. But I wanted his hours, which were more desirable than mine. So I went right to the supervisor to ask if I could change my hours to his “if” he left. Oh, I thought I was smooth, planting that seed. But my supervisor detected my excitement, and put two and two together. Needless to say, it ended badly, because my colleague was led out the next day with no notice due to “security reasons,” and not only did I lose a friend in him, my supervisor considered me a tattletale and my hours stayed the same.

Well maybe it took me twenty years of like situations to get it through my thick skull that the value keeping a secret extends beyond a simple trust issue; and the Universe decided to test my strength on this factor once more. Fast forward to this year, when a friend let me know she was leaving her job to start her own business. Oooh, here’s the rush again, for I knew something that will impact not only my team but the possibly the entire company that employed her. But this time, I sat back and measured the consequences. Who would benefit from my keeping my mouth shut this time? Well, obviously she would, since she could continue making her business plans while still employed there; I would, since I can show that I am trustworthy. Who would suffer? The company might, as it finds itself understaffed for a time until she could be replaced.

I asked myself: who is more important to me?

Well, in the grand scheme of things, friendship trumps a job anytime. Even in this depressed economy, I wouldn’t be sitting on my deathbed worrying about whether my boss thought I was a good employee. I would be concerned that my friends considered me a reliable, loving companion. So another lesson learned, and one step closer to guilt-free secret keeping.




Profiting from Another’s Misfortune

Last week I crossed another goal off of my list.  Since I was 6 years old, I have always wanted a horse.  So when a good friend found us a smoking deal on an 8-year old Arabian mare, I was ecstatic.  We would share the horse since we each lack some of the requirements to fully care for a horse by ourselves.  We were excited to give her a safe home, for she had been penned up in a small stall for 2 years, with nowhere to stretch her legs or exercise.  When I asked why she’d been neglected for so long, I heard the story:

Her owner was a young pre-teen, who with her older sister had shared the horse, showing her in local Western-discipline horse shows.  When the younger sister fell ill with cancer, the horse became a sorrowful reminder of a happier family life as more pressing issues prevailed.  After two years, the little girl succumbed to the disease, and the family lost interest in keeping her.  Hence the smoking deal, but to me it came with a dose of guilt for being so ecstatic about adding her to my family under such circumstances.

This brings up the question of whether it’s OK to feel joy when you know that you’ve obtained something due to another’s misfortune.   Although I played no part in this family’s life or the passing of their daughter, it still hurts to see our new mare look longingly at the two little girls that live next door to our new pasture.  We can see the sadness in her eyes, and we wonder if we will ever be able to replace this gentle beast’s good memories–of happy, laughing little riders–with equally happy new memories.

I will keep you posted.

Saying No to Yourself

It seems like when we were kids, we heard “no” far more often than we ever heard “yes.”  Of course, I know that it was in our own best interest that our parents made these decisions on our behalf, since they were protecting us from things and situations that we didn’t know were harmful.  But to a kid, it’s just a bummer to be shot down when our thirst for learning and new experiences is at an all-time high.  So when we grow up, we don’t want to have to say no to ourselves…after all, we are making decisions for ourselves now, and we are willing to accept the consequences for our poor decisions.

This, of course, leads to all sorts of vices, as many of our decisions are made for the purposes of instant gratification–ask anyone with a sizable handbag collection and I’m sure they will concur–rather than what’s really best for us.  We don’t want to miss out on any situations that could bring us joy or freedom; but this can lead to decisions that we later regret.

Take a serious night of drinking for example, or the Ding Dong-eating binge one night when those little black and white rolled cakes just looked too good to leave any in the box.  And then the next day comes along, and we wish we had said “no” to ourselves much like our parents had.  And what’s worse, we don’t learn the first time we do it, either.  It can take multiple examples of the same miserable experience to learn that some actions just don’t serve us.  If perhaps we could learn from our experience the first time, then when that second chance at failure is presented to us, we can make an alternate decision–which may actually include the word “no.”

Guilt Free Travel: Are Handouts Necessary?

I remember the first time I saw a leper.

Although it’s on the decline thanks to modern medicine, leprosy is alive and kicking in many third world countries.  I was in Morocco, and the man sitting (armless, by the way) on the dirty street corner smiled at me with barely 3 teeth remaining in his mouth.  I was in a hurry to meet a wool rug merchant who was offering me a private showing of his best handmade rugs, and I didn’t want to be late.  I quickly smiled back to the leper and was on my way.

But it isn’t merely the disease-stricken that drew my attention on that and other trips.  It was the kids running after me on the remote island of Lombok when I rode in on the back of a truck.  There were six other people on the truck with me, but the kids knew to thrust their hands out to me rather than the other visitors.  Perhaps it was my snow-white skin, or the fact that I even gave them the attention at all;  but there it was, that compelling feeling that I had to give to anyone extending a hand out for help.

And so here we begin a thread on how we can enjoy guilt-free travel no matter where we end up.  For no matter which country you visit–which includes our own, if you care to look for it–there will be financial disparity between the citizens.  And unless you are whisked off to the Ritz Carlton immediately upon landing your Gulfstream, then you are likely to have exposur to those less fortunate than you.

I will be leaving for Panama on June 21, 2009, and will be reporting from there about our travels and how we handled the poverty surrounding us.

Using Guilt as a Last Resort

My son recently asked me to play basketball with him.  I haven’t played basketball since 3rd grade phys-ed, and even then I was the laughing stock when we got back to the locker room.  So when he asked me to play, my memories rushed to the forefront and took over my tongue.  I found every excuse I could to delay the game:  I was tired, I just ate, it was time to cook dinner.  But he kept asking, and I continued with my excuses.  Finally, my son welled up with tears and said “You never spend time with me.  I keep asking you and you want to do all your stuff and not play with me.”  He stormed off to his room and locked the door.

Before I went in to smooth things over, I spoke to my partner, who spilled the beans.

“He told me that he was using the thing that works best on you:  guilt.”

My own son was using all of the lessons I taught him about living a guilt-free life against me.  Here I have spent years teaching others about how to live a life without guilt, and he had jumped the fence and honed my techniques for his own benefit.  Now I’m not releasing myself from blame here, because if I had taken the time to actually confront my own issues and enjoy the time with my son then he never would have had to use guilt against me.

Does anyone use these techniques on you?  It’s up to you to recognize the signs that someone is trying to reach you, and this may have been their last ditch attempt to get through to you.

See more guilt-related posts on TheGuiltFreeLife.com

Internal Happiness despite the External Economy

If you listen to the news, the sky is falling at any moment.  The Dow is down, homes are being lost, and the future for many is on shaky ground.  It’s no wonder people lose their marbles in such an environment.  However, these issues have repeated themselves, with different details, through man’s entire existence.  For the caveman, it was a lack of food and freezing temperatures, and babies that rarely lived past the age of one.  Then there was the bubonic plague, a multitude of crusades and wars, and the Great Depression.  If you look back, things have rarely been peachy for very long.  Even the ancient Babylonians, considered the wealthiest civilization on earth, employed exorcists and the diviner, who drove away evil spirits that haunted the citizens. Giving in both abundant and scarce times

Now in early 2009, we are acutely aware of this particularly painful period in history because we are living in it; yet external elements of society–whether it be sickness, unrest or a bad economy–need not influence our inner well being if we choose to disallow such it.  This does not require you to plunge your head in the sand and ignore the pleas of those in need.  There’s plenty of room for assistance in times like this.  Rather, your attention toward others and away from your own needs allows at least two parties to benefit from your generosity: the recipient of your goodwill (whether that be time or money), and you, who according to the Law of Attraction will receive similar kindnesses in turn.  This is where true happiness lies, from the giving of yourself in both plentiful–and scarce–economies.

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