This is an archived blog post from Green Alder Coaching
You’ve experienced it again…
You know…that shrunken, gut-wrenching, and small feeling when you (?) feel guilty.
Perhaps you have let your friend or partner down in some way (again), such as: forgetting their birthday, being rumbled for telling an untruth, or turning up late for a meet-up.
You either find yourself reacting on the defense, repeating the behaviour, or perhaps shrinking into a quiet heap of self-conscious goo.
Know what I mean?
Feeling guilty?
Well, Stop It right now, for just a moment! Let’s check in and look a little closer!
Call forth my Glorious Guilt Monitoring scales…;)
Let's weigh this up.
I can hazard a guess that you are often weighing low in actual guilt of ‘I did something bad’ and more heavily weighting towards labeling yourself as ‘I am bad’.
False guilt such as:
Stupid me…I am hopeless…I never get things right…I am so crap at relationships…etc.
Get the picture?
If the story that you are telling yourself is self-labeling harshly then this is NOT actual guilt.
It is a whole different emotion; the dreaded S***e word that people don’t like to comfortably speak of.
If you are doing guilt properly, you are holding the action/behaviour up against your ethics and values. Is the behaviour inconsistent with who you want to be?
If it is incongruent with your values then it can be a huge positive motivator to change your actions and tackle a situation differently. Such as a simple heartfelt apology and an intention to alter a behaviour in the future.
Or, conversely, to help you stand in your own power and confidently justify your actions to yourself and others.
The more you label yourself as some kind of bad person, the more likely you will fulfill that label in the future or process things in an unhealthy way and undermining your confidence.
I often find my clients comment that they are feeling guilty for one reason or another.
As part of our coaching experience, it is extremely useful to say Stop and get out my Glorious Guilt Monitoring scales to check if it is actually guilt (the motivator for change) that a client is experiencing.
Time is then spent actively seeking to label a behaviour, and then creating positive solutions to align with their values.
So, let’s make an active choice to stop for a moment when we feel bad or diminished in some way.
Take a pause to look for the behaviour and compromised value and start showing yourself a bit more self-compassion.
You imperfectly Rock already!
If you would like to have more support around this then consider checking out my Cultivating You package here >>
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