Conquering Guilt

Let me start this by asking a simple question.

What is guilt?

Guilt is an emotion that occurs when a person feels that they violated a moral standard.

Understanding it better 

Guilt is an emotional warning sign that most people learn through their normal childhood social development. It's purpose is to let us know when we've done something wrong, to help us develop a better sense of our behavior and how it affects ourselves and others.It prompts us to re-examine our behavior so that we don't end up making the same mistake twice. 

While we all understand the difficulty to cope with guilt, we fail to understand the concept was designed to make us better. 

Now that we have understood it, How do we cope with it!!! 

Making Amends

While sometimes we already know the lesson guilt is trying to teach us,it will return time and time again until we've actually learned the lesson fully.It can be frustrating, but it seems to be the way guilt works for most people. The sooner we 'learn the lesson' - e.g make amends, work to not engage in the same hurtful behavior in the future etc.- the sooner the guilt will disappear. If successful , it will never return for the issue again. 

Accepting but moving on

If you did something wrong or hurtful, you will have to accept that you cannot change the past.But you can make amends for your behavior, if and when it's appropriate. Do so, apologize, or make-up for the inappropriate behavior in a timely manner, but then 'let it go'. The more we focus on believing we need to something more, the more it will continue to bother us and interfere with our relationships with others. 

Learning from it

Guilt's purpose isn't to make us feel bad just for the sake of it. The feeling of guilt is trying to get our attention so that we can learn something from the experience. If we learn from our behavior, we'll be less likely to do it again in the future. 

Perfection is a 'Myth' 

Nobody is perfect, even our friends or family members who appear to lead perfect, guilt- free lives. Striving for perfection in any part of our lives is a recipe for failure, since it can never be attained. 

We all make mistakes and many of us go down a path in our lives that can make us feel guilty later on when we finally realize our mistake. The key, however, is to realize the mistake and accept that you're only human. Don't engage in days, week or months of self-blame or battering your self-esteem because you should have shown, should have acted differently, or should have been an ideal person.You're not, neither am I. That's just life. 

The Key

I had a discussion over the same thing with a close friend of mine and while i learned many things during the course of that discussion, the most important of them all was 'To forgive oneself'. 

The key to get over any sort of guilt lies in forgiving ourselves. While you are expecting the one you hurt to forgive you, the most important thing you need to do first is to forgive yourself.

If you succeed in doing so, things will become far more easier and possibilities of overcoming it will present themselves. 

Guilt is one of those emotions that we feel is telling us something important. But we need not let it take over our thought process. And always remember 'To err is human'.