The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [104]
I don’t want to live with the burden of failure: This decision revolves around guilt. Guilt is the internal knowledge of wrongdoing. As such, it has its place as a healthy reminder from your conscience. But when guilt gets attached to the wrong thing, it can be destructive and unhealthy. Guilty people suffer most from the inability to tell thoughts from deeds. They are burdened by things that are purely mental rather than actions in the world. Sometimes this is called “sinning in your heart.” Whatever name you give to it, guilt makes you feel like a failure because of your horrible past.
Guilty people don’t want to face new challenges for fear that when they fail, they will feel more guilty, adding to the burden of the past. To them this sounds reasonable, but in actuality, guilt itself is extremely unreasonable. As with shame, you can break guilt down into its irrational components:
• Guilt doesn’t accurately measure good and bad. It can make you suffer for trivial reasons.
• Guilt is a blanket that tries to cover everything. It makes you feel guilty about people and things that have no bearing on your guilty actions except that they happen to be in the vicinity.
• Guilt makes you feel overly responsible. You believe you caused bad things to happen that in truth had nothing to do with you.
• Guilt is prejudiced. It finds you wrong all the time without any chance of reprieve.
When you understand these four things you can begin to apply them to yourself. Don’t try to force guilt to go away. Have your guilty reaction, let it be what it is, but then ask yourself: “Did I really do something bad?” “Would I condemn someone else who did the same thing?” “Did I do the best I could under the circumstances?” These questions help you get a more objective sense of good and bad. If you find yourself in doubt, seek the opinion of a nonguilty, noncondemning person.
“Who did I actually hurt?” Be specific; don’t let guilt be a blanket. You may find that you’ve never really hurt anyone. If you still think you have, go to the person and ask how he or she feels. Discuss your actions. Try to reach the point where you can ask forgiveness. When it is given, accept it as genuine. Write the forgiveness down as a mental note. Whenever your guilty voice accuses you again, hold up the piece of paper that proves you’ve been forgiven, saying, “See? It doesn’t matter how you try and make me feel. The person I actually harmed doesn’t care anymore.”
“Am I really responsible here? What part did I really play? Were my actions a small part of the situation or a big part?” You can be responsible only for the actions you took or failed to take. Be specific. Detail those actions to yourself; don’t exaggerate them and don’t fall for the irrational notion that just by being there you are totally responsible. Many family situations immerse us in a general sense of shared guilt, but if you are specific and narrow your responsibility to what you actually said and did, not what others around you said and did, you can diffuse the guilt trip of being responsible for everything.
“What good things have I done to atone for the bad ones? When will I have done enough to let go? Am I ready to forgive myself?” All bad actions have their limit, after which you are forgiven and reprieved from guilt. But as we’ve seen, the inner voice of guilt is prejudiced—you are guilty the moment you step into the courtroom and will remain so forever. Take any guilty action and write down the day you will be forgiven. Do everything you can to atone for your bad action, and when the day of release arrives, take your pardon and walk away. No heinous action deserves condemnation forever; don’t buy into the prejudice that would hold you responsible for even your most venial sins year after year.
I don’t want to expend all my energy: This decision revolves around a belief that energy, like the money in your bank account, is limited. Some people who don’t want to spend much energy avoid new challenges out of laziness, but that is mostly a disguise for