be free of guilt

Even if you remind yourself of Christ’s sacrifice to redeem us of our sins, you feel guilty for somehow being responsible for Christ’s suffering.

Might as well embrace the guilt and the responsiblity.

When you have guilt, you reinforce the feelings of being not okay. You lose your confidence and self-respect. You feel undeserving and you hold yourself back.

The key to releasing guilt is to recognize that we all go through life doing the very best we can with the extremely limited skills and awareness that we have at the time.

Unfortunately, the awareness that we have is seldom enough. As a result we make mistakes. Sometimes we make big ones.

Making mistakes is part of the human process. This is how we learn. Every time you make a mistake you learn a little more about life. You then become wiser and more aware.

Five years from now you will be much wiser than you are today, but the wisdom you will have five years from now doesn’t do you any good today. This is true because today, you don’t have it.

Likewise the wisdom that you have today didn’t do you any good back when you made your mistake. This is true because back then, you didn’t know what you know today. You only knew what you knew.

To see this in your life, go back in time to the moment you made your mistake. Notice that at the time, you had a very particular state of mind and a very particular way of seeing life. Notice that you acted totally consistent with where you were at the moment.

If you knew then what you know today, you could have acted very differently, but you didn’t. Even if you thought you knew better, you didn’t know the consequences like you do today.

So here is the big question: Are you willing to forgive yourself for not knowing? Are you willing to forgive yourself for not being wiser and more aware? You might as well. If you look, you did the very best you could with where you were at the time.

Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for not being wiser and more aware. Forgive yourself for acting consistent with your limited awareness and forgive yourself for the damage that you caused as a result of your not knowing.

Allow yourself to be human.

Guilt is like bad barbecue sauce.

It’s a great feeling…really there is nothing wrong under the sun…

it’s been quite awhile since i’ve felt this way… i’m trying to eliminate “i’m so sorry” and “i feel bad” from my vocabulary unless i have truly made a mistake and want to make amends.

today i had to ask everyone who is coming to my sister’s bachelorette party for money for the limo. i don’t feel even the slightest bit bad about it. :)

i’m finding that working on this one involves a lot of talking to myself. at least once a day i’m telling myself that its okay to be me.