#95 – What do we feel guilty about?

Does breaking your own rules trigger guilty feelings in you?

Most likely yes, as reported by Psychology Today.

But of course, and you probably know what I'm about to say, it's not your own moral rules what you feel guilty about breaking. It's the restrictions and limitations that your Ego has imposed on you – as we discussed in this piece, because it doesn't want you to be rejected by the tribe.

Here's a list of behaviors I know for a fact (first-hand or because friends and clients have told me) trigger baseless and unjustified guilty feelings (I'm sure there are many others):

• Eating (especially certain things)
• Resting (after work hours, when you're on vacation, when you have nothing else to do, when you're tired...)
• Leaving work early because you have to take care of your children or elderly parents, or a personal matter
• Saying no to something you don't want to do – because it goes against your nature, doesn't reward you in any way, or you'd be doing it out of "obligation"
• Taking a day off (or two, or three, or however many days you need to fully recover) from your training

Why would someone deserve to feel guilty about any of these things? These are healthy ways to protect your Self, not "moral obligations."

By the way, if it's an "obligation," how genuine is it as an act of generosity?

And if it's not genuine, where does it come from?

And if it doesn't come from your True Self (and so it isn't a natural instinct), why is your Ego nudging you to engage in it?

Because it wants you to, above all else, fit in.

Here's a renaming of these self-preservation acts:

• Nourishment
• Energy conservation
• Care for others
• Integrity
• Health preservation

And you know what word encompasses all of the above? Compassion.

What would treating your Self with radical compassion change for you?

Love,

Carolina