Powerful Strategies for Joy-Stealing Guilt

Hey you,

Have you ever had time for yourself—time you’ve been craving to have, time you’ve been needing to feel like yourself again, time to rest and recover, or simply be—and the very next nanosecond a great big wave of guilt hits you? Just pummels you with thoughts of how you should be doing something, or how dare you take this time when others don’t have it, or a sudden immense pressure to make the time super valuable so that you feel like you’ve earned it? Guilt is a big fat meanie, and for some of us (myself included), it’s a very loud voice that likes to show up particularly when we are at rest. Let’s talk about how to manage that meanie so you can get what you need from that moment of rest.

Quick caveat: I’m not talking about the guilt that is the kind you do need to pay attention to because it signals something you need to go make right. I’m talking about the unnecessary (but very loud) guilt that shows up like a pop-up ad every time you do something for you.

Maybe you heard explicit messages from someone in your life growing up about why you shouldn’t “just sit around,” messages about laziness, about how hard the other person was working so your resting was somehow unfair to them. I had a roommate once whose farmer father made her feel so bad about “sitting around reading,” that she didn’t discover the joy of a good novel until she moved away for college. Imagine the years of lost reading joy!

Maybe there weren’t any obvious messages but the demands of your life right now are loud enough to make it feel like rest of any sort is wrong.

Two powerful questions can help cut through to the heart of the matter here: How is the guilt serving you? And what is it costing you?

The idea of guilt “serving” you probably feels wrong. It should. It’s a question to provoke you to consider why we allow something that we know isn’t good for us. The answer is often something related to how it protects us. So, how does feeling guilt in a moment of rest protect us? Well, I know for me if I listen to the siren song of guilt and let it overtake my moment of rest (or joy, or time to write, or time alone, or time doing anything I absolutely love) then I don’t have to unwind enough to get still. I can be so in the mode of doing-doing-doing that to actually slow down and change gears is really painful at first.

And what does letting guilt run the show cost us? If guilt steals the richness of rest from the moment you have it, then it’s not just barging in and ruining a good moment, it’s stealing from your future energy because that moment of rest was a refueling station. That’s a big cost. It’s actively preventing renewal, joy, and presence.

The questions How does this serve me and What is it costing me clarifies what choice you really want to make. Because no matter how immediate or all-consuming the guilt feels when we rest (or have time to ourself or time to create, etc.), it’s a choice whether or not to let that guilt run the show. We can let it steal the richness of rest, or we can choose to not let that happen.

One strategy I have for how to actively choose not to act on the guilt that shows up 100% of the time I have a moment to myself is to imagine them as a character in my head. I paint a little visual of what they look like. And then I take their hand and lead them over to a sitting area where some other characters already are (Anxiety is often hanging around, so is Perfectionism and someone I like to call Worst Case Scenario lady). I hand them each a cup of tea and tell them to talk amongst themselves. With them fully occupied in their little conversations that I don’t have to participate in, I start to breathe easier and am more able to take full advantage of the time available. It sounds silly perhaps, but it works for me. Maybe it inspires an idea that will work for you.

The next time you are about to do something awesome, like rest or doing something creative or taking time for yourself, and guilt tries to barge in I hope you will choose not to let it steal anything from you. Because each of those awesome things helps you be you in this world. Rest and creativity and joy create wholeness.

Sending you empowering energy,

Christin 

P.S. Looking for more joy in life? Download my free Glimmer Guide to unlock more joy to fuel your life: https://www.chaptercraftcoaching.com/the-glimmer-guide