Episode 105: Forgiving Ourselves

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Forgiving Ourselves.”

Some people are basically ninjas when it comes to finding ways to avoid guilt and ownership of their wrongdoings. I just dedicated an entire episode to those types of people, but there's another kind of person as well. These are the kinds of people that seem to soak up guilt and shame like a sponge.

So much so that some of them will even blame themselves for things that other people did to them for these kinds of people. They have no problem owning their mistakes, but rather they can't move on from them for one reason or another. They hang onto their guilt and shame as if it was a security blanket for these types of people, life is hell.

I personally don't see guilt as a bad thing. I think it actually has the potential to help us, but there seems to be something of a campaign against it going on. It makes sense why we would want to avoid it. Guilt is one of the greatest sources of pain humanity has to live with, and it's possibly the single greatest contributor towards living a terrible life, or maybe more specifically shame, which walks hand in hand with guilt most of the time.

Most new age spirituality is based on the concept of releasing guilt. The links people will go to to avoid it are incredible, but the threat of guilt is what keeps a lot of us from doing bad things in the first place. The problem arises when we choose to do nothing with it and just let it linger. Some of us cling to guilt because we think if we let go of it, then we don't care, or we aren't taking our wrongdoing seriously.

That guilt serves as evidence of our inherent goodness, because at least we feel bad about what we did. But feeling terrible for 10 years actually doesn't prove your moral seriousness. Some of us hang on to guilt as a kind of penance, even though that penance serves no one. It's sometimes easier to accept self-inflicted punishment than it is to make meaningful change.

But of course. That just keeps us stuck in the same place we began. Another reason I think we sometimes hang on to guilt is that it allows us to continue doing the things that make us feel guilty. We may be doing bad stuff, but we might think at least we feel bad about it, which somehow makes it okay to continue doing.

It's as if we absorb that guilt into our identity. Ironically, I think our guilt and shame can even be a kind of self-absorption. Guilt lets us keep our eye perpetually focused inward instead of seeing the world outside of us. Guilt affects people differently, and as often as not, I think we aren't even aware that we're hanging onto it.

It changes who we are. Sometimes it cripples us and keeps us from feeling worthy enough to participate in real life, and sometimes it makes us feel like there's no turning back now, so we might as well double down when you're already expecting to go to hell. What's the difference if you keep living that kind of life without even knowing it?

People will sometimes withdraw from life or maybe just certain parts of their life where they no longer feel worthy to participate. People feel more comfortable around others that mirror how they see themselves, even if that crowd isn't actually doing them any favors. A lot of times I see people more or less join this club of other people that don't feel particularly good about themselves and begin to find ways to make being too good a bad thing.

They begin to see everyone else's goody two shoes. They themselves and everyone else in their group, they consider to be real. That guilt somehow turns into a kind of superiority, but I believe it stems from guilt, nonetheless. You know, it's guilt because they're uncomfortable with and around people, they perceive as guiltless.

A person that truly felt good about the way they live their lives simply would not care if someone else was more quite good than them because they wouldn't feel bad about themselves. A truly guiltless person or someone that is using their guilt to move on is indifferent to how good a person is behaving.

It simply is not a threat to them. I know guilt is not something that we get to magically switch off, especially when we've made really big mistakes. But I think there's a way for us to feel good about ourselves again, and it isn't always easy because truly moving on requires us to change. So that we're not the same person that did those things all that time ago.

When I think back on things I regret, I still feel that pain of guilt knowing I participated in something I'm ashamed of, and I think I always will, but fortunately I don't have to let that guilt further shape me into someone I don't wanna be. I like to think I've learned from those things, and I want to help keep other people safe from making those mistakes if I can help it.

I know there were moments in my life where I was not a good person, but I haven't taken that to heart and defined myself by my wrongdoings. My pursuit to become better allows me to be free of the weight of my guilt because I know I am in the process of trying to make things right again. Some things obviously can never be made right again, at least not entirely.

But the good news is that simply doing what we can to make things right again is good enough to take most of that weight off of our shoulders. Where things have been better for you. If they never happened, yes, probably. But does that mean we can't ever allow ourselves to move on from all that? Of course, not moving on is to allow yourself to feel that guilt and to feel that shame for a time, but ultimately to let it go by taking actions to make it right again to whatever degree possible and to take a lesson from it.

Unfortunately, we cannot solve a problem from the past with pain in the present. Guilt isn't meant to haunt you forever, but rather to change you for the better. Make use of your guilt to be a better person. It helps me to remind myself that I'm an ordinary person that wants to be good, but is going to stumble along the way.

It's sad, really, when a person doesn't truly believe they can be forgiven and when they don't truly believe they can recover, they just stay stuck in this world of low self-esteem and poor regard for themselves, whether or not things can be made right and you can truly be forgiven. I couldn't say without preaching my religious beliefs, but I think regardless of what you think about that, it's important to believe you can use the lessons you have learned from all the bad you have done and all the bad you have experienced to then make the world around you even just a little bit better.

Forgiving yourself does not mean it never happened. It is not calling good evil. It isn't even saying what you did didn't matter. Forgiving yourself means you are learning from it. It means you're accepting that it happened and moving on. Forgiving yourself means you are choosing not to spend the rest of your life.

Kneeling to your own failure. This is Skipping Stones - “Forgiving Ourselves.” You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit skippingstonessr.com. And if you enjoyed the show, please like or subscribe. If there is a topic you would like me to speak on, please feel free to email me at info@skippingstonessr.com, new episodes will be released weekly every Monday.