Remember: Guilt: Your Responses

I recently asked for your responses to make a post on guilt. You guys were amazing! Here’s what you said:

I'm personally trying to define guilt before separating it into two kinds. To me Guilt is a gap between where you're 'at' versus where you should be and want to be. You can only have this gap if you're aware of where you should be and could have been there and wanted to be.

I think a little guilt helps to hold society together, but I think your focus on guilt probably makes life more miserable.

Sorrow and guilt are not the same things. We can and will and should feel sorrow for things, even after we've repented and moved on. But we shouldn't feel guilt after we repent. Like Enos said, "my guilt was swept away"

Guilt from the Spirit makes you want to be better and motivates you to work on it. Guilt from the devil makes you want to give up because you are hopeless and worthless. The hard part is holding on to that motivating guilt and not letting it become “unbalanced” and ever so slightly switch into devilish guilt.

God-given guilt points us in the direction of repentance and improving our lives so that we can have a positive influence outside of ourselves. Satan-driven guilt is self-centered and usually destructive. It could all be summarized by the "fruit" of the guilt—does it lead to good, positive results or destructive feelings?

I think guilt is a terrible motivator. Guilt very rarely entices me to act, it actually tends to impede my ability to act--and that, for me, is the ultimate test of whether the guilt I'm feeling is Godly or not. If I can say, "I feel TERRIBLE about this, and I really feel that I need to do x y or z to make it better"--then it's Godly. On the other hand, if I am just feeling guilty, and guilty, and guilty, and I don't know what to do about it, and I can't think of anything I CAN do about it, and it's impeding my ability to serve, then I know it's time simply to let go.

Personally I don't refer to good motivation as guilt, but it can be the same feeling. As simple as this sounds, I've seen the largest part of guilt problems I've run into, due to the concept of 'possibility'. For example, a father continually telling his son to practice football eight hours a day so he can be in the NFL, every person cannot reach every possible target and if you demand so much without them choosing the goal themselves, it's likely to fail. However, if you're talking to a child four or five years old... let them dream and reach forward to see what they like and are good at. Someone trying to 'guilt' you into something will be distracting you from those (or adding so much to do, that you fail at the others). Choose your goals, prioritize, and achieve. Then choose more, and repeat.

A speaker I really like said: "There is only one variable that separates the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people [who feel a sense of debilitating shame]: they had the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection and --this was the hard part--as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were."

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Three things have worked for me when I am trying to let go of the negative. I find that shame likes to sneak its way in to every crack and crevice of my life, till I can't tell, exactly, WHAT it is that I'm even feeling guilty about. I'm never good enough, kind enough, doing enough. But I am learning to be kind to myself. Here are the three things:

- Learning to laugh at myself

-Waking up every morning and telling myself three things I like about myself

-Doing things I'm not good at. My current project is learning to ride the unicycle. I'm terrible at it. But it's fun.

When we repent, we are trying to change ourselves, and not change things that have already happened. So if we get hung up on things that are in the past, that's bad. For myself, I know I have to focus on doing what's right in each moment that I'm living in. I've done enough things wrong that it would be easy to never forgive myself. Just do your best, don't worry about it. We'll feel guilt and sorrow when we do wrong, but I don't think we should focus on the guilt, I think we should focus on doing our best, and if we do that the Lord will help us feel bad when we need to and the enemy won't have power over us. It is super important to have faith, hope, and charity, focused on Christ and His Atonement. This knowledge works to become a force in us, a power and ability to overcome challenges.

Guilt is a terrible, terrible motivator. It is a WONDERFUL -indicator- but a terrible motivator. What I mean by that--it's kind of like when you have a nauseous stomach. That lets you know that something is wrong. Guilt can be an indicator that you need to repent, or it might be an indicator that you need to start treating yourself differently. Which it is you'll have to diagnose yourself, but if you are feeling guilt it is DEFINITELY an indicator that something is wrong. But if you spend your life letting guilt (or avoiding guilt) be your MOTIVATOR you're going to be unhappy.

Life is about a process of change. Receiving the Holy Ghost also takes time and consistent effort, and with His help, we can let go of any guilt that is holding us back from progressing. We can become like God and we can find joy today.