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“Guilt is anger directed at ourselves.”
Peter McWilliams

Guilt. Although it can sometimes be a healthy signal that you have done something that goes against what you think is right and that you should change it can also become a huge and terrible thing makes life unnecessarily hard and heavy.

So in this article I’ll share some tips that can help you to minimize guilt right now and prevent much of it in the future. I hope you’ll find something useful here that will make your life lighter and more enjoyable.

Accept and let go of the feeling.

If you are feeling guilty about not getting enough exercise, people you may not have had time for lately, missed opportunities, not sticking to your goals this year or something else then don’t reject that feeling. Instead, accept it.

Tell yourself: “This is how I feel right now and I accept it”.

This sounds counterintuitive and perhaps like you’re giving up. However by accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into this problem. It then tends to just kinda lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel. And oftentimes it becomes so weak after while that it just moves out of your inner focus and disappears.

Find the actions you can take. Then take them.

After you have accepted how you feel it becomes much easier to think clearly. Now, find the actions you can take to change what you are feeling guilty about. Shape up your diet starting tonight with a healthy dinner. Make a specific schedule where you exercise three times each week and your first workout is today. Catch up with people and reconnect with them.

Find a system that keeps you consistent.

So the first two tips can help you today. But it’s easy to fall back into your old behaviors after a while. To avoid that you can set up a system. This will take time and you will stumble. But the more you use it the easier and better it will stick.

A few suggestions for that system would be:

• Write everything down. Ideas, meetings, you biggest goal(s). Keep those notes on paper, cell phones, white boards and your computer as reminders and inspiration so you stay on track with things like your career, social life and health.
• Use a limited to-do list. Do you have a to-do list? Think about what the absolutely most important items on the list are. Just two or three. Then put them on a new to-do list. This list will seem less daunting and I have found that it makes it easier to actually take action and get those most important things done.
• Set limits in your daily life. If your life is overfilled with stuff you may need to set some limits. You may need to stop doing some of the least important things, the things that if you are honest really don’t matter that much. And set a limit for how many times you will check inboxes etc. per day. Checking on stuff all the time creates a lot of stress. And say no if you really don’t have the time. By going about things this way you will have more time and energy for the things that you may feel guilty about missing too often right now.

Be OK with being good but also being human.

On one hand it’s great to challenge yourself and doing what you think is right or fun or exciting as much as you can. But on the other hand you have to balance that with being human.

Take it easy on yourself. If you slip don’t beat yourself up. It’s not a big deal. Everyone slips from time to time. Just get back on the horse the next day again. But learn what you can so you don’t fall into the same hole or do the same mistake again.

Striving for or expecting perfection can be pretty dangerous. Because you will never feel like you or what you do is good enough.

Even though what you do, for example, is just fine 90 percent of the time you still feel deep inside like you are not OK. No matter what you do. You have set the bar at an inhuman level.

If you expect perfection then your self esteem will stay low, your stress levels will shoot up and you will feel disappointed or guilty even though things may have indeed been very good overall.

So stretch yourself. But remember that you are human. Finding that balance will make it easier to both to achieve things and to find enjoyment in your accomplishment.

Live by your own standards rather than someone else´s.

Who set your standards and values? Society, your parents or friends, media or advertising? Where did they come from?

One big problem people run into with guilt is that that try to live up to standards that just don’t fit them or that are simply unrealistic.

So question things, figure out where they came from. Then see if those standards and values serve you well. If not, then consciously choose your own human standards for all kinds of things rather than just accepting someone else’s standards.

As an adult you have responsibility for yourself. But you also have the option to live your own life according to your own rules. Choosing and using that option can make life both a lot lighter and at the same time more productive and exciting.

Forgive yourself.

Perhaps you feel guilty about things in your past.

Well, if you look at it from a very practical perspective then forgiveness is the smart thing to do. It saves you from a lot of pain. It makes you clearheaded again.

Forgiveness centres you in the now and in yourself once again. You stop regretting what is already in the past. You stop feeding your thought loops of negativity with more energy. And now you can use that energy and focus that was previously spent strengthening those loops to start moving forward again.

It might not always be easy to forgive. But it has many big benefits. And personally I would be a bit wary of playing up forgiveness and what happened more than necessary. Many of our challenges – not all, of course – become so large and complicated in our heads that we build huge, monumental problems. Making mountains out of molehills is a good way to strengthen a victim mentality. It’s an effective way to paralyse yourself.

Instead, focus on forgiving yourself for what happened in the past. You are only human and you cannot change the past anyway.

By forgiving yourself you can over time release that pent up guilt and let it go.

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“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
Henry James

“Be kind to unkind people – they need it the most.”
Ashleigh Brilliant

“Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”
Mother Teresa

This is a short guide to being a kinder person. It’s not always easy though and I focus on being more consistent rather than trying to be perfect.

But why even make the effort to be kinder? What’s the point? Why not just go about things as you usually do?

Three reasons pop up in my mind.

• By being kinder to others you tend to be kinder towards yourself. Perhaps a bit counter intuitive but this has been my experience.
• You get what you give. Yes, some people will be miserable and ungrateful no matter what you do for or to them. But most people will over time treat you as you treat them. Unfortunately, a lot of people will not take the first step. So if you want a change in your life you have to take responsibility for it and make those first moves. Sitting around waiting for someone else to do them could take the rest of your life.
• It makes your world and the world all in all a nicer place to live in.

So that’s the why. Here is the how to.

1. Be grateful for what you got. It’s very easy to take yourself, your life and the people around you for granted. Avoid that by using two minutes from time to time for reflecting on what you can be grateful for. Or write it down each day in a gratitude journal.
2. Express it. Don’t hold in what you are grateful for. Say it. It may be that you are happy to have brought an umbrella on a rainy day. Or just a small thing such as saying thanks to someone for holding your books for a minute. But even such small expressions of gratitude can make your or someone else’s day better.
3. Minimize judgments. No one likes to be judged. And the more you judge people the more you tend to judge yourself. So it’s a lose-lose situation.
4. Take it easy with the criticism. Constructive criticism has its place. But too much of that or criticism that won’t help anyone just makes people feel and perform worse. Try encouraging them instead. It makes work and the people involved – including you – easier to deal with and more fun.
5. Try to understand the other side. It’s easy to stick to your point of view. But you can gain powerful insights about the other person and yourself too by trying to understand their point of view. This also tends to decrease harshness and negativity and can make it easier to reach an understanding where both parties feel more satisfied with the solution.
6. Make positive observations about people. This is pretty similar to being grateful for what you got but a habit I like to keep in mind and use. Replace the habit of spotting the things that annoy you about people with one where you make small or big positive observations about them. It could be their great sense of style when it comes to shoes, how they always make you laugh when you need it or simply that they are always on time. Be sure to tell them that.
7. Remember the small and kind gestures. Let someone in into your lane while driving your car. And hold up the door for the next person.
8. Remind yourself. It’s easy to forget. Use whiteboards, your cell phone, post-its and other reminders in your daily environment.
9. Awash yourself in the positive memories of the times when you were kind. When you remind yourself how good it felt to be kind and how you helped someone out and made them feel good too it becomes easier and easier to stay kind instead of questioning the habit.
10. Take the smarter and higher road. Don’t be someone the people can walk all over, set boundaries and say no when needed. But recognize that unnecessary conflicts just waste your time and energy. And that some people are so addicted to the drama and conflicts that you will never win or reach an understanding between the two of you. There are more fun and good things to spend time on in your life. So try to reach an understanding in a kind sort of way. But if it doesn’t work then remove yourself from getting drawn into their conflicts and make the day better for both you and possibly them.
11. Be kind to yourself. It’s OK and something that a lot of people don’t do enough. And it seeps over into your world and how you treat others just like how being kind to others seeps back into how you treat yourself.

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“Nobody will think you’re somebody if you don’t think so yourself.”
African-American proverb

“Self-love is not opposed to the love of others.”
Dr. Karl Menninger

“Happiness is: Looking in a mirror and like what you see .”
Author Unknown

People have a need for affection and being liked. But it’s very easy to make a mistake here and go about it the wrong way.

Because while trying to get others to like you may seem like a simple and common solution there is an alternative. One that I find works better.

It is to focus on liking yourself more rather than trying to get people to like you.

Here are six reasons why I put my focus in that place. And after that a brief guide to how you can increase how much you like yourself.

1. Liking yourself gives you power and strength.

If you go for trying to get people to like you you’ll most likely come off as needy and desperate a lot of the time.

This is a bad position to put yourself in. Because liking and respecting yourself goes hand in hand with people liking and respecting you.

If you bend to other people all the time then they may like what you do for them. But they may not like you on a deeper level because there is a weakness and lack of confidence and personal power there.

2. People like people who like themselves.

What is attractive to a friend, an employer or a potential partner? To me, it seems like a lot of this boils down to people liking people who like themselves.

Someone who likes him/herself is positive, confident, takes care of his/her health and opportunities in school/at work/in life.

3. More inner stability, much less of an emotional rollercoaster.

Getting compliments and being liked is wonderful. The problem is just that if you rely too much on validation from others then you let the outside world, other people, control how you feel.

And that can be a real roller coaster.

Because if you really need the positive validation from people then it’s hard to avoid listening to their negative input. Or you may feel bad when there is a temporary lack in the validation.

So what do you do?

You let go of focusing on needing that input and replace it with focusing on validating and liking yourself instead.

4. Life becomes more fun and relaxing.

If you like yourself then it becomes natural to just be your best self and let people like the real you.

Doing the opposite and trying to get people to like you leads to a lack of honesty in any kind of relationship and life becomes a like walking on egg shells while using different masks with different people.

5. What you think and feel about yourself flows over.

The more you like yourself, the easier it becomes to like, help and be kind to other people. How much you like or do not like yourself flows over into your world.

6. You minimize self sabotage.

If you don’t like yourself, if you deep down don’t really think you deserve what you go after then you will tend to sabotage for yourself. Perhaps in subtle ways.

You may get a gut feeling that this success is wrong and so you start doing stuff that screws things up.

If you like yourself there will be a lot less self made obstacles in your mind to overcome on your path to success.

How to like yourself more

So, the benefits sound pretty good. But how do you go about changing how you feel about yourself?

Here is a brief but in my experience very effective guide that works in real life.

Do the right thing.

I write about this a lot. That’s because it’s simple thing to keep in mind and if you live it then it can bring your awesome results.

When you do what you think is the right thing then your self esteem goes up. If you just coast then you tend to feel kinda lame about yourself.

So do awesome stuff and you feel awesome about yourself. Do OK stuff and feel OK about yourself.

This is not always an easy thing. But people who do the right thing get fine inner rewards (and often outer rewards too). What you do tends to correspond to what you get in the long run.

What is the right thing?

Well, that’s up to you to decide and it can vary from life to life and situation to situation.

Some of the things I think is the right thing to do is to keep my life in order and organized, to workout regularly and take care of my health, to be positive and open, to spend time doing things I really like doing, to get out of my comfort zone and face fears and to be a person of action.

When you do the right thing you like yourself more and so the self sabotage decreases. The standards you set for yourself flows over to your world too.

What you accept or don’t accept from yourself is what you tend to accept or not accept from other people.

And what you think and do to the world around you – for example being judgmental or being open and kind – is how you tend to think about yourself and treat yourself too.

Don’t take yourself for granted or focus on the wrong things. Appreciate yourself.

What you do or do not do has a huge effect on how you view yourself and how much you like yourself. But what you focus on in your mind is also important.

Because if you do good things but then focus on small faults or failures then that won’t help you.

So make a habit of focusing on appreciating the good things about yourself. Take two minutes right now to think about positive things about you or good things you have done and accomplished.

Or take a few minutes tonight to write down five good things about yourself in a journal.

This extends to what you focus on in the world around you too. Because as I mentioned in the previous tip, what you focus on in the people around you tends to be how you see and treat yourself.

So you may want to add five or ten things that you appreciate about the people around you to those journal entries and two minute appreciation sessions.

The more you do things like these, the more this kind of thinking will naturally pop up in your everyday life too.

You are changing how you think about yourself and what you have a tendency to focus on.

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”
Brian Tracy

One big problem that I used to run into is that you simply don’t seem to be able to get started with making a change.

You want to make a change but feel stuck. You don’t seem to be able to take action and start moving.

If you feel this is a challenge for you then here’s what I have done to get out of such a place. Perhaps you’ll find something useful in my experience.

Do a reality check.

It’s actually pretty simple to get started. Even if you feel stuck. It may however not be as easy as you wish and there lies a problem.

Making a change isn’t that easy and it will require effort. You have to accept that. And work from that model of reality. If you think that things will fall into your lap effortlessly or by some kind or magic then any effort or action will feel so hard and difficult that you will probably not even try. Or if you try and fail, you’ll just quit instead of trying again.

So check your reality. Are you looking for an easy answer or a magic pill? Or will you work hard while at the same time listening to advice that can help to make the process easier and allow you to work smarter?

A few tips for finding a view of reality that will help you:

1. What have other people before you or around you done to improve their situation?

Ask yourself this question. Talk to people who have made the change you want to make (lose weight, quit smoking, improve the social life etc.). Or if you can’t find anyone, read the top rated books on Amazon.com on that topic or read blog articles. But make sure that you take advice from someone who has actually been in your shoes and gone where you want to go.

2. How much work am I putting in?

It’s very easy to be a bit delusional about how much actual work you are putting to make that change. Instead of guesstimating, ask yourself this question and be honest and measure it. Log what you spend your time on during a week. It’s not uncommon that you need to put in more work than you may think to make that change. And that you doing a bit less actual work than you think.

3. Realize that you are responsible for your life.

I really like this quote from Nathaniel Branden’s The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: “No one is coming”.

You can look for the next big thing that will fix you. Read more blog articles. Read more personal development books. Look for people to help you. And yes, some articles or books or people will give you support and insights that resonate deeply with you. But in the end, if you are an adult then no one is coming. No one is coming to save you. You have to take responsibility for your own life and what happens in it. Other things and people can certainly aid you quite a bit. But you are responsible.

You can go around blaming society or some people for your problems in your social life (or finances or health). You can always find scapegoats to judge to feel better about yourself. You can look for people that will “fix you”. You can do this for the rest of your life if you like. It won’t change much. Whatever has to be done, it’s you who have to take responsibility and do it.

Yeah, things might always not go your way and you will probably have bad luck from time to time. But you still have to focus on yourself and doing what you can do in whatever situation that may arise in your world.

4. If you have a really serious problem, seek professional help.

This is also a part of doing a reality check. How serious is your problem or challenge? There is a difference between getting a bit nervous before a meeting at work or a date and having a big panic attack and feeling like you can’t breathe or are about to faint.

If you have a serious problem, then please seek professional help. The advice on this blog is for small or medium sized problems (at least as I experience it). If you have a really bad problem then the advice here or on other blog or in books may still help you a bit.

But I still believe that best option in such situations is to seek professional help. Perhaps one on one counseling with someone with vast experience, someone that comes highly recommended.

Get out of your comfort zone.

Doing a reality check isn’t that fun all the time. If you are anything like I was you may have noticed that you aren’t putting in enough work or that you aren’t really taking responsibility for your life. So it can be an uncomfortable thing to do.

After you have gotten a more accurate picture of what needs to be done you need to do it. This requires moving out of your comfort zone in real life and not just while sitting comfortably on your sofa.

I don’t think there is much one can do to avoid discomfort when making a change. Yes, you can lessen the discomfort and you can make it easier for yourself. But trying to avoid it completely is one thing that makes people go running around in circles for magic pills and leaves them stuck with little actual progress to show. That’s why you need to do a reality check. You can’t make much progress or live life fully if you live in fantasy world where everything is supposed to be painless and easy.

Now, there are some things you can do to make it easier to get out of your comfort zone and start taking action.

1. Make one small change.

If you try to change many habits at the same time for example then that will probably fail. You will spread yourself too thin and run out of energy and time as regular life starts to interfere.

Focus on changing one habit at a time. And if you have trouble making a big change then start with a smaller one. It’s better to make small changes little by little in real life than walking around in endless daydreams of drastic and incredible change that never comes. As you make one small positive change your confidence goes up and it becomes easier to make the next change. And over the months and this year and the next you can make a lots and lots of progress.

Let’s say you want to be less nervous and awkward in social situations.

To solve that you can take small steps. Steps like first just saying hi to people. And being more involved in conversations at work or in school to exercise your conversation muscles. After a while those things will feel more comfortable. And so you can expand your comfort zone a little bit more.

And so you gradually desensitize yourself to social situations or whatever you are uncomfortable with. You make it the new “normal” for you.
So, identify your problem. Then make a plan with some smaller steps you can take to gradually lessen your discomfort.

2. Make it social.

Sign up for a course in something so you have to be there each Thursday and learn. Locking in this time into your schedule probably makes you more likely to show up than if you will do “some self-studies sometime when you get the time”.

If you are going to a party where you know few people then it may be easier to bring a friend. If you have decided to start going to the gym it might be easier to actually get going and keep going there every week if you have a gym-partner.

However, there are potential downsides to bringing friends too. If you are at the party with your friend then you might not meet and get to know that many new people. If you are going to the gym with a partner it might lead to the two of you talking and focusing less on getting a great workout.

But try it out and find what works for you. By involving more people and/or signing up for courses somewhere you will feel commitment to people you like and a bit of positive social pressure to actually go there when you are supposed to instead of slacking off on the sofa.

3. Ask yourself questions that changes your perspective.

If it feels uncomfortable to do something then I find that I can often reduce that by changing how I think about it in my mind.

I do so by asking myself better questions. Question like:

• What’s awesome about this?
• Will this matter in 5 years?
• Honestly, am I overcomplicating and overthinking this?

Sounds a bit silly perhaps. But by providing better questions you can get more positive answers out of yourself. And you replace destructive thought loops in your mind that can paralyze you from taking action with a healthier and a bit more relaxed perspective.

4. Focus on the positive past.

Realize that it can be fun to get out of your comfort zone despite what your mind and feelings might be telling you before you get started. Think back to the previous times when you have broken out of your comfort zone. Focus on the positive memories, when you got out there, when you took a chance. And you will probably remember that it wasn’t so bad, it was actually fun and exciting and something new to you.

A lot of times we automatically play back negative experiences – or negative interpretations of events – in our minds before we are about to do something. And we forget about the positive memories and our previous, positive achievements. Avoid that trap. Let the good memories flow through your mind instead.

Final words.

If you are here then you have probably heard about this blog from a friend or perhaps you had a problem that you wanted to solve and found it via Google. If you are here then you probably want to make a positive change in your life in some way.

You may still need time to get started with that. Perhaps you haven’t had enough yet and not reached a point where you know deep down that you really need to get started with making that change now. If that is the case then this article will be here when you are ready, when you one day wake up and say to yourself “That’s enough! I’m sick of this and I’m getting started with changing this today”.

If you are ready now then get started. Use the advice in this article to start making your 2010 the best year ever.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23912576@N05/ / CC BY 2.0

“He who knows others is learned;
He who knows himself is wise.”
Lao-tzu

Who are you? What is your daily and weekly life really about?

Those not always easy questions to answer. So today I’d like to share three tips that have helped me to get to know myself a bit better and to see my life more accurately.

1. What part of you do you see in them?

What we see in others is quite often what we see in ourselves. And what irritates us in people may be what we don’t like in ourselves. What you judge in someone you are actually judging in yourself.

Therefore what you notice and what irritates you in others can teach you important things about yourself. Things you may not be aware of. In a way people can be like a mirror for you. A mirror that can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself.

So, what people generally irritate you? What do you often judge or criticize people for?

What can that tell you about you?

2. Do the unusual thing.

When faced with a choice in your daily life, step back for a minute and think. Then take the option that is and feels unusual for you.

If you often back down just don’t for this one time. If you often get into arguments with people then just this one time don’t and instead just let it go or treat the other person with kindness. Do the opposite of what you usually do and see what happens (while using common sense of course). Do something new and something you wouldn’t expect from yourself.

This is a fun and great way to get new experiences and to learn things about the world and about yourself that you wouldn’t if you kept going like you usually do. It’s also a great way to be surprised about life as things often turn out more positively than in your fear filled daydreams if you just take action.

Getting stuck in the same old routine until it becomes a rut can suck the life out of you. Doing the unusual thing in small and big situations, no matter how it goes, is a great way to feel alive again and to reveal aspects of yourself that may have been hidden from you.

3. Journal.

Journaling is a fine way to get a more accurate picture of yourself and your life. A few ways that I have used journaling to get to know myself and my life are:

• Journal about how you use your time. Just write down what you do during one day. Or during one week. Write down what you spend your time on and how much time you spend on each thing. You may, as me, be surprised about how much time you waste on procrastinating and pretty pointless busy work. Even if you may have an image of yourself as an effective person.
• Journal about what you think. What do you think about during a normal day? Or a week? Write it all down. By doing so you can find recurring patterns of thought such as fears or maybe that you spend a lot of time regretting what happened in the past. Or you may find that you are actually a more positive person than you may think. This is a really interesting exercise because it can help you spot both positive things and negative things about yourself and just how accurate your current image of yourself is. You’ll probably run into some surprises.
• Journal about what you eat. I used this to lose weight. If you want to lose weight you have to consume less calories that you use. So how do you know what to eat and how much? You got to monitor it in some way. I used the free and very simple Fitday.com to monitor what I eat during the day. This is essential stuff. Because the three normal and most of the time actually pretty healthy meals I ate in the past consisted of the same amount of calories I used during the day. So little progress was made. To keep things within effective and healthy limits I think it’s important to monitor what you do. But not to get obsessed about these things though. The main point is to keep an eye on what you are actually doing instead of guesstimating a whole lot.

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