Anita came late to the office and felt guilty about it? Still, she completed all pending tasks that day, came up with more ideas and achieved much more. With the baggage of feeling guilty, but determined to take action, she had a much better day than usuals.
There are numerous examples like these, where we performed much better because of feeling guilty.
Still why guilt is considered a negative emotion or a bad thing? Why shouldn’t we use it to get our determination and achieve goals?
But there are guilts like someone cheating or stealing from others, we may define as morally incorrect guilts. So let’s categorize “Guilt” as (In want of better names to Type 1 and Type 2):
#Type 1: – Less offensive Guilt: Not meeting ours or others expectations without actually doing something morally incorrect. Being late to the office, or eating more sweets or binge tv watching are the kinds of guilt which leads us feeling down but is not that big a crime.
#Type 2: – Offensive Guilt: All other types of “Guilts”, morally incorrect types, cheating or purposely hurting someone. These are the cases that come when another person is hurt or hurts the social well being and more.
We should use “Type 1 Guilt” to our advantage. In fact, sometimes it happens; we feel so guilty about not studying earlier that we put extra effort to study the whole night. So why not consciously use it to improve ourselves…
As long as we control the guilt(emotion), we can use it to help us grow…What u say?
Disclaimer: Please use this at your own risk 🙂