EP 73: Can Guilt be Good?
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So, let's get to it.
Alyssa Dver:
Guilt is quite a tool. If you have a Jewish or Italian mother, I'm sure there's other cultures, boy, do they take advantage of guilt? Right? If you keep eating that dessert, you'll never get a husband. Ya, could have been a doctor, right? About this is one that I've gotten from my mom, I didn't know your phone was broken. You know, you could call me once in a while. My answer to that was, well, I guess your phone is broken to then. But you know, sometimes guilt can be good, it can be a motivator, it can really kind of get you from a place of I really need to do something. But it can also be the opposite, it can make you feel less than worthless. Right, so let's talk about guilt for a little bit.
And yeah, it's a very powerful emotion or actually, I'm going to reposition that as a reaction to one of the confidence fears and confidence fears for those of you who are new to the podcast, I talk about these a lot. These are the fears that trigger in our head, this question of our confidence, which is the fear of failure, the fear of regret, and the fear of rejection. Now they're all very connected, in some ways, even synonymous. But guilt really hits hard on that fear of regret, that we did or didn't do something that we really could have, should have wanted to. So, when we don't do that thing, or we do that thing that we regret, that we go, dang, I could have had a V8, we have a choice, surprise, surprise, confidence is a choice, but so is guilt. Guilt is a choice. We can use it to motivate, like I said earlier, we can kind of go Alright, let's do something differently. Next time, let's fix the situation, let's get off our butt and stop feeling badly. But the other side of that choice is to wallow in it, right? Is to wallow in it. It’s the opposite. Or we can simply just discard it. Now some people I'm not one of them, can take that guilt and be like whatev just put it aside, compartmentalize it. But I'm not like that I can't do that I am one of those people that has to process the emotion to feel better about it. But I do have friends, I have a lot of friends and a lot of them happened to be male for that reason, is that they can take something like a guilty situation where they're feeling badly about it, and just be like, yeah, wasn't my best moment. Put it away, tuck it away, not process it and just move on.
But for the rest of us who are, I don't know, maybe just need to really unpack that need to resolve it can't just tuck it away, throw it out, let it roll off our back, I want to really continue this conversation this this podcast dialogue at least or I should say monologue with really understanding that guilt isn't necessarily our enemy. Because it's another one of those signals that I talked about. It's a signal that your brain is saying, hey, girlfriend, hey, pay attention. And I say girlfriend, whoever you are girlfriend boyfriend. It is a signal that something's not right. It could be something trivial. It could be I did this recently; I went to a restaurant, I left a tip and then like as I was driving away, I was recalculating ugh, I should have left more money. Right? It was a little guilty. What did I do I turned around and went back, gave more money to the waitress. So, you know, it can be anything that causes you to say wait, Timeout, timeout. You did something that didn't feel right. Now that feeling of not right is very clearly a violation of your own values. It's something that you feel is important. That's something that you want, or you need that you see value in. So maybe the value I felt that day when I didn’t tip enough is boy, if I was a waitress or waitstaff person, I would be upset. And I don't want people to be upset if something like that an extra dollar or two is not going to impact my lifestyle, but it may make that person feel better. And the fact that I went back, I think just was showed some respect for that person. So needless to say, it could be something is, shall I say, trivial, even trivial, like, you never go and want to buy something, and then you don’t, and you ruminate, like, I really should go back and get it and right. So, if it's something you really value, you need or want and you don't respect that as trivial as my examples here, or as significant as I should have been a doctor, or, boy, I haven't talked to that cousin in 20 years. Anything that's triggering that guilt feeling is a signal that you have violated your own values, needs and wants. Hmm, let that sit with you for a minute.
How about those days that you go, boy, I wasted all that time on Instagram, or I'm not managing my time well, or whatever it might be. You can really look at that as if I'm feeling guilty. It's because I'm doing something that's not aligned with what I value, need or want. Simple in concept, right? So, what I would like to do is take a quick sponsor break, and I want to come back and really talk through when you feel that guilt that signal. What are your options, what can you do to resolve it so that it's not lingering in your brain rattling around, taking extra energy and cognitive cycle so we'll be right back.
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Alyssa Dver:
Thanks for coming back and hear hearing how we can kibosh all that guilt, or at least some of it, I would say I think guilt is, is such a powerful weapon in so many cases that people not just mothers, of course, but lots and lots of people, salespeople, especially like to create it for us even if it doesn't exist, right. I have gone through lots of sales methodologies and trainings. And, you know, creating the pain for people, for those of you who have been through some of the similar trainings, creating pain for people is a way of making them feel guilty. It's terrible. If you think about it, right? It's really horrible. But that latent pain that they didn't even know they had you creating that, oh, my God, I really need this and want this, you know, it's guilt. It's guilt. It's, it's not great. But again, let's look at guilt as an opportunity. Let's look at it as an opportunity for ourselves. When we're feeling guilty about something, again, it is a signal that we have violated our own values, needs and wants something that's important to us. And again, that could be something that we did or didn't do, said or didn't say. And subsequently, our brain is making us revisit and say, hey, this is why I wasn't cool. It wasn't cool. So, we have some pretty, I would say relatively obvious options. But the key here is to recognize that feeling that signal and make a decision to choose what you're going to do. Now of course, one of your choices, as I said earlier, is to just ignore it, let it go away. It's too bad. It's history, whatever. And if you can do that if you choose to do that, Rock on. Awesome but for those, again, like myself, who really aren't particularly good at doing that, letting it roll off the back or compartmentalize it, we have some other options.
So, one of them is we can choose to say, that wasn't my best, I don't want to do that again, in the future, I'm going to do something differently. I'm going to choose to respect my values, needs and wants so that I don't repeat the performance. And it could be anything it could be, you know, I regret the way I present it, I regret the way that I got defensive in a pitch it could be I regret spending all that money on x, or wasting all that time on y. Right, so any of those things, particularly if they weren't terribly, shall we say destructive that they are just like, alright, that just thought I'll move on. But I'm going to do it differently next time, you know, to really consider what could you do? How could you do it next time? How can you recognize when it's happening again, so to use it as a learning moment for yourself, of course. Now, I know sometimes that's easier said than done. But if you're making that conscious decision to say, what I just did really wasn't my best. And I'm going to really work hard to do it better next time. That's a really big step in the right direction. So that's option number one.
Option number two, may sound so obvious when I say it, but rather than just planning for the future, what can you do now to fix it? And there's always options, I don't care if it's a presentation that's already been done, or something that you were unable to complete a degree, whatever it is, you have options. And so is there a way that you can fix whatever it was that you did or didn't do in the way that you were hoping to, or you would want to. And in that moment of taking back your power, your control to choose what you want to do, you're basically saying to your brain to that guilt, I hear you, I recognize that that is not the way I wanted things to go. And I am choosing how I want them to go from here. That's what confident people do. So, figuring out that next step, very important.
Now, part of that can also be is there a particular person or type of person that often makes you feel guilty? And in that, I want to invite you to think about something that maybe that person, or that situation, has a pattern has a reason why they're doing that to you that they're making you feel guilty? First of all, are you enabling them by reacting in a guilty way, kind of like a bully, not kinda, like a bully. But also, that that person who's creating the guilt for you probably is offloading some of their own. Again, typical bully behavior, right? I should have could have would have in subsequently I feel badly about myself, and I'm going to make you feel badly because then we're both in the same boat, the guilty boat. So, when somebody does that to you, or you allow somebody to make you feel guilty, maybe take a step back, and also make the choice that you're not going to react, that you're not going to be defensive and maybe even acknowledge to that person. You know, you're right. I wasn't my best then but I'm really working hard to correct it. So, thank you for pointing that out. And even if it's your mother, and even if it's a dessert that she's harping on, you can say you know what, Mom, I love this dessert. And I am working hard on my weight. But I appreciate you letting me know and I will take it from here. Whatever, stand up, make the choice.
All right, my friends. Hope it's giving you good food for thought deserted all that. Thanks for joining me again here on Real Confidence. Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media. channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All rights reserved.