The Effortless Way to Overcome Success Guilt - Article Intro
While guilt is an emotion that can be healthy in some cases, feeling guilty about our success is never helpful. Sometimes, it isn’t even about what we think is a success, but rather, how other people see things. Perhaps our initial reaction is to feel guilty for outdoing ourselves or others. It’s easy to rationalize away these feelings of guilt by doing what we do best; we blame the economy or our circumstances.
Understand what success guilt is:
Success guilt occurs when you feel bad about your success because you believe that it will negatively affect other people. This may include feeling bad because others are less successful than you, or feeling guilty about receiving praise or rewards for your hard work.
Success guilt is caused by the need to focus more on relationships than on personal growth and achievement. You may find that there is some opposition to your successes in the form of criticism, sarcasm, put-downs, disapproval, avoidance or rejection.
The key to overcoming success guilt is to determine where it comes from. Success guilt can be caused by many things; some very logical and some completely irrational. A lot of it has to do with the way we were raised and our perception of ourselves throughout life. Some people simply feel guilty about their success because they don't feel like they deserve it. Others have a sense of self-righteousness which makes them feel as if they should be punished for being successful. Sometimes people don't want to let go of old hurts from the past and use those feelings as a reason for sabotaging their own future. Fortunately, knowing what causes your success guilt can help you work through it.
Success guilt is common:
The term "success guilt" may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it's a very real phenomenon. It's also one that can be harmful and detrimental to your success and fulfillment in life. Success guilt is that feeling that you don't deserve success because of something negative in your life.
It might take the form of believing that you don't deserve success because you grew up poor or raised by drug-addicted parents or because you struggled as a child. Maybe you feel as though you don't deserve success because you dropped out of college or were fired from a job or divorced.
Here are some ways to identify and overcome success guilt:
The positive: Write down your past and think about how far you've come. Think about how far and fast you've progressed and let those accomplishments speak for themselves. Success is hard work, if it was easy everyone would have it. Don't underestimate the power of hard work! ? The negative: If you're finding yourself thinking negatively about your past then ask yourself what that's doing for your future? In other words, what do those negative thoughts bring into your mind? Making money is great but the true power of making money lies in what it allows you to do with it – travel, go on vacation.
Guilt feelings may seem like they’re coming from outside sources
Guilt feelings may seem like they’re coming from outside sources, but often they are projections of our own values. In other words, we feel guilty because of what we think we should have done or what we believe we should do in the future.
Guilt is a word that is used all too often in everyday life. It can be a useful emotion if it helps us to acknowledge our mistakes and try not to repeat them. However, guilt can also be a destructive force on both ourselves and those around us if we dwell on the negative aspects of our actions rather than learning from our mistakes and moving on.
In order to avoid using guilt as a destructive force in your life, consider some of the following ideas:
Always remember that you are more than one thing. When you make a mistake, don’t define yourself by it. Remind yourself that you are so much more than your actions. You are not just your guilt; you are also your hopes, dreams, and desires.
Focus on the possible solutions instead of dwelling on the problem. When you find yourself feeling guilty because of something you did or something you didn’t do, ask yourself what you could have done differently, then focus on how to move forward with this new knowledge.
You can overcome your guilt:
The feelings of guilt arise because your thoughts are focused on the past ("I did something wrong", "I made a mistake"), instead of on what you can do now to improve the situation. It is also usually associated with unhelpful beliefs such as "I'm bad", or "I'm incapable". Guilt is not helpful, and it holds you back from moving forward. So how do you overcome guilt?
Guilt is a feeling that arises from believing that you have caused a negative consequence for someone else. It's a good survival mechanism that discourages us from doing things that hurt others, which would ultimately hurt ourselves. However, guilt can be destructive if it goes too far, and convinces us that we're bad people who can't do anything right.
To overcome this feeling of guilt, you first need to make sure that the things you feel guilty about aren't actually your fault. If something bad happened as a result of your actions, but those actions were justified by the circumstances, then don't beat yourself up about it. For example, imagine that you accidentally crashed into someone's car while driving home from work. You weren't speeding or drunk – just tired – and there was no way you could have avoided it.
Conclusion:
Success guilt is a common affliction among those who strive for success. Escaping from this guilt requires a two-pronged approach. First, you must forgive yourself for past choices and behaviors. Acknowledging that you shouldn’t have placed blame on yourself for something in the past isn’t excusing your behavior or making you a bad person – it’s simply accepting what happened and what you were like at the time. When you do this, you can identify how your behaviors have changed today. Sometimes this type of guilt stems from the realization of what we could have been or what we thought we should have been – but that’s not realistic if we were meant to be another way all along.
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