Guilt and shame tend to hold us back from achieving a lot of things in our life. It can hold us back from following our dreams, seeing a major commitment to something all the way through, from remaining consistent with our self-care and wellness routine, as well as from reaching our goals.
This is because when we make ourselves feel guilty or shameful about not doing something, we are essentially making ourselves feel as though we have done something wrong.
We often times get stuck in this rumination about that guilt or shame, and for some of us it can be hard to move past those feelings immediately. So, we end up just waiting in these negative feelings for a light to shine down on us and motivate us to get back up and try again.
But does guilt and shame affect us differently? Is it possible that we can feel guilty about not staying committed to a goal, and still be able to achieve that goal in the timeframe we originally set? Is it possible to shame ourselves about not staying committed to a goal, and still have the desire to reach it?
Believe it or not guilt and shame are one in the same. They both encompass negative emotions that are directed towards the self.
The way they differ is in how we choose to let those emotions hit us. We can shame ourselves, which is actually never a good thing to do (more on that later) and still do what we know deep down inside is the right thing to do. We can also make ourselves feel guilty about something and move on just as easily.
Guilt and shame and the connection they have to reaching your goals greatly depends on the kind of relationship you have with these two emotions. In today’s post I’m going to share with you the differences between guilt and shame, and the direct connection they have to reaching your goals.
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Guilt vs. Shame
Earlier I said one of the key differences between guilt and shame is how we choose to let those negative emotions hit us. This means how we choose to let them influence the way we see ourselves, and what we choose to believe about our own potential. While guilt and shame can both make us feel bad about ourselves, one has a much more detrimental impact than the other.
Continuing reading below for a more in-depth conversation about guilt and shame and reaching our goals.
Shame
When we shame ourselves, we are sending the message to ourselves that we have indeed done something wrong. In a sense we are emotionally punishing ourselves, which can lead to mental and in some cases physical harm as well. Shame is the act of intentionally putting yourself down and making yourself believe that you have done something wrong.
An example of this would be setting a goal to exercise for 7 days straight. If you exercise for a total of 6 days, but you don’t exercise for that last day you have a choice. To either shame yourself for not seeing the goal through to the very end, or you can simply forgive yourself and keep looking forward.
Shaming yourself for not reaching this goal would be you telling yourself “I’m so pathetic”. This statement alone is very clearly directed towards the self, and it is creating an unhealthy relationship that with yourself.
When you engage in shameful behaviors that are directed towards yourself, it can make it very hard for you to believe in your potential. You open the doors to seeing yourself as something less than what you truly are. For every little thing you may set out to achieve, but for whatever reason fail to, you will always choose to shame yourself for not achieving that goal.
This behavior is not only directed towards the self but it is also a perspective that you begin to form about yourself. Shaming yourself makes you see yourself as someone who is incapable of doing things, someone who is not intelligent, someone who is not worthy of love and support from others, and someone who is not likeable.
This can greatly impact not only your goals, but also the way you live your life.
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Guilt
When you make yourself feel guilty, you are simply acknowledging your role in a situation. Instead of directing a negative behavior specifically towards yourself, you are taking responsibility for your actions that may have prevented you from achieving something you had set out to do.
Guilt is very much like discipline in the sense that we acknowledge what went wrong, we take responsibility for why it went wrong, and we begin to engage in problem solving behaviors to avoid making ourselves feel guilty about the situation again in the same way. Take the example from above.
Making yourself feel guilty about your decision to not finish out the exercise goal all 7 days would look something like you telling yourself, “I should have just got up and exercised when I had that hour of free time instead of choosing to finish watching the movie.”
You acknowledge that you had a choice to make and instead of making the choice that would keep you on track with your goals, you choose to make the choice that was completely unrelated to your goals. While guilt is a much softer way to beat yourself up, it still has the potential to have a lot of downfall when it comes to reaching your goals.
Guilting yourself can make you develop an unhealthy relationship with everything that you set out to do. This can open the doors to never really giving any goal that you set your all. Instead, you learn how to work towards them when they matter, but when it comes down to actually reaching those goals in order to see the desired changes you want, you back out at the last minute.
What’s the connection to your goals?
So, what’s the connection between guilt and shame and your goals? They ultimately teach you how to hold yourself back. This is because you learn how to make yourself either feel like no matter how hard you try you will never be good enough, or that you will never be able to reach that goal.
Guilt and shame completely alter the way we see ourselves and the truths that we believed to be true about ourselves. This is because we learn how to see ourselves as someone who just can’t seem to continue to move forward. This greatly impacts our ability to reach our goals because we unintentionally create a system for ourselves that is not designed to help us move forward.
This system reflects the idea of taking 10 steps forward, just to fall into a deep ditch, finding the strength to pull yourself out of that ditch, just to take 5 steps back before you can take another 10 steps forward and repeat the process all over again.
What we see happening here (if you play this out in your head like a short movie) is the person failing to engage in problem solving thinking so that they are able avoid falling into the ditch time and time again.
The ditch is the last obstacle that you have to overcome in order to successfully reach your goals.
Shame holds us back and pushes us into that ditch by telling us that no matter what we do or try we are never going to reach the end. It influences us to feel very negatively about ourselves to the point where we look forward to falling into the ditch just to prove a negative thought that we may have had about ourselves true.
If you tell yourself “I’m so pathetic”, every time you see that ditch you will make sure you fall right in just to prove this negative thought right. Shaming yourself over and over again slowly kills your determination a little bit more each time. This happens until you get to the point where there is no motivation or determination to get up and try again.
Instead, you remain there in the ditch waiting for someone who you believe to be more capable of succeeding than you are, to come along and pick you up and drag you with them to the finish line.
Guilt holds us back in the sense that we trick ourselves into believing we have exhausted all options. We see the ditch, we fall into it a couple of times, and we begin to tell ourselves that no matter which way we go we can’t seem to get around the ditch. However, guilt has a learning component to it. While it does direct negative feelings towards ourselves, it is not designed to hold us back.
After a while of making yourself feel guilty about not being able to reach a goal you find that spark of fire within you that pushes you over the ditch.
Maybe you do see a different way. Maybe you learn of a different method that you never thought to try. Or maybe you simply come to the realization that you were within reach of your goal and the nervousness of the unknown of what would actually happen once you reached it scared you into limiting yourself for a short period of time.
Shame makes you feel like you will never be able to reach your goals. Guilt makes you feel like you made the wrong decision somewhere along the way, but once you bounce back from the poor choice you will indeed propel forward.
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Overcoming guilt and shame to reach your goals
It’s never easy to avoid engaging in these negative behaviors and directing them towards yourself. Especially when you may have felt as though you really did do all that you could do to reach your goal, but you just weren’t able to. The good thing about these behaviors is that while they can be detrimental to our emotional, mental, and in some cases physical health, they are not permanent.
Meaning they can be reversed.
There are tons of things that you can do to avoid shaming or guilting yourself when you run into obstacles that seem to be harder than others to overcome. The key to it all is choosing to love yourself through whatever your struggle may be. Even when you are shaming yourself, choose to love yourself in spite of that shame. When you make yourself feel guilty about something, choose to love yourself through the guilt.
Self-love is the greatest proclamation of love that we could ever receive from anyone. This is because it is a clear message to ourselves and other people that we 100% accept ourselves. When you have such a solid foundation and relationship with yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, and your flaws, you always have the ability to turn any negative into a positive.
Especially when it is a behavior directed towards yourself because you know it is simply a moment of weakness, but not something permanent that defines your true character.
Self-love is not easy and it is not something that happens overnight. However, that does not mean it is something you are incapable of learning how to do. No matter how old you are, or how much life you have lived and experienced, you can always take that first step towards being more compassionate, patient, kind, and gentle with yourself.
When this happens, you will be amazed at all the goals and other things you are able to accomplish in your life. So, the next time you find yourself shaming or making yourself feel guilty about not reaching a goal, take a deep breath and just pause for a minute in that moment. Feel the rhythm of your breathing, let the tears fall, feel the tension in your body disperse, and just tell yourself “It is ok.”
We are not perfect nor are we meant to be. The best part about being human is watching yourself continuously grow and evolve from different stages in your life in order for you to grow into the person you knew you were always destined to be. That begins with having the courage to overcome guilting and shaming yourself about being human, and moving to a place of love for your humanity and humility.
That all starts with you.
-Xo
Kimora