Mastering Your Guilt
My journey of learning how to master my disasters plays a central role in my memoir. But disasters take all different forms, from the big stuff like death and disease to the everyday stuff like dealing with guilt and remorse.
One of the things I struggled with was my interactions with my kids when I was under stress (which was often daily). I’d scream and shout at them like a lunatic. Can you relate? It wasn’t until I discovered the 5Rs in my Buddhist classes, that I radically changed the way I dealt with my unhelpful, torturous emotions.
Do you know anyone who could benefit from mastering their internal demons? Why not invite them to read my memoir so they can be part of this journey too!
Here is an excerpt from the book that helps to explain how to better master remorse and guilt:
‘I’m a failure, a fraud, a hypocrite,’ I admitted morosely to my Buddhist class as they sat quietly around me, listening to my story.
‘I constantly lose control and scream like a maniac at my kids, and then I’m so angry with myself that I secretly binge-eat crappy lollies, the same ones I’ve educated people for years not to eat. I follow it up with a bottle of wine. I poison and punish myself for my bad behaviour like some kind of deranged, self-abusing, candy-gorging, alcoholic psychopath. Then I feel so disgusted with my behaviour that I start the whole cycle again.’
Maree and the class nodded knowingly. I was spilling my guts out in an attempt to gain some much-needed help rather than elicit sympathy.
‘Are you aware of the Five Rs?’ Maree enquired.
I shook my head.
‘Ah, well, you see they’re a set of golden rules designed to help people when they screw up.’
She held up a closed fist and then listed each of the five Rs as she opened up her five fingers one by one.
‘One—Recognise that I did or said the wrong thing.
Two—Regret that I shouldn’t have done that.
Three—Recompense, how can I fix this or make up for it?
Four—Rejoice that I have now rectify my mistake.
Five—Remember to do my best to not repeat it.
See? Now my hand has gone from closed to open. Your mind should be the same.’
Finally, a process I could use to deal with the daily fails without beating myself up. I remembered what my yoga master Connor said:
‘When you gain knowledge you gain wisdom. And if you then ignore that wisdom you are ignorant because you are ignoring the lessons learned.’
Using the 5 Rs is a simple and powerful way to shortcut your suffering around guilt. USE them as a guiding principle to stop beating yourself up about what you’ve said or done in the past. The Five Rs allow you to craft a better response to your crisis and stop you from repeating the same karmic mistakes in the future. Here’s a few more practical tools you can use to dispel anger, deal with guilt and build a better future for yourself.
PRACTISE forgiveness.
Karma tells us everything happens for a reason and every action we put out there we receive back in kind. So the absolute worst action you can take in any bad situation, at least from a karmic viewpoint (let alone a moral viewpoint) is to say or do things to intentionally harm or hurt others. It will simply magnify and come back to haunt you. Better to practise forgiveness and remember that the best revenge is to focus on making your own life happier.
STOP planting bad karmic seeds.
If you’ve done or said anything in the past to create the conditions leading to your current bad situation then you need to accept your role in this, then ditch your judgemental attitude and commit to changing your behaviour going into the future. Adopt kindness as your new religion.
CREATE better future memories.
If you’re in the midst of a crisis and want to improve your future sense of self try creating better future memories. That means doing a little soul searching, perhaps by reflecting back compassionately on the people and events leading up to the betrayal and changing your backstory to something more positive. Just as a seed grows into a tree, so karma can magnify and grow which means even the small good deeds count.