Does guilt work as a motivator to change your life for the better in a longterm way? Both my observation and my experience tell me that, at best, it’s an unnecessary expenditure of precious energy, and at worst, it can lead to bad backlash. Backlash is when you find that you’ve just eaten/drunk/done the very thing that you swore you would NEVER eat/drink/do ever again, period. Whoops.

It’s actually easier, more realistic and requires less psychic energy to just anticipate that you WILL eat/drink/do it again and that hopefully next time you will have your eyes open while you’re doing it so that you can at least learn something from it. We are cyclical creatures. We all have cycles. For some that means maintaining an intense pace of life and then crashing hard 3 or 4 times a year. For others it’s feeling awesome for a few weeks and then kind of down for a week. For many the cycles are more subtle.

Whichever cycles are your pattern, they don’t define you. They are never hardwired. Some people who have a manic-depessive tendency can become instantly even-keel (comparitively) when they give up cane sugar, for example. The cycles can change and sometimes by alot.

But there are inevitably some sort of cycles. Often guilt shows up in the cycle somewhere. It feels like it’s the wind in the sail, but it’s actually more like a barnacle on the boat. It’s there, a bystander, and the boat would be cruising along anyway even if it fell off. The cycles happen whether or not you feel guilty about them.

I don’t know anyone who made it through the holidays unscathed foodwise. I didn’t. I ate something that made me feel horrible both on Thanksgiving and on Christmas. Oh well. I’m bemused. Annoyed. Surprised that I still have that kind of learning to do. But I don’t feel guilty.

I used to. I used to be convulsed with guilt and shame about my habits. Oh it was awful. It was like experiencing an earthquake of bad food choices, and then getting hit with the aftershocks of guilt and shame.

At some point I decided to drop the guilt because I realized it wasn’t helping me. And then I was confronted with this question: “If I don’t feel compelled by guilt, will I stop striving?” Indeed, what is the motivation to strive if you remove the negative emotions of self-hatred, guilt and shame? I sat with that for a long time. Quiet.

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.” –Rumi

That turned out to be it for me; I am compelled by feeling good and learning and growing and the simple joy of striving for its own sake. That is the wind in my sails. When guilt stops pushing you, what will pull you?

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