Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Few days back, I have written a post on how we always end up in guilt. I received a very interesting comment on my thoughts. But I am not buying the commenter’s argument completely. Not because I don’t agree with the commenter’s thoughts, but because I think there is some misunderstanding between what we both are communicating.

Before I try to extend my thoughts, I recommend you to read following comment, which I received –

I refuse to live with guilt; rather
I want to train my brain / my thoughts in a way so that it never ever
ends up in guilt. The goal here is not to live with guilt. Guilt comes
because it’s human nature to see ‘greener grass on the other side of
the fence’. Once you train yourself to see the ‘greenest grass on YOUR
side always’, the guilt will go away forever. This does not happen so
quickly. It requires months and years of practice. To fill guilt free I
always think where I was before years and where I am right now, rather
then where Bill Gates was and where he is. I always think I have
perfect fitness / perfect wealth / perfect family / perfect friends
suitable to my need and requirement at this moment of life and I enjoy
it fullest.

So here is how I live…

• I make decision to go to bed late
myself and can see result as waking up late next day morning. I believe
from bottom of my heart that it was right thing to do because of
something important than waking up early next day. No guilt when I wake
up late.

• I wake up early with the thought that ‘early bird catches the worm’ and rush to get ready to catch ‘THE WORM’ without guilt.

• When I eat pizza or drink soda, I think I am consciously working on
my digestive system to train it to absorb some of the ‘bad’ stuff so
that in emergency it can still survive on that ‘bad’ stuff.

• When I eat salad, I think it is good for my system but I make up my
mind to eat tasty and spicy food at some defined schedule in a way it
doesn’t affect adversely to my system.

• I believe office pays me for 40hr/week. I make sure I work 40hr/week
for the office, weather it is during day / evening / weekend, doesn’t
matter. I can not accept myself to cheat office by working less then
40hr but I know something is important to be done during day time and I
do it in controlled manner so it doesn’t harm office.

• I always work diligently in the office so never end up in guilt.

• I make sure I spend 100% quality time with my wife. If I have
something to take care and it take away some time from my family, I
promise myself to give back the time to family to avoid guilt and make
family understood that the missing time is not going to go away.

• When my to-do is not complete, I find out genuine reason and
acknowledge that reason for not completing to-do tasks. I put the info
in planning feedback and improve next time.

In nutshell, take responsibility of
what I do and make conscious decision before doing things to avoid
guilt later. Continuously learn what are RIGHT things I should be
doing. Even do wrong things by knowing I am doing wrong thing and I
will never end up in guilt.

First, I really appreciate these positive and optimistic thoughts of the commenter. They are very inspiring.

Second, my point was not to live with guilt. My point was – we always end up in guilt in one front if not on the other front – is a fact. And let’s live with this fact, not with the guilt itself. As commenter pointed out very brilliantly that we can "convince" ourselves by some "genuine reasons" to "assume" that we never ended up in guilt. Sure, I love this "optimism".

The key point is, we are talking about integrity, the state of being whole here. We might find genuine reasons to convince ourselves on one front, but I personally find it very difficult to convince myself on all fronts at the same time. And that’s how I land up in guilt on one front even though I am achieving super heights on other front.

My only worry is, it’s acceptable as long as we are "convincing" and not "lying" to ourselves that we did the right thing.

But again, what I learned from commenter is – "positivity" is the mantra. And that’s exactly what I had conveyed in my previous post that let’s not worry too much about if we end up in guilt or not. Let’s use our thinking bandwidth wisely and move on!