#75: Rethinking Guilt
#75: Rethinking Guilt
#Guilt #InnerChildPerspective #Decisions #DelightAndDoubt
Hey there 👋🏼
Great news—Pursuit has officially joined Instagram! If you love the newsletter and enjoy those bite-sized learnings and quotes, you'll definitely want to check us out on Instagram. Sometimes I come across something so inspiring that I just can't wait for the next newsletter to share it. I used to post these on my personal Instagram, but now they have their own space. This way, everyone can enjoy these insights, not just my personal followers. Hope to see you over there!
This week’s discovery:
🤔 Rethinking Guilt
🎭 I'll Take The Pain. I'll Take The Joy.
🦋 The Freedom in Changeable Decisions
✨ The Wing Between Doubt and Delight
🤔 Rethinking Guilt
Growing up, societal norms and religious ideologies, framed by a conservative and non-secular society, used guilt to shape my behavior. I was fortunate to have an open-minded family that helped me break free, to some extent, from the chains of this guilt. Yet, I still grapple with it. I once thought guilt was a useless emotion, a self-defeating mechanism that only served to bring you down for past actions and foster self-doubt. But over time, I've learned to reframe my relationship with guilt. Now, when guilt surfaces, I pause to consider the dissonance between my actions and the underlying value that triggered the guilt. I question whether this value truly belongs to me, whether it was externally imposed, and whether I want to continue to uphold this value. Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David offers a compelling perspective on guilt:
Guilt is an under-appreciated emotion. Rather than an outright, in-your-face emotion like anger, guilt often signals a subtle dissonance between our actions and values. This dissonance can be towards ourselves and our feelings or towards the outside world. To navigate guilt, consider the continuity of self. Imagine a little five-year-old within you, demanding attention and recognition. What subtle needs is this inner child highlighting where you feel guilty? Additionally, consider the advice of an older version of yourself. These perspectives allow us to connect with guilt and values dissonance in a way that broadens our outlook and enables more productive forward steps.
🎭 I'll Take The Pain. I'll Take The Joy.
It’s the strangest thing: A lot of people as they get older get more protected and terrified. My desire is to keep throwing myself into things. My parenting, my relationship, my work. I’ll take the pain. I’ll take the joy. Because the feeling makes me go, I’m in life. It’s an enormous gift, this life.
🦋 The Freedom in Changeable Decisions
Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.
✨ The Wing Between Doubt and Delight
Any route to clarity must make use of chaos. The path to a given destination must contain a seed of its opposing force, or else there isn’t enough friction for you to deem it worthwhile. This is why meaning resides in the thin line between delight and doubt. The delight comes from the hits of clarity you gain from being engaged in a pursuit, whereas the doubt comes from the friction that must be embedded within it. And the more you oscillate between delight and doubt, the more that endeavor shines with purpose. Doubt is what makes you reconsider what you know through a different lens, and to update your thinking as a result of taking a renewed perspective of your thoughts.
🎵 Music I'm Listening To
You’ll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, Disco, and Organic Electronic here:
🎧 If you appreciate the music I carefully select and haven't followed my Spotify playlists yet, now is the perfect time to hit that follow button and join me on this musical journey! 🎶
🌒 Pano: Danceable and electronic obscure songs
🌓 Sisy: Ethnotronica and organic house
🌑 Berghain: Dark, minimal techno and tech house
🌕 Heide: Groovy soul and disco house
🌞 Sonntag: Afterhours shit
🌎 World: From Latin jazz to Turkish psych
🌚 Super Slow: For your intimate moments
Previously on Pursuit:
