The Usual Guilt

We often think of ‘guilt’ as a powerful motivator — we make a promise or commitment, and the fear of the guilt of not following through compels us to get the job done. Doesn’t it?

And yet we all feel a certain amount of regular guilt. Daily guilt. The usual guilt.

The guilt we feel when we scrunch up the cookie packet after, once again, we demolished the whole lot when we said we’d only have one (well, two at most). The usual guilt we feel when we don’t hit the gym after ‘investing’ in the expensive membership, or don’t call our parents for the second week running.

If you think about it, experiencing ‘usual guilt’ is a pretty disturbing notion. It’s not just guilt, which isn’t a bundle of laughs in itself. A usual guilt is a signal we’re consistently ignoring. If guilt is an internal message to change something — our actions, our behaviour, the story we’re telling ourselves — then a usual guilt is a sign that the process isn’t working properly at all. Instead of hearing the signal, we treat it like white noise: present, insistent, but tuned out like so much static.

As a long-term strategy, relying on guilt for motivation is like relying on cocaine for a pick-me-up.