It’s International Day of Happiness! What’s guilt got to do with it?

This morning I was doing some spring cleaning and I came across “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks, which my mom gave to me years ago. I skimmed through it at the time, but didn’t finish it. Hendricks’ message resonated but I allowed his writing style to distract me. I found it cheesy, overly sales-y, overly focused on financial rewards. 

I realized recently that I should finish this book, as it comes recommended in coaching circles, and today it appeared on my lap. Amazingly, the book is about how we limit ourselves in order to avoid feeling true happiness. It’s about how we self-sabotage when things are going great, just to keep ourselves in an emotional comfort zone. It’s about fear, ego, authenticity, guilt and so much more.

A couple things surfaced for me as I started reading. First, what a fortuitous gift from my mom. It was as if she knew my path before I knew it. Yet, I self-sabotaged. I stopped reading because of the writing style, stopped myself from experiencing the lessons the book might have to offer.

Second, guilt. What a hideous feeling. Hendricks describes guilt as “a way our minds have of applying a painful grip on the conduit through which our good feelings flow”. Guilt shows up when we’re feeling good. 

My strongest experience with guilt was when I became a mother. I was putting in 50+ hours a week at work, which felt like the bare minimum, and yet I barely saw my son. The guilt was palpable, and not just towards my son. Towards my work too. 

So is Hendricks right? Did the guilt show up when I was feeling so good that I had to self-regulate back to a familiar middling place? I don’t know, but I’m intrigued. I had just experienced a huge change in my life, welcomed a wave of new love. And it’s possible that as I was riding high on this wave of love, I decided to bring myself back down.

As parents, we have a deep desire to give our children a supportive childhood, the best possible start in life. We feel guilty because we believe it's impossible to create an idyllic childhood while working full-time. But what if that belief is just a self-inflicted poison to dampen the positive parental emotions. From this perspective, I see another way.

Maybe it’s possible to redirect guilt. Maybe it’s possible to acknowledge that guilt comes from having so much good. Maybe it’s possible to learn to bask in that goodness. And if you did bask in that goodness, what decisions would you make as a working parent? How would your decisions be different if they were made from a place of goodness, rather than a place of guilt? 

I chose to leave my corporate job and seek something with more flexibility. I am not sure yet if it would have been different if I made the decision from a place of goodness, but I’m going to look into it. For International Day of Happiness, I’m inviting you to explore your guilt. I hope in doing so, you can find, sustain, and bask in some happiness.