How to Live a Guilt-Free Life
A guilt-free life sounds pretty good, right? Especially in today’s age where guilt and shame can be found everywhere we look from both internal and external sources. It seems we can’t escape it. Sometimes we feel guilt based on what we think we should look like or be doing differently. Other times we feel guilt over things we have already done that we know weren’t right. No matter where or how, we cannot let guilt and shame run our life. We are not meant to bear the heavy weight of guilt and shame.
You Are Loved
Before I go on with this, it’s important to know that no matter what you’ve done, will do, or could do,
You are loved.
You are wanted. You are valuable. You are priceless. You are those things, because that’s what God says you are, and there is absolutely nothing you could possibly do to make Him not love you. You will never be too bad, too dirty or too messed up for Him. He wants you at your best and your worst. He loves you unconditionally. Period.
Okay, moving on now.
Guilt of our Wrongdoings
We have all sinned. We have all made mistakes. We all have those moments of darkness that we hide, because they were so wrong and shameful. A lot of us still feel the weight of that to this day, even if it was years ago.
Justification
You do not need to justify your past actions to feel peace about it now. Some of the most common ways we try to justify our past actions include things such as, “ Well, I was just a kid.” Or “I was younger then.” I know I’ve told myself things like, “I didn’t know any better at the time.” Or claimed that it was my circumstances lead to that poor decision. My favorite is the blame-game. “I was just listening to what this person told me to do,” and “I was just doing what this person was doing.”
Truthfully, we often could have known better despite our age and circumstances if we thought more about it. Additionally, right and wrong behavior does not change no matter how many or how few people are doing it. If you hurt someone, whether or not you intended to or “knew better,” that person is still hurt by you. The result of your sin and the consequence of your actions are still there, because of you.
Even if those are viable reasons for doing wrong, covering it up with excuses for why you did what you did gives you a false sense of peace. It gives you a personal reason to accept that what you did was okay, when it’s not.
Make Peace with your Past
How do you make peace with your past? Well, it can look different depending on the situation, but generally speaking, it requires confession and a whole lot of forgiveness. This is an important step to achieving the freedom of a guilt-free life. Without peace and closure from your past mistakes, the guilt and shame will always be carried with you.
1.) Confess
To start making peace with your past, you have to admit that what you did was wrong in the first place. You have to look at your own actions and judge according to your moral code if it was right or wrong. If it was wrong, you have to accept the truth that you did in fact, sin. Tell who you need to tell.
If you want to be right standing with God, you have to be open about your actions with Him. Yes, He knows, but are you humble enough to bring it to Him? In some circumstances you may need to confess it to the person or people you hurt. You might choose to confess it to a close friend that you can confidently confide in. Some situations, you hurt yourself or you did something that only affects you and God. If that’s the case, you may need to confess it only to you and God. No matter what, accepting the action was wrong and then confessing it is the starting point.
2.) Ask For Forgiveness
The first person to ask forgiveness from is God. At the end of the day, His judgment and His approval is the only one that matters. Therefore, He is the guy that you want to make amends with first.
The next person you need to ask forgiveness from is you. This is only step #2, and it’s already hard. I’m not saying this is easy. However, being able to forgive yourself is essential in having peace over the bad choices you’ve made in the past. It’s hard. It’s painful. It hurts. It’s a process, but if God can forgive you, who has all rights and reason not to, you can forgive you, too. Not only that, but if He has forgiven you, you are wiped clean. He sent His own Son down to die on your behalf and cover you in a blanket of forgiveness. Just for you to continue to cling to that guilt and shame? No, rather to set you free from those bonds so you can live a full life.
There is yet another person you may need to ask for forgiveness from, and that is the person you hurt. I say “may”, because not every situation is this possible or wise. There is an abundance of different situations where this could be the case: the person is deceased, there’s a restraining order, etc.
However, in most cases, you can and should ask for forgiveness. This is especially true with people you are trying to keep a good relationship with including your children, friends, spouse, boss, and coworkers. Here’s the curveball: they do not have to forgive you. They might never forgive you, and that’s okay. You cannot depend on the forgiveness from someone else to feel peace about what you’ve done.
If you depend on someone else’s response for your peace, it won’t come. The fact is, you’ll never be able to control what other people do, how they think, or how they feel about anything. You have to be okay with the possibility of unforgiveness and be humble enough to understand. The reason you are apologizing in the first place is because you did wrong. It doesn’t matter what they did to instigate it. In this moment of requesting forgiveness, the focus is what you did wrong. So, if they don’t forgive you, control your mind when you start to think things like,” how can you not forgive me, after I poured out my heart and confessed my wrongdoing to you and well you did wrong too so you should be apologizing to me and so on…” You have to accept the response, be humble, and understand that you hurt them, and they do not have to forgive you for it.
3.) Make Amends
Again, this may not be applicable to every situation. Some bridges need to stay broken for the sake of all parties, and that’s alright.
Making amends does not always mean restoring a relationship with someone. For example, if you stole from somebody or a store, making amends may mean repaying the amount of money or goods you took from them.
4.) Learn from the Experience
Part of making peace with those past mistakes is understanding the negative effects of that behavior or action and committing to doing better in the future. Pain is a tool. Our bodies feel physical pain to protect us from destroying ourselves. If the flame didn’t hurt, we would stand in it and burn up. If we didn’t feel remorse or any sense of guilt, we would continue to hurt other people and ourselves senselessly. Pain is not bad. Pain protects. Of course we don’t want to sit in pain, but that’s exactly the point. That’s why we make better decisions in the future, to avoid those painful tangled situations that result from our poor choices. Allow that pain and discomfort to be your teacher, rather than your enemy so you can learn from the experience
Media Guilt
Sometimes guilt is not from what we’ve done, but from what we haven’t done, don’t do, or don’t have. The most common source of this is social media. The average American spends nearly 2 ½ hours on social media every day. That is a lot of time to see all the things other moms are doing with their kids, see their clean aesthetic kitchens and their blissful daily morning routine videos.
It’s easy to feel inadequate. It’s easy to feel guilt and shame about where you are at in life when other people are doing so much better than you. Let’s take this comparison down to reality. People post the best of what they have. Their best moments, best meals, best activities, best family events, best car, best room in their house, etc. Nobody has the best everything, but when you take in the fitness girl’s morning jog video, the Christian’s Bible verse from their reading, that mama’s photo of her kids having fun at the splash park, your neighbors new car, and your friends beautiful meal she made for her husband last night, your brain combines the best of all of those and expect that you meet all of those expectations. It’s not realistic, and most certainly not sustainable. Nobody can be in that “best” state of mind or picture-perfect life all the time. None of those people do all of that 12/7. So why do we then expect us to be doing all of that, and feel guilt when we aren’t?
I love social media. I get so much inspiration from seeing those jogging videos. I am encouraged when I see those Bible verses. I desire to play with my children more when I see that mom’s photo of her kids at the splash park. I am excited for my neighbor about getting that new car. I am motivated to make my husband a good meal when I see what my friend made. Those are good things to share for that very reason, but when you are consuming, we must be careful how our brain is absorbing it. It is too easy to slip into the guilt of not having what they have and not doing what they do.
Let social media inspire you and motivate you, not bully you into guilt. Social media does not dictate whether we are adequate or not, God does. Let’s look to Him for how we should live, and not social media. If you think we are not adequate for God, check out one of my earlier posts, “ Am I Enough? “ for more on that.
Do Good: Trust Yourself to Make Good Choices
The ultimate way to a guilt- free life is found in trusting yourself to make good choices. If it is typical of you to make good decisions, when you make a mistake, guilt and shame will not have a strong hold of you because you know that you will do better next time.
I can miss a workout or eat sweets without feeling guilty, because I know I will work out and eat better tomorrow. How can I know this? How do you build that kind of trust with yourself? With proof.
You need to prove to yourself that you make consistent good decisions. You need to prove to yourself that when you do wrong, you make it right. Prove to yourself that when you forget to read your Bible, you will pick it back up, and stay on track. Prove to yourself that you can calm yourself down and speak kindly to your husband or kids after you yelled at them or talked with disrespect.
You create proof by consistently doing good, even after you trip up. When you have that proof, you can trust yourself. When you trust yourself, you can make a poor choice and not beat yourself up over it. The sin becomes a weak point, not who you are. You are not a thief, a disrespectful person, or a slacker. You just made a mistake; it’s not going to be habitual. (If you don’t let it be) You can fall, without holding onto that guilt and shame beyond what is necessary for learning and understanding. You can know yourself enough to know that you will do better. You will be better. You will strive to overcome what made you fall in the first place. It is then that you will be able to be freed from those shackles of guilt and shame. It is then that you can enter into guilt-free living.
Living a guilt-free life allows you to live without the constant barrage of guilt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy. However, it takes effort. To live guilt-free requires you to make peace with your past, be quick to accept when you’ve done wrong, and request forgiveness from God, yourself and others. It also takes a lot of trust. You must trust yourself to make good future decisions, despite a current bad decision. Don’t let yourself stumble over and over again, and continue to break trust with yourself. Do what you need to do to build that trust. Prove to yourself that you will stay true to what you said so when you mess up, you can pick yourself up and move forward with a humble heart of forgiveness and a security in knowing you will do better. When you can do that, you can start to enjoy a guilt-free life.
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