#42 Let Go Of Guilt Just In Time For The Holidays!

Do you ever feel torn between what you want to do and what you feel obligated to do-especially during the holidays? 

We'll  explore how learned guilt hijacks choice, drains energy, and crowds out joy, especially during the holidays.

 You'll learn how to release the emotional weight of guilt, reconnect with your truth, and give from love-not obligation.  We will share personal stories, clear definitions, and practical tools to move from obligation to authenticity.

If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today.
And remember to subscribe so you don't miss next week's episode on creating emotional boundaries during the holidays.

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If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!

Transcript

Welcome And Show Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Just Count Me In, a podcast designed to help you break free from your limitations and step into the life that you actually were meant to live. I'm Sari Stone and I'm a holistic coach with a background in education. For the past six years, I've been guiding people to transform their lives from the inside out. My journey, to be honest with you, was not always clear. For years, I actually felt like I was living someone else's life, checking all the right boxes, but never feeling quite truly fulfilled. That all changed when I experienced a few miracles, met some incredible teachers, and had a major wake-up call that forced me to shift my entire perspective. Wayne Dyer once said, When you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at change, and that is exactly what this podcast is about: helping you see your life in a new way so that you can start living with authenticity, purpose, and passion. Each week, I'm going to bring you 30-minute episodes filled with insights, practical strategies, and inspiring interviews to help you uncover what truly lights you up and identify what's been holding you back. Eventually, this is going to ignite your motivation and create real change. Are you ready to step into the life you were meant to live? Then just count me in. Hit subscribe and join me on this journey. If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today. Let's do this together. So after last week and this week's full moon, I realized I woke up one morning and I just had this uneasy feeling in my chest and my stomach. And recently we had been invited to an event, and of course, I said yes because it was really the right thing to do. And then I realized, oh my gosh, I don't think I'm saying yes because I really want to do this. I'm saying yes surely out of guilt. And I was even trying to talk my husband into it, and I realized that this full moon illuminated some places in me that I really don't talk about too often. In my family, I was raised with a lot of guilt. Um, it was just a cultural thing. It was a way that we didn't even question it, we didn't even think about it. The phrase guilty pleasures or you should feel guilty about that or I have too much guilt to do that were really common in my house. And you know, when you're young, you absorb all that stuff. And we worked really hard. My husband used to tease me and say, pack your bags, you're going on a guilt trip when I started. Um, because he also had to work on letting go of guilt. But I thought this would be a great time because today's episode is one that many of us need right now, especially as we're getting into the holidays. What perfect timing! We're gonna talk about guilt. It's kind of that quiet, heavy feeling that you get. And it for me, um, usually it makes me want to say yes when I actually want to say no, and it drives us to attend gatherings or do things out of obligation rather than actual desire. And that is a huge energy drain. So if you caught last week's full moon episode on releasing energy drain, this one flowed right from it because guilt is one of the biggest energy leaks of all. And I feel a lot of places in my life and worked through a lot of guilt, but this is an area where I still needed some expansion. So guilt is often seen as like a sign that we've done something wrong. I think we confuse conscience with guilt. Like if I feel inside of me, in my conscience, like that really isn't acting in alignment with who I am. That's different, that's selling out. Guilt is more of an emotion and it's learned, it's almost inherited. Philosopher John Paul Satcher said we're condemned to be free, and that means we always have a choice, but choice also brings responsibility, and sometimes that responsibility feels really heavy. Like I wish somebody else would just make up my mind for me sometimes. We feel guilty sometimes, not because we've done anything wrong, but because we've stepped outside the expectations that actually were placed on us and reacting in a way that living up to something that was never really mine to be by family, culture, past selves. It could have come from anywhere. Now, Brene Brown is somebody that I like a lot. I go to her a lot for emotions and how to translate. And I have to say, I was in slight disagreement about this. She says guilt is the discomfort we feel when our behavior doesn't align with our values. Shame, on the other hand, tells us we're bad. Well, the shame part, that's okay. But for me, guilt is the discomfort I feel when my behavior often doesn't align with someone else's values that I didn't think about questioning when I was younger or the roles that I've had. You know, the the overachiever role, the 200% employee role, the super mom roles. I mean, it just goes on and on. And I released those because they really were not real, they were not realistic. And the more I released the need to prove myself and get rid of my old identities, the more the better I felt. I kept letting go of things that were never really mine to carry. When guilt becomes chronic, it blurs right into shame, and that's where it blocks your joy. So my awakening moment was when I had gone to a family event probably about four, five, four years ago, and everything in me said, don't go. And there was nothing wrong with the event. There were people I loved there. It wasn't that I didn't want to go and be with them, but it was just at the time I was really emotionally spent. I was tapped out. I really needed rest, but I went because of guilt. I didn't go because it was what I needed to do for myself. I went because I was thinking you should go. And that day I sat in the room surrounded by a bunch of conversation and just too much going on for me at that time. I was actually recuperating from a heart attack, and I realized I wasn't even really present. Like I had to go sit outside. I was physically there, but my heart wasn't feeling right, and I needed to be somewhere else. I had given my energy out of obligation, not love, making me, by the way, probably not very good company either, because I'm sure people could feel that. That was my awakening moment to see how deeply guilt had shaped my choices and how it was disconnecting me from being authentically who I am. So I was a little surprised and disappointed when it cropped up this past week, but we just keep expanding, and that's what it is. Beyond growth, there's more growth. It's all about expansion. So to put it together, guilt as a noun is kind of like a state of being. It's it comes up as an emotion when we think we've done something wrong, or it also means we emit responsibility like legal guilt. It shows up as self-directed anger, uh, shame, fear of disappointment, all really low-level vibrations. As a verb, somebody can actually guilt another person, or they try to guilt another person into doing something to actually make person number one feel better. Either way, it involves regret, shame, anger, stems out of just feeds fear of rejection, very low vibes. When I'm not tuned into myself and I make a choice out of alignment with myself, and it results in feeling wrong, I can feel it. I let my heart or my conscience and my mind be my guide. While I definitely own all of my behavior, I realize that as I continue to awaken and become more and more aware, my life keeps getting better and better and better because I'm living a heart-centered, really joy-centered life. I think we're here to feel good and enjoy life as much as possible. And love is the best emotion for me to feel. And when I live like this, there's less and less opportunities for guilt to raise its ugly head. In this case, it was more like it not conscience, but guilt as far as I think somebody else might be having an expectation of me that I previously lived up to, and I can't do anymore because it just doesn't feel good, and I make choices based on what feels right for me. The unhealthy type that I described is in itself completely different. I completely dismiss my own inner knowing. It feels like I have abandoned myself and abandoned what's best for me out of guilt. And or sometimes it's out of society's expectation or someone else's expectation of me, having nothing to do with what I think I did being out of alignment. It might be what they think I did was out of alignment, or society rewards as being in alignment and what you should do. This guilt has nothing to do with aware, conscious, loving, living. And it's a choice on my part to stay in touch with my body, stay in touch with my emotions, tap in every day. It's like being on a retractable leash. And when I push that button, when I realize I'm doing something not out of love but out of guilt or fear, I push that button and I reel myself back in because when I'm feeling like that, it's an opportunity for me to expand and come back home to myself. Just a gentle, gentle, we hope, lesson and all an experience in expansion and coming home to living my best life. So there is a psychology of guilt. Psychologists describe guilt as a social emotion, and it's one that keeps relationships almost in harmony, but when it becomes chronic, it turns into an internalized control mechanism. It tells you you owe them. You better not disappoint anyone. You're being selfish for wanting peace. And yet, when we live from guilt, we are totally guilty of abandoning ourselves. Self-betrayal should never ever be confused with kindness or masquerade as love. Wayne Dyer said it beautifully. Guilt is the most useless of all human emotions. It never makes anyone feel better, nor does it change what already happened. Guilt doesn't purify us, it paralyzes us. It keeps us stuck in these like emotional loops of overthinking instead of learning and moving forward. The holidays of all times can really, really magnify guilt. And I made a conscious choice a few years ago to just do what meant the most to me and what I honestly felt was bringing joy to the people I was giving to. And it changed some things for us. I made the move, I guess I would say, from obligation to just authenticity. And sometimes it's hard. I get a little nervous. Maybe, you know, people won't think I'm the person I was or the family member I was or as good as they thought I was. But on the other hand, I know that what I'm giving is really the right thing for me and for the person I'm giving it to. It's healthy giving. So if I made a shift from obligation to authenticity with the holidays, that immediately felt better. I started asking myself, am I doing this out of love or out of guilt? Am I giving my time and energy because it feels good or out of fear of disappointing someone? When your actions come from guilt, they drain you. When they come from love, they expand you. The full moon we passed is just about releasing what no longer serves us, and it's the perfect time to release or let go of actually guilt-driven patterns. So no longer being bound by guilt, I can choose to act from love and authenticity. My worth is not measured by how much I please others, but by how I truthfully live. I want you to think for a moment about who you see when you look in the mirror. And think about all the old identities you've had. All the identities you've had. And I recently did this with a teenager because literally, by the time you're a teenager, you've had several identities too. And thank them and give them permission to go. Unless it's something that's resonating and feeling good now. And with it, you can say, I release the need to prove. And the big one for me, I release the fear of being misunderstood. So feel that letting go. Feel that dissolving of the old story. You don't need to carry guilt forward. You can thank it for trying to keep you in line and let it know you've got things and let it go. Now, when do I feel the most guilt? These are things I would journal about. What values might they actually be pointing me towards? Where in my family or childhood did I learn that saying no was wrong? What would it feel like to give myself permission to rest without guilt or explanation? What's one thing that might change in my life if I made decisions based on love instead of obligation? As you move into this holiday season, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I want you to remember you are free to choose peace. You are free to say no. You are free to honor your own energy. When you release guilt, you don't become selfish, you just become more real. And people will feel it and they'll actually they'll actually resonate with that. And those people that don't, to be honest, if they want you to do something just because you felt guilty, if you didn't for them, I think you need to rethink, and they might not be your people anymore. You become available for true connection, real giving, and for the joy that this season is meant to hold. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear this message. And remember to subscribe so you don't miss next week's episode on creating emotional boundaries during the holidays. Thank you for listening to Transform Your Life Count Me In. Until next time, choose love. No guilt trips.