Bad people don’t feel guilty, they are too busy being bad. Good people feel guilty because they are good and they feel they have done wrong, let somebody down, made a mistake or screwed up somewhere. Good people have a conscience. Bad people don’t. If you do feel guilty, that’s a good sign. It shows you are on the right track. But you have to know how to deal with it, because guilt is a terribly selfish emotion. It is wasteful and pointless.

We have two choices: put it right or dump the guilt. Yes, we all make mistakes. We all screw up from time to time. We don’t always do ‘the right thing’. And if we’ve got a conscience, we will feel guilty sometimes. But guilt is utterly pointless unless it is acted on for the better. You would be better off feeling something else^* if you aren’t going to act on your guilt. If you hang around feeling guilty but don’t do anything about it, then it’s a waste of time and life.

The first thing to do is to assess whether you really need to feel guilty. It could just be an overdeveloped conscience or sense of duty. If you are the kind of person always to volunteer, but just this once you say no, then there is no need to feel guilty. You’ll know deep down if you’ve earned this one off. If you’ve a choice between doing something or not, then it’s simple: do it or don’t do it but without guilt. Make the choice with that in mind. Not doing it and feeling guilty is not an option.

If you do have cause to feel guilty, then if you can, put it right. That’s the simplest course of action. And what if you can’t put things right? Then learn the lesson, make a resolution, dump the guilt and move on. If it keeps on gnawing away at you, you have to find a way to put it behind you.