I Don't Want To Use Self-Generated Guilt To Motivate Myself Anymore

I am tired of motivating myself by making myself feel guilty about my procrastination. I would rather use a different kind of motivation - thinking about my future self and how I can help her by doing my work in time.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Transcript

Hello everyone!

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Bhoom Shekha and I welcome you to my channel.

As always I'm so grateful that you're listening,

Subscribing and commenting.

I really appreciate the support.

And in this one I wanted to speak to you about self-generated guilt and worthiness.

This is a term that I think I got from one of the viewers in the comment that he or she left.

I don't remember now.

And also I'm trying not to use names anymore because people are so uncomfortable with that.

But I really love the word self-generated guilt.

It is actually perfectly poignant to a lot of the things that we do to ourselves.

One of the examples that I wanted to use for this was our goal setting system.

I think our civilization in general.

I read somewhere that Nietzsche said that the whole Western civilization is based upon guilt.

And the way they make people do things that we do.

We go to work,

We work long hours,

We save for things that may potentially never happen.

We buy insurance for things that will never need it.

And all the things that we do is all because of guilt.

Because we're doing it because of guilt.

We're doing it because we want to alleviate the guilt that we feel.

Or we want to make sure that we don't feel guilty in the future if we're trying to postpone it.

Whatever it might be.

And as I said,

It's a lot of self-generated guilt specifically as I said to do with goal setting.

So this is just one example but one of the things I definitely do to myself is that I'll set up these goals for myself.

And I spoke about it recently where I set up a goal for myself that I'm going to read 10 minutes a day.

And in that other video I spoke about how I was listening to a book for 10 minutes a day and then I started making myself feel guilty.

Because I was like,

Well,

No.

It has to be reading.

It has to be me sitting down at a desk or wherever and reading a book rather than listening to a book.

And so I started getting really angry with myself because I'm like,

Alright,

I'm trying to cheat and how dare I.

And I started feeling guilty about the fact that I'm actually not doing it properly and how could I do this to my goals.

And why am I even setting up goals if I'm just going to go around them.

But I was actually reading a book.

I was paying attention.

I was sitting and reading or listening at least properly.

And I knew exactly what the book was about.

But again,

Self-generated guilt.

We create guilt around things that we do because we think that guilt is a good way of motivating ourselves.

Because society has taught us that guilt is a good way of motivating ourselves.

And from childhood we're taught,

Like our teachers,

That's one of the main ways that they make sure that we do our homework or that we follow through in class or whatever it might be is by using guilt.

Oh,

Look at everyone else.

Look at this person.

They're doing so well and everyone else is doing so poorly.

How could you?

Your parents are spending so much money on this school.

How could you raise their money like that?

And your parents worked so hard for this and things like that.

This is how our teachers would talk to us.

At least to me at least they said these things.

And it would make me feel like,

Oh my God,

Yeah,

That's true.

My parents worked so hard and I'm just sitting around talking to my friends.

How dare I waste their money.

And so again,

Guilt.

This is something that's used from when you were young as a tool.

And as we get older,

We start using it for ourselves.

So at first it's a society generated guilt,

Which is great.

Because society is really good at it.

That's how they make us buy things as well.

And then as we get older,

We start using it for ourselves.

So then it becomes self-generated guilt.

So at that point,

Society doesn't need to step in unless something happens.

Most cases,

If you are just going along and doing your thing,

You can just guilt yourself into anything and do everything,

Into most things.

That's one of the reasons why January is a month where a lot of people start going to the gym.

It's because of guilt.

It's not because they're like,

Oh,

Well,

Look at me.

I think I'm getting unhealthy.

I can barely touch my toes.

Or,

You know,

I huff and puff when I'm going up one staircase or one stairwell,

One flight of stairs.

So maybe I should do something about it.

It's not because they're suddenly thinking,

Oh,

I'm getting unhealthy.

I should do something about it because I want to stay healthy for a long period of time.

It's not that.

They start thinking about the fact,

Oh,

Everyone else is doing it.

There's loads of people who are going to the gym.

I have a gym membership.

I haven't been there in so long.

I've been paying for $30 a month every single month.

Maybe I should use it,

Etc.

,

Etc.

We guilt ourselves into it.

Again,

Not all people do this,

But a lot of us do it.

Is there a solution to this?

I actually don't even know because I know that I've been doing this to myself for so long that I actually don't know how to get out of it.

But I can speak about a couple of things that I do in order to at least alleviate it a bit.

So that even though I'm using guilt to motivate myself in a lot of different things,

Like motivation schemes,

I do try as much as possible to think about other things in order to motivate myself to do the things I do.

And one of the other things that I use in order to motivate myself is future boom.

I always think about the future person that I would be.

And why do I want to do this?

Well,

I want to ease the burden on future boom.

That's usually a lot of times when I think about things.

And so a lot of times when I am doing my exercise or doing my yoga meditation,

Yes,

Of course,

It is to make sure that I'm healthy in the present moment.

But a lot of it has to do with the fact that I want to make sure that I don't burden myself in the future,

That I'm not sitting around in the future and not able to be mobile,

That I'm reliant upon someone else,

That someone else has to take care of me,

And that I can't go around and travel anymore,

That I can't do these videos anymore because I didn't take care of myself properly.

I don't know if it necessarily is related to guilt,

But I definitely do know that it is a sort of empathy,

A sort of wanting to make sure that my future self is taken care of.

And I know that all the things that I do right now in this moment in time will help her in the future.

So and even the future self doesn't have to be 60 years down the road.

It can just be my tomorrow self.

If I do all the work that's necessary for today and I don't postpone anything or don't procrastinate on anything,

Then my future self tomorrow,

My boom tomorrow,

Will not have to deal with the procrastinated work from today.

And she can just focus on the work for tomorrow.

In this one mind tweak,

Making sure that my future self is taken care of,

It doesn't necessarily include guilt in it because I'm just trying to take care of myself,

But in the future.

I'm just making sure that I don't burden myself in the future,

That I don't put so much stress on myself in the future,

Because if I do a little bit every single day,

That means that my future self will not be burdened with it,

And taking care of a thousand things,

And stressed out,

And getting sick,

Or getting a migraine,

Or all of that stuff.

And so that is one thing that I always think about when I'm trying to motivate myself to do things,

Is that,

Okay,

Think about it.

Do you want myself tomorrow to be stressed out?

No,

I don't.

Okay,

Cool.

Then do the work.

And a lot of times,

The second tweak that I use is,

A lot of times I realize that as soon as I start the work,

I realize how quickly it actually does,

How quick it is to finish the work.

So a lot of times,

For me at least,

I spend a lot of time contemplating the work,

And thinking about the work,

And being angry about the work,

Or all of that emotion about the work.

But then as soon as I sit down to do the work,

It gets over pretty quickly.

So I might think about editing my book,

And I'm like,

Oh no,

I have to edit my book,

And I might spend half an hour procrastinating,

And half an hour complaining in my head,

And all that.

But then when I actually sit down to do the editing,

It's a 15-minute process,

Really.

I have 15-minute chunks that I've set up for myself,

And so in 15 minutes,

I'm done.

So if I had just not wasted my time on procrastinating,

On complaining,

On moaning,

Wasted my energy on it,

Then I could just be done with that work,

And then spend my time relaxing.

And so I know this about myself,

And I know I've done this many times in the past,

Hundreds and thousands of times.

So now,

When I'm actually procrastinating,

I'm like,

Alright,

You can either procrastinate,

Or you can get the work done,

And then relax.

What do you want to do?

And again,

This is not really a guilt,

It's just about the fact that I just don't want to waste my time procrastinating,

I want to waste my time relaxing.

I want to relax rather than procrastinate,

Because procrastination time is stressful,

Whereas relaxing time is relaxing.

And so if you procrastinate,

And then you relax,

It doesn't feel that great.

But if you relax after you get your work done,

Oh my god,

It is the best relaxation ever,

Because you feel good,

And you're completely happy with yourself,

Content with yourself,

Because you've done the work,

There's nothing to worry about.

You don't have to contemplate it,

Or think about it,

Or guilt yourself for it.

And so again,

These are the two tweaks I've been using at least for the past few months for sure,

Maybe a couple of years,

In order to make sure that I don't use guilt in order to motivate myself anymore.

It's so tiring to use guilt,

Oh my goodness,

I just don't want to do this to myself anymore.

Not that I'm completely away from it,

Of course not,

But as much as possible,

If I notice myself that I'm like,

Hmm,

I'm guilting myself right now,

Then I stop,

I go take a walk,

Or I'll reset myself,

And I'll restart the work with a different mindset,

Because it's just not right,

It doesn't feel good in my body,

My heart doesn't feel good,

I start feeling sick,

I start feeling stressed out,

It's just not a good way to deal with work in general.

So I hope this is helpful,

Again I really do appreciate whoever came up with,

Or whoever wrote down the comment with this self-generated guilt phrase,

I thought it was brilliant and perfect.

Again,

Thank you so much for being on my channel,

I really appreciate your support,

I thank you for your time and for all of the Ko-fi donations,

I really appreciate that as well,

And I shall see you in the next one.

Bye for now!