What is the definition of guilt? An on-line dictionary defines it as: “The fact of being responsible for the commission of an offense.” So there lies the key to removing this barrier to personal growth and dealing with your guilt: accept responsibility for what you’ve done and act appropriately. You may need to apologise, you may need to make reparation and both of these may be as true when apologising to yourself as to others.

This will help your personal growth in another way – it will teach you to listen to your intuition; you may initially feel that you have to take masssive action but if you pause and take a breath, your intuition will guide you. It’s difficult for some people to accept the wisdom of their inner voice – people have a difficult time accepting this inner teacher that has perfect understanding.

The other side of the coin is forgiveness – we often have lengthy conversations with students on our courses, and with our clients, about the need for forgiveness. The conversation usually goes along the lines of “Why should I (or How can I) forgive them after what they have done?” The answer is simple – it has little to do with the other person. It’s for your benefit, for your personal growth. It’s about releasing the angst trapped within us, angst that can add significantly to the burden of stress we carry. To put it another way, the other person may have done something nasty to you that caused you a lot of problems. Why should what they did continue to cause you a problem, perhaps even endangering your health? Why give them that power over you? Forgiveness is for your benefit, not theirs.

Another important catalyst for personal growth and development is pardoning yourself – we often carry unrealistic expectations about ourselves and when we fail to meet those expectations, we blame ourselves. For example, for years I blamed myself for mishandling how I told my brother that our mum had died. It took me a long time to understand that there is no ‘best way’ and that I’d done the best I could with what I knew.

When you have a quiet moment, sit and ask your self two questions:

1. What guilt are you carrying around and what can you do about it?

2. Who do you need to pardon?

I wrote here that true happiness comes from within and I believe that you can start to experience this by thinking about, and acting upon, the two questions above and by beginning to listen to your intuition. What benefits have you gained from learning about guilt and forgiveness? How important has it been for you to learn to forgive yourself?

I have found that a key to my own personal healing has been to realise that I need to forgive myself and release my burden of guilt before I can forgive others.

So, a little exercise for you – sit in a quiet place and think aboutt he things you feel guilty about, that you need to forgive yourself about.

1. Write them down.

2. Imagine the list tied to a helium baloon.

3. Release the baloon andwatch it fly away into the sky, becoming smaller, and smaller and smaller until it disappears out of existence.

4. Look at the list again; how do you now feel about each one? A clue to whether or not you have forgiven yourself is whether you have released the need to beat yourself up over the issue.

Good luck and let me know how you get on.