Very few of us were trained to use anger for change (except, perhaps, in athletics). Mostly, we use anger for blame and feeling bad. The gift of anger, however, is the physical, mental and emotional strength to make change. When we feel guilty, and want to use the anger for change (for a change), we have two options: we can either change our actions, or change our beliefs about those actions. As the old saying goes, "When you get sick and tired of being tired and sick, you'll change." When angry, people often say, "I'm sick and tired of this!" The question is, how sick and how tired do we need to get before we change?

When we feel guilty about something, sometimes we can change the action, sometimes we can't. If we feel guilty about something that hasn't yet happened (that twinge of guilt we feel when premeditating a "wicked" action), we can use the anger to not do it (or, if it's a guilt of omission, to do it).

The habit of feeling guilty over certain things - and the habit of feeling guilty period - is deep seated, instilled before we can understand language, much less understand. It takes great energy and perseverance to change it. Fortunately, there's a lot of energy available in the anger of guilt. It's a matter of remembering to redirect it from blame to change over and over.

The question arises, "When do we use the energy to change the action, and when do we use it to change the belief about the action?" That's an important question. Here are some thoughts on it.

1. If you change the belief first, changing the action is easier. So, even if you want to change the action, taking the pressure off by changing the belief might allow for the freedom of movement necessary to change the action.

2. Realize you're not going to change all the actions about which you currently feel guilty. We're not perfect, we're human. Nonetheless, in our childhood we are given images of perfection to live up to. We add to these the perfect images we have as adults.

3. Change first the things that physically harm others. We're not talking about hurting someone's feelings', we're talking about activities such as hitting people, stealing, child abuse, drunk driving, etc., in which another is physically harmed by your actions.

4. Change next the actions that physically harm yourself. Smoking, extreme overeating, high risk sexual activities, drug or alcohol abuse, and so on. Again, these are not the things that might emotionally harm you, but things that physically do you harm.


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