Are You Feeling Guilty For Having Time?

Abstract:

The first time I employed a cleaner, something strange happened. While I was overjoyed to have less housework to do – which I hate – I also felt a little self-conscious, whenever my cleaner was in the house.

Something in me thought she was judging me for sitting there while she was working. Of course, that was me judging myself – she was happy to have the work and decent pay.

Since this is just one example of a fairly widespread phenomenon, your mission today is to learn why you may feel guilty for having time, and what to do about it.

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Task 1: Catch yourself out

If you ask anyone whether they feel guilty for having time off, or time for their passion, their spontaneous answer will be: “Of course not!” It sounds a bit silly, and most people aren’t even aware that they might be feeling this.

So in order to catch yourself feeling these things, you might have to be a little sneaky. Ask questions such as:

• What’s your reply when you meet someone you know in town and they ask: “So how are you, keeping busy?”?

• When you’ve had a quiet weekend or holiday, do you feel the need to explain this (“You know, I needed that after everything that’s been going on”)?

• What are your thoughts about outsourcing parts of your housework?

Task 2: Counteract the guilt

Now that you’ve identified where your guilty feelings are happening, it’s time to do something about them. You do this in two steps.

1. Dig deeper: Feel a little deeper into that guilty feeling you’ve discovered in Task 1. What exactly are you worried about? Whose voice is it that berates you?

2. Find counterexamples: Write down your guilty feelings as phrases, and then find true sentences proving the opposite (“I’m lazy for sitting around when my friend is working” becomes “I deserve time to rest. I’m a badass for looking after myself. Life’s not a competition”).

Refer back to what you’ve written whenever you need to.