Guilt "Lite"

I am so conscientious that I feel guilty about every failing, real or perceived. Do you want to move through life guilt free? BE PERFECT!!!

If contrite for our mistakes, everyone should be allowed a second chance.

In the event that you are unable to achieve perfection, try my guilt "lite" recipe for life. If you are doing the best you can, you are absolved of firsthand guilt. You can always shift whatever vestiges of guilt remaining to your upbringing: parents, grandparents, ancestry, genes, etc. Secondhand guilt is much easier to deal with. I coin it, "guilt lite." First of all, much of what I feel guilty for is just basic human error. This side of heaven, it's pretty easy to come into contact with. 

Kidding aside, WHY do I feel so much guilt? Did I get it all from my forebears? I think I may have interpreted what was expected of an exemplary human being in my own way and then created rules for living based on a super-hero image of what my life should look like. 

If I don't cut myself some slack, who will? If I accept that I should be perfect, should I blame everyone else for expecting that of me? 

I'm bringing my best every day. If my conscience is messed up, does that mean my performance suffers? 

It will if you don't allow yourself to be human. In this technological age, it's easy to think everything should be accomplished to perfection. But you've no doubt heard the phrase, "garbage in; garbage out." Even with all our technological advances, we can't ensure perfection.

I have attempted to be perfect. All I have done is imperfect.

I will continue to attempt to be perfect. I will continue to make mistakes.

Is there a mathematical formula for contentment with this situation here? I'm not as good at math as english, so here's my solution:

When you do your best; be satisfied that you have done your best. What more can you do?

Bad Apples

By Gypsy Sojourner

We’ve all heard the saying “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch,” and have probably seen instances where it does apply to people, but does it actually happen with fruit?

Yes. As they ripen, some fruits, like apples and pears, produce a gaseous hormone called ethylene, which is, among other things, a ripening agent. When you store fruits together, the ethylene each piece emits prods the others around them to ripen further, and vice versa. (Fun tip: Want to quickly ripen an avocado? Stick it in a paper bag with an apple overnight.)

The riper a piece of fruit is, the more ethylene it produces, and overripe fruit gives off even more ethylene, eventually leading to a concentration of the gas that’s enough to overripen all the fruit. Given the right conditions and enough time, one apple can push all the fruit around it to ripen—and eventually rot.

Additionally, an apple that is infested with mold will contaminate other fruit it’s stored with as the mold seeks additional food sources and spreads. In both cases, it actually does take just one single apple to start a domino chain that ruins the rest of the bunch.

Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/31666/does-one-bad-apple-really-spoil-whole-bunch#ixzz2RJJNVXQM  –brought to you by mental_floss!

I usually eat an apple a day. Fuji apples are my favorite. When I buy a nice big bag, I check to make sure none of the apples inside have bruises on them. When I get my nice bag of fragrant, crisp apples home, I open the bag and put the apples into my fruit basket. Once in a while, one apple with a mushy spot will sneak in. The trick is to remove it quickly and wash the rest of the apples that it touched. The longer you leave the bad apple in with the rest, the more likely you will end up with an entire spoiled batch.
The bad apple analogy has spread into psychology and organizational psychology.

How one bad apple can create a toxic team

http://www.management-issues.com/2007/2/14/research/how-one-bad-apple-can-create-a-toxic-team.asp

 

http://www.ehow.com/info_8234254_problems-workplace-team-players.html

 

Even if you have an entire bag of beautiful, crisp, fragrant, ripe apples, if there is one rotten apple in the bunch, it will infect the good apples. It doesn’t matter if you put the bag in a nice environment, like a cool refrigerator. The bad apple is the determiner of how the rest of the apples will end up. I can be the happiest, most productive apple in the bunch, but if that bad apple’s gasses touch me day after day…well, you know the rest. 

 

 

Give apples a chance.

Forgiveness?

There are things in my life I wish I'd done differently. But then, I couldn't have done them differently without the knowledge that I have now. I need to forgive myself. I need those who were affected by my life choices to forgive me. I need to take my lessons and move on.

"Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future." ~Lewis B. Smedes

There are things that others have done to me that have hurt me deeply. I have borne the pain of their deception, betrayal, evil, oversight, thoughtlessness...


There's not much I can do about the actions of others, but my reactions to them are within my control. Yes, I can feel HURT. Yes, I can feel BETRAYED. Yes, I can cry. But the thing that I most absolutely, positively CANNOT do is STOP living my life and being authentic. If someone else is messed up, that doesn't stop me from growing and evolving.

What do you want to grow up to be?