Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:43: Some guilt statistics

00:03:20: Guilt as an emotion

00:05:08: Four types of guilt…

00:05:17: … 1: natural guilt

00:05:51: … 2: chronic guilt

00:07:13: … 3: collective guilt

00:07:43: … 4: survivor guilt

00:08:29: Looking at your should and whens

00:14:03: Three ideas for action…

00:14:09: … 1: swap your story

00:18:34: … 2: circles of control, influence and concern

00:27:30: … 3a: letting go of to-do-list guilt

00:29:04: … 3b: letting go of boundary guilt

00:30:16: … 3c: letting go of missed deadline guilt

00:31:07: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly podcast where we talk about the ins, outs, ups and downs of work, and give you some ideas for action, some tools to try out, and hopefully, just a little bit of Squiggly Career support for whatever you might be going through at the moment.  And if it's the first time that you've listened to the podcast, it's worth knowing that we create lots of things to make learning last.  So, as well as this episode, you can also download our PodSheet, which is a one-page summary; lots of people use it to reflect on what they've listened to, and also people use it to talk about this in their teams as well.  So, that's on our website, amazingif.com.  You can also join us for PodPlus, which is a free 30-minute session that we hold most Thursdays, as many as we can do.  It's at 9.00am, it's on Zoom, and there's a lovely community of listeners and learners who contribute their own perspectives on the focus of the episode.

Sarah Ellis: And we are recording this in the same room together today.  It is also a glass meeting room, lots of people are watching us.  So, if we sound slightly echoey, it's because of all the glass, there is a lot of glass.  But also, we have got people staring at us from all directions.  So, we're just going to ignore that.

Helen Tupper: We're just going to go with the flow.

Sarah Ellis: Go with the flow.  So hopefully, if at times we get a bit distracted, it's probably because someone's just staring at us, which is exactly what's just happened.

Helen Tupper: I think what will probably happen is, you know that thing in meeting rooms where someone thinks they've got it booked?  Can you imagine if that happens midway through this and they have that passive aggressive thing where they stand outside until you're like, "No, it's my room".

Sarah Ellis: They just stare at you, "It's my room".

Helen Tupper: They obviously think, "It's my room", and you're like, "Well, I'm just going to keep recording the podcast".

Sarah Ellis: So, at least we've got our microphones with us so we look broadly professional, maybe.

Helen Tupper: Maybe that's a trick.  If you want to own a meeting room, just take a microphone with you and look confident!

Sarah Ellis: So, today we are talking about how to let go of work guilt.  And we know this is on lots of your minds because we did a quick poll on Instagram, and 26% of you said you feel guilt all of the time; 32% of you said most weeks; 32% said occasionally; and 10% said never.  And we were like, "Oh, who's the 10%?"  You can't help but think, "Who never feels guilt ever?"  But great, I guess, if you don't.

Helen Tupper: It's quite freeing.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, maybe, though we'll come on to this.  There's some usefulness in all emotion, is what I've discovered.  We also asked you for the reasons, which we promised to keep anonymous because I think this is quite a personal thing.  So, we were like, "Well, why are you feeling guilty; what are you feeling guilty about?"  And we'll come on to share some of our examples.  But there were three themes I think kept coming up in people's responses.  One about not doing enough, so not learning enough, not working enough, not being there enough, just lots of not enoughs.  And almost linked to that, one around confidence, which is interesting.  I don't think I combined gremlins and guilt, but I think you start to see those coming together. 

So, people talking about not being good enough, almost feeling guilty for things like making mistakes or failing, and I think those are all getting into gremlins territory here, which is interesting.  And then quite a lot, which is probably what I anticipated, about not protecting boundaries.  So, you know that whole, "I feel guilty about not being at home when I need to be.  And then when I'm at home, I feel guilty about not working more.  I feel guilty about not exercising enough".  Quite a lot of work-life fit, as we would describe it, or work-life balance themes coming through as well. So, what's quite interesting when you get into guilt as an emotion is, it's sometimes described as the most useless emotion, and I was like, "Oh, that's quite an emotive word.  It's quite a dramatic word.  It's useless". 

So today, obviously, one of our values at Amazing If is "useful", which I feel like is the exact opposite of that.  So, I was like, "How can guilt be useful?"  And what's interesting is that guilt tends to be less intense than lots of other emotions.  So, I guess if you think about anger, it's really intense, it's really in the moment.  And guilt's almost like a lower-key emotion, but then that can make it more problematic, because it's frequent.  So, as we described in the Instagram poll, people are feeling quite a lot of guilt quite often; it's common and it sticks around.  So, that then means that guilt ends up circling in our heads and then it creates loads of problems.  So, it leads to stress, lack of sleep, makes it hard to relax.  Guilt steals stuff from us.  I think it steals our energy and it steals our self-belief. I do always really remember when I interviewed Dr Bill Mitchell on resilience, and he said, "The number one thing that gets in the way of our resilience is guilt".  So I was like, it's actually interesting we've not thought to do the topic before.  I was like, "Oh, we're only thinking about this now, two years later"!

Helen Tupper: Guilt is a bit like toothache, you know, it's quite a constant, it's distracting, or like an earache, and it stops you sleeping.  You go to sleep and then you wake up and you're like, "Oh, I've still got toothache".

Sarah Ellis: And maybe you feel quite helpless.  Is it one of those emotions where you're like, because it's probably not as immediate and it's more low level, do you just get used to it?  And then do you just sort of feel like, "There's not really anything I can do", you get quite accepting of it.  I think we're going to talk about maybe that it doesn't have to be that way.

Helen Tupper: So, I was doing a bit of research into the not so lovely world of guilt, and there are four different types of guilt, and I was trying to think about how these four different types relate to how it might show up at work.  So, the obvious one is something called natural guilt.  So, this is you feel bad because you've done something wrong, basically, and whether that is perceived wrong by other people or not, it's kind of how you feel about this.  So, you think you've missed a deadline, or I've made a commitment to Sarah that I've not kept, or maybe I feel guilty because I said something in a situation because I was just responding in the moment and actually, now I'm thinking about it, I wish I hadn't said this at all, but that kind of natural guilt.  I think that probably reflects quite a lot of the feedback that we were getting, about what guilt looks like for people at the moment.  But there are three other types of guilt which are kind of interesting.

Number two is chronic guilt.  So, this is where you basically almost can't get away from the guilt and it is often as a result of prolonged exposure to stress.  So, I was trying to think about have I ever had chronic , and I think I have had this prolonged exposure to stress.  When I came back from maternity for the first time, I was working at Virgin and it was quite a stressful situation.  We were launching a new business.  I don't think they were trying to overtly put me in a position of stress, but I felt responsibility for that role and the team and I cared about it a lot.  So, there was a lot of stresses at work, there were stressors for me outside of work.  I was a first-time parent, I was making decisions about childcare that I wasn't that confident in like, "Is it okay to leave a little baby, and is it okay to miss a bedtime?" all this kind of stuff that I hadn't quite maybe accepted some things yet.  And I'd also started to study and I think I was thinking, "Oh, I'm not a very good student". 

And so, there were quite a lot of stressors that had been around for quite a long time. I think my guilt was showing up with me constantly saying sorry.  I didn't even realise it but I was basically saying sorry to everybody all of the time, "I'm sorry I'm late, I'm sorry I've not done that yet, I'm sorry I haven't prioritised that particular meeting, I'm sorry I can't come to that thing after work".  And it was when someone called it out that I realised it was happening.  But I think if you are in a situation where you've got that prolonged exposure to stress, then it might be going from natural guilt to chronic guilt; could be interesting to think about.

Third one is collective guilt.  So, this is where a group feels shared responsibility for an issue.  This is big, this collective guilt one, when I was looking at it, the research says it's often embedded in sort of systemic issues.  So for example, white privilege, like a group thinking, "Gosh, this is not right and it hasn't been right for a long time and I'm part of the problem", that kind of real sense of, "I didn't even know I was contributing to this and now I've become aware of it, I feel really bad about it".  So, that's that collective guilt that a whole group could feel. Then there's one called survivor guilt, which is where you have these conflicting emotional states.  So, you might be happy that something has happened to you, but then you might feel bad that somebody else has experienced something very different. 

So, redundancy would be one of these.  Let's imagine you've gone through a consultation process at work, your company's going through a restructure, everybody's role was at risk, but you've retained your role and maybe a close friend or a colleague has lost theirs.  That kind of desire to be happy, but a feeling of guilt because someone else is not, it can be quite a difficult type of emotion to feel.  So, I just thought it was quite interesting.  I think the natural one comes to mind quite easily, but then when you start to think about those other ones, think, "Well, have I ever had that kind of a guilt, or is the guilt that I'm experiencing right now perhaps one of those?"

Sarah Ellis: And so just to get you started, I mean I think intuitively everyone listening will have some sense of what you feel guilty about, but there are two routes into thinking about this that I think just might unlock your insights around your own guilt and then what you might do about it.  One is your should, because I think shoulds often imply a guilt, you know, "I should be doing these things", and you feel guilty that you are doing them.  So, it's sort of the fact that those things are missing is what you're guilty about.  So, what are your shoulds?  So, there's a "what" question.  And then I think there's a "when" question like, can you pinpoint specific situations when you feel guilty?  And I got some different answers actually from those two things, which I think is interesting, because then you can figure out which one of these feels more important or more pressing, because one of them felt to me more like it mattered.  So, should we do our shoulds first, Helen?

Helen Tupper: Let's do it.

Sarah Ellis: So, I got to my shoulds were, I should have done more exercise this week,  I think I think that every single week; I should be spending more time reading books with my 6-year-old.  That's so specific.  Yeah, I don't know, that was just in my head!  I should have responded to those emails sooner.  I think I always think about emails that I'm always like, "Oh, I've not responded, and I feel guilty that I've not gone..."  I can think of one right now where people have asked me for some recommendations on procrastination, and I'm feeling really guilty I've not gone back to them.  To be clear, I'm not procrastinating about doing it, I've just not done it.

Helen Tupper: It's quite interesting hearing your shoulds, actually, because I think there's two parts of this.  There's one which we'll dive into, which is how you manage that within yourself, like how you feel about things that you might not have done the way that you wanted to do; that's a kind of personal thing.  But also, as a person who can support you, it's quite useful for me to know that they're the top three things that you feel like you should be doing that you're not, because I think, "Oh, how can I enable it?"  So, I actually think sharing your shoulds is quite useful. My shoulds, the first two are in complete conflict with each other.  So, the first one, I should have finished everything I had on my list, I end most days feeling like that; the second one is the conflict, I should have spent more time on the new rather than just the to-do.  So, there's part of me that's just trying to get everything done, and then a part of me that's like, "Oh, but I want to do new stuff".  So, those two are in complete conflict, which is some endless cycle of guilt.  And then the other one's actually quite similar to Sarah, I should have got home on time, or I should have done some exercise, that feeling.  I think that's the boundaries bit that I don't feel like I protect very well.

Sarah Ellis: Do your whens then, keep going with your whens.  So, when do you feel most guilt?

Helen Tupper: I've got three.  So, when I have avoided a difficult conversation, like I feel like, "Oh, it would have been so much better to just have that discussion", so I feel guilty that I didn't have that conversation.  I feel guilty when I'm making either/or choices.  So, I feel at the moment this particular stage in my life, a lot is very either/or.  So, I either go to that event after work, or I get home for my children's bedtime; I either do that email or I work on that presentation, and I often feel guilty for the one that I don't choose.

Sarah Ellis: The one that misses out, yeah.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, because I want to try and do everything.  And I feel guilty when I'm a bottleneck, so when my lack of action holds back somebody else.  They are three things that I feel quite frequently.

Sarah Ellis: My whens were quite different.  When I'm ill, because I feel like it puts pressure on other people, and actually somebody else on Instagram said the same thing, know that kind of guilt about being ill or sick generally, that was the first one that sprung to mind for me.  And then when I miss something that matters to me and other people.  So, you know when you've got something where, probably like you're either/or, I guess, where I'm like, probably I'm making the choice that I have to, but I'm missing something that I'm like, "Oh, but I think it's important that I'm somewhere else", but I sort of can't change it.  Which of those did you find more helpful, out of interest?  Did you find them both helpful, or did you find the shoulds more helpful than the whens, or…?

Helen Tupper: I found the, "When do I feel more guilty?" a bit more insightful.

Sarah Ellis: Same, yeah.  I think the shoulds are good to get you started, but I think it's the whens where I was like, "These are the ones I actually really want to do something about.

Helen Tupper: They felt more personal.  I felt like the shoulds were a bit generic when I came up with them, but those are the ones.  And when you look at yours and my answers, they are very individual.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  And so I was reading one of the HBR articles that we'll link to for today about guilt, and it asks a really good question, which was, "Does it help?"  And I was like, I like how binary and black and white that is.  Often we're like, "You should ask open questions".  But essentially, the reason that it's useful is it starts to get you to your level of control.  And one of the ideas for action we're going to talk about today is around control.  So, almost sometimes it's like, well, does it help to feel guilty?  There are actually times where the answer to that is yes.  When you read lots of research around guilt, guilt can be a really useful prompt for motivation and momentum.  So, Helen's point on bottlenecking, we go, "Well, actually, there's something you can do.  We can do something about that.  You and I can do something about that.  As a team, we can do something about that".  And so actually, it propels you, it propels you to positive progress. Or sometimes, "Does it help?" the answer is no, you are beating yourself up about something where you're like, "I can't change that thing.  My level of control is quite low".  So, we are going to go into lots of ideas for action now, but I do think just that almost quite harsh question of like, "Does it help?" can it help you with that motivation and momentum, or are you going to need to make an active choice to let go of that guilt so that actually you move away from where we started, like that helpless.  If we just go, "Oh, we're just helpless", it just continues.  So, I think we want to figure out what will be helpful now.

Helen Tupper: So, we've got three ideas for action to take if guilt is getting in your way.  So, action number one is to swap your story about when guilt happens in your head, what it makes you think.  Because actually your thoughts around your guilt can either hold you back, get you stuck in a situation, or help you to move forward, help you to take action.  It's the kind of, "does it help you" thing and your thoughts will be the kind of enabler of the action.  So, we've got some swaps that might be useful for you to think about. So, the first one is moving from guilt to gratitude.  So, this could sound like originally you might say to yourself, "I feel really bad that I've not done more prep for tomorrow's podcast that I'm recording with Sarah" and that's kind of the voice of my guilt in my head.

Sarah Ellis: You actually did do a lot of prep for this one, so give yourself credit for that.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, well I was stuck at an airport!

Sarah Ellis: I know you were!

Helen Tupper: I was stuck at an airport reading about guilt.

Sarah Ellis: You were stuck at an airport and then you told me you were feeling guilty about something, and I was like, "Use it, use it for the podcast"!

Helen Tupper: That's very true!  I can't even remember what I was feeling guilty about now.

Sarah Ellis: No, I can't.  But I was like, "Put it in the podcast notes".

Helen Tupper: The supportive business partner I have, "Use your guilt to help other people"!  But yeah, so it might sound like, "I feel bad…"  The swap you can make, the guilt to gratitude here is, "One thing I feel good about is…"  So for example, I might be like, "Oh, I feel bad that I'm not at work helping Sarah with something because I went away for the weekend", which is true.  "One thing I feel good about is that I am refreshed and have a bit more perspective, and I always get that when I've had a break".  And suddenly, you stop feeling guilty about taking time out and I start feeling about positive about the contribution I can make as a result of it. Another one, another swap you might make is, from what you've done wrong, so that kind of idea that you've sort of made a mistake, to what you've done right.  So, this might sound like, I might be like, "Oh, I shouldn't have been so difficult with Sarah about my view on that particular project we wanted to move forward".

Sarah Ellis: That is true!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I'm taking it.  I might feel guilty that I said something I didn't mean to, or I said it in a way that wasn't helpful.  A swap could be, "Okay, well one strength that I brought to that situation was, I was very clear about how this action could connect to our purpose of our business", or something like that, but kind of moving from the shoulds about that situation to the strengths you've brought to it instead. Another one for you, from something that didn't work well, to what you'd do differently next time.  So, this is sort of more towards the learning that you can take from something.  Originally that might sound a bit like, "I really wish I'd double checked my data before I presented it to the team".  So, maybe you were doing a presentation, it went a bit wrong, that was a mistake you feel like you've made. 

The swap, really simple, "One thing I've learned from today is, get someone to double check my work before I present it, or do it with somebody else, so that if I forget something, they can pick it up for me in that moment".  So, you've kind of banked the learning. The last one, again, there are probably more froms and tos, but these are just ones that we wrote down, from sorry to thank you.  I think this is a very simple swap.  So, it sounds like, what I did in that situation earlier, "Oh, sorry I'm late, sorry I couldn't make the meeting, sorry I didn't get it done in time", all that kind of stuff; swap it to, "Thanks so much for your patience on this project.  I've been juggling quite a few balls over the last week".  Or, "Thanks so much for moving that deadline back a bit to give me a bit more time to contribute to the conversation", whatever it is.  But swapping sorry for thank you is often a way you can feel more confident, and I think it comes across as confident to other people too.

Sarah Ellis: So, I think it is just worth reflecting before you move to action, how loud is the internal guilt chatter in your brain?  So, this refers back to Ethan Kross's work, and I still think his is one of the best books on self-talk and the stories that we tell ourselves, if you feel like that is a challenge for you.  Because I think if you don't swap your stories, like the story that you tell yourself about you, if you try to just take the actions without doing the reframe of how you see yourself moving from like guilt to gratitude, what you've done wrong to what you do right, it's actually really hard for these actions to stick.  Because if you're constantly telling yourself that you're not good enough, I'm not learning enough, I'm not getting the balance right, I feel like the actions are really hard. 

So, maybe you actually feel like, "Oh, the chatter's not my challenge.  My challenge is practically what I do".  So, maybe you're quite good at that already.  You've already quietened the unhelpful chatter.  But if you feel like your chatter is really loud, that's definitely the place to start.  And there are loads of articles where almost everything that you read about guilt is pretty much about that.  They don't even go beyond the reframing the story.  Obviously we have because I was like, "Well, that's not enough". So, action two is circles of control, influence, and concern.  So, this might be a model that you've come across before, and I think it's really useful to apply this model specifically to guilt.  So, first of all, the first step I would say here is, list everything that you feel guilty about.  Or maybe there's just one big thing and you need to break it down a little bit.

Helen Tupper: Which you'll probably get to from those questions that we asked earlier, the shoulds and the whens.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think so.  And then you've got to decide which category: control, influence or concern, they belong in.  So obviously, control is where you sort of go, "I actually feel like I do have a really high level of control".  I could take an action, I could do something differently.  Maybe not, for whatever reason, but I do feel like I've got a high level of control.  Influence might be, "Well, there might be other people involved.  So, I might need to have a conversation, I might need support from someone else, I might be able to share what I'm thinking.  I might not be able to solve it all myself.  So, I might have the control, but I might need to solve together".  So, for example, Helen with her bottlenecking example, she might go, "I've got 100% control over it", or she might think, "Oh, well actually, some of the things around bottlenecking, that's only going to get solved with some support from Sarah".  So, there might be some that go in control, some that go in influence. 

And concern is where you are basically feeling guilty about stuff that you cannot control and you can't influence, so you've got to learn to let go.  So, you have a different response to the guilt, depending on which category it falls into. So, a few examples here.  One thing you can control, let's say you've missed a deadline.  Now I'm sure you could argue all of these.  You could be like, "Well, I've missed a deadline because Helen added in more work.  So basically, it's her fault I've missed a deadline".  But fundamentally, let's say I'm like, "Right, I had a 'say do' that.  I said I was going to deliver it by Friday.  We're doing something actually this week for Friday.  We didn't do it, we missed that deadline".  I think then when you've got high control, you then go, you've got high control about your action.  So, in that example, I think you apologise, you don't over explain, and recommit to a new date.  So, let's say Helen and I miss this Friday's deadline, we go to that person and we say, "We're sorry, we know we were going to get this to you today, we've fallen behind, apologies, we know that will impact…" so you know it has a knock on impact, "however, we've managed to clear some extra time on Monday morning, so we will get it to you by Monday midday".  And you don't need to make it long or over-apologetic, those sorts of things, but you're sort of acknowledging it, and then I think it helps you to just let go of the guilt. 

You let go of the guilt and you get on with fixing the guilt essentially. Influence: something like work-life fit, I think often setting and communicating your own boundaries.  I get other people are involved in those boundaries, and where you work and who you work for definitely has an impact.  But you might say something like, "My commitment is to be home for more bedtimes than I'm not", for example, if you've got kids.  So, that would apply for both Helen and I.  Less of an issue for me because I don't like going out!  Maybe more for Helen, who's a lot more sociable.  So, you might have this thing of like, "I'm going to be home for more bedtimes than I'm not in a week".  And then actually, there's no point Helen just saying that to herself.  She probably also needs to share that with our team, she perhaps needs like an accountability partner, she probably also needs to talk to her partner at home and other people in her life.  So, she's got relatively high influence over that. She's also got to let go of any guilt to say no.  I saw that come up in Instagram a few times, so events are going to come Helen's way that she probably wants to say yes to, let's face it.  So, she's got to let go of the guilt of saying no to that, and she's also got to let go of the guilt of probably sometimes saying to her kids, "Well, I'm not going to be home tonight because I'm doing something else".

Helen Tupper: I mean, this is like a live thing going on right now in the 24 hours I'm experiencing.  I've had the guilt from my daughter this morning, and I've also got to say no to something that I want to say yes to, but it's live, yeah!

Sarah Ellis: So, it doesn't worry me.  For all the introverts out there, you're like, "Yeah, it's not a thing".  And then concern: me getting ill, I think, is a good example here, and this is actually something I've worked really hard on, because I can't control getting ill, but it's actually probably the thing I feel most guilty for.  So, it's my biggest sort of guilt challenge, I guess, or my biggest guilt trap.  And what I have found is that learning to let go of that guilt, I think, first of all we talked about sharing your shoulds or sharing your whens; actually, just sharing it out loud with other people feels like quite a vulnerable, brave thing to do. 

But then it helps you, I think, to believe that other people are on your side and they're not judging you.  So, you can't help but think, because I get ill perhaps a little bit more than average because sometimes I have migraines, and I always think, "Oh God, this is a nightmare for Helen.  She's having to cover loads of stuff, it's creating loads of problems", so I'm both ill and then feeling guilty for being ill. But actually, once I started to share with Helen, that was how I was feeling, she was just like, "You do realise I don't ever think that?"  And you sort of objectively know that, but you know emotionally that's not how you feel in those moments.  But I think just by sort of -- I feel like I've chipped away at it.  I don't think you suddenly let go of all of the guilt, but I have chipped away at going, "When I am not well, it is okay, everything's going to be there in two days' time".  And I actually had a client say to me, a lovely client, who I'd had a really bad sickness bug that my 2-year-old niece had given me, and it was horrendous, and I was talking to the client two days later when I was back at work, and I was like, "Oh, it's been a bit of a tricky two days, and I felt quite guilty about being off for two days, been quite ill".  And she said to me, "Oh, so how long have you been off for?"  I was like, "Yeah, two days".  She was like, "Two days?"  And I was like, "Yeah, I know, feeling really guilty about these two days".  She's like, "Sarah, it was two days!"  And I'd really built up this guilt in my head. Also, I think it was a separate sort of guilt because it wasn't a migraine; the migraine guilt, I think I've worked quite hard to let go of.  This was different.  I was like, "Oh, this is sickness guilt!"  So, I'm separating my guilt out because I think I just always feel really bad and you just know it puts pressure on.  I think in a small company, it feels very different to being in a big company when you're not very well.  And so, that's also a good example of where other people's perspectives I think can really help you let go of guilt.  Just that one conversation for me changed how I felt about that week.  And I was like, "Do you know what?  It is okay and I can let go of that".

Helen Tupper: I feel like I can see that from both sides more than I could have done six months ago.  So, the side that I can see is, "Sarah, don't worry about it, it's fine", because of the people helping people thing.  If you're poorly, you give me an opportunity to help, and people like helping people.  So, I quite like, not quite like you being poorly, no, but I like being like, "Right, we've got to sort this for Sarah, we've got to give Sarah some space", and I quite like the team galvanising together, and you know, you definitely shouldn't feel bad, and I probably would have sort of not dismissed you feeling bad before, but when I was off in August, because I'd had an operation, I actually had the same sort of feeling of, "Oh, I feel really bad that I'm being out of the business, which is really for almost a month, and how much work the team are having to put in to cover for me".  So, I can understand the guilt that you feel, but also, did you like being helpful when I was off; did it make you feel useful?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I did actually.  Not just probably for you, probably also --

Helen Tupper: You got rid of me for a month!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  I mean, we did quite different sorts of work, didn't we, in August?  And I still felt like you were around.  I also quite like to help people out who'd gone on holiday.  We have lots of our team go on holiday in August because lots of people have got small kids, and I was working at that time.  And so, you know people feel guilty for going on holiday?  I quite enjoyed it.  I'm like, "Oh, I get to meddle in other people's work".

Helen Tupper: But that's what you should remember.  I think, the things that people might feel guilty about, if you can't really understand it, I'm like -- because I don't think me saying to you, "Oh, Sarah, just get over feeling guilty", doesn't really help.  So, I think kind of understanding where that feeling's coming from a bit more, or getting closer to it.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's quite interesting, because you start to get to, don't you, the sort of, are there upsides for other people when you might be feeling guilty?  So, lots of people talk about the work-life fit thing, and sometimes I will feel guilty that I'm going off to exercise rather than choosing to spend that hour with my 6-year-old.  But then I just sort of go, if you looked at it, what's the upside?  If I was trying to find an upside, I'd be like, "Okay, well, I've just given my 6-year-old 45 minutes of playing computer games with my partner.  I cannot provide him with the joy that that provides".  But there is usually -- and he is helping me, my partner is also helping me and he's very happy to do that.  He's probably doing something that I can't do.  I wonder if there is sometimes a glimmer of upside in your guilt, of upside for others.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  If I feel guilty about making a mistake, does it give someone in our team an opportunity to help me find a better solution that would make them feel really good?

Sarah Ellis: It does mean that someone else is not going to make the same mistake, because you shared it.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.

Sarah Ellis: I do wonder whether there's something in that, like you say, that just helps you to feel better about it because I think we do feel like guilt is this nagging, underlying bad thing.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  So, the final action is actually a set of actions because that's normally how we do it; we try to squeeze in as much as possible!  So, this is three small actions that you can take to let go of the different types of guilt that we identified at the start.  So, this is the to-do-list guilt one to begin with, which is like the, "I've not done enough".  This is one I get all the time.  So, a couple of small actions here that might be helpful if this is a guilt that you feel quite often at work.  So first one, tick off the most important task, the thing that mattered the most today to you, because actually if it's the thing that mattered most to you, then you could probably let go of some of the other stuff that was a bit less important and you'll still feel good that you got that thing done.  So, you kind of start with what matters most. The second thing here is, what's one thing you achieved that you didn't anticipate?  So, I think the problem sometimes with just ticking off a to-do list is you don't appreciate the things that you've done in that day that were never on the list to begin with.  You know the random call or message you get from somebody that says, "Oh, can you just come to this meeting for me?  Or could you just help me out with this report?"  And because it wasn't on the list, so you didn't tick it off, you might not really appreciate you've done that.

Sarah Ellis: I think that's such a good one, like what's one thing you have ticked off that wasn't on the list?  Giving yourself credit for everything, I think credit is an offset to guilt, and I bet hardly anyone ever does that.

Helen Tupper: And third small thing if you get to-do-list guilt is, who is one person that you've helped today?  Again a lot of that list can sometimes feel quite tactical and transactional, where actually if you've helped somebody, that's a very nice thing for you to do that you should kind of appreciate that you have done that for somebody.  So, who have you helped today, is a good question to ask yourself if you are suffering from a bit of to-do-list guilt.

Sarah Ellis: And then the second area is on boundary guilt.  So, three small actions on boundary guilt.  Firstly, set and share boundaries, really small things.  I don't think this is like how I'm going to be boundaried in all of my life.  I think it sounds more like, "On a Thursday lunchtime, I'm going to an exercise class because I promised to myself that I'm going to do one thing a week that is just for me", and you just share that with everyone else.  So, really simple, really straightforward.  Ask people for support to stick to them.  So, you might say, "I'm going to block out my diary.  And if it's okay, can we avoid meetings then?" 

So, you're sort of almost getting that kind of joint commitment. Then finally, signal issues quickly.  So, let's say those boundaries are being broken consistently.  You might then say -- I might say to Helen, "Well, do you remember I said to you about the exercise class?  The last two weeks actually I've missed it because of last minute requests.  So, I'm really open to looking at maybe doing this differently, or is there a way that we can avoid it in the future?"  And it might be that someone's just forgotten, or it might be that they're giving you a last-minute request that can totally wait until after your exercise class, and actually sometimes you just need to remind people like, "Oh, I'm just off to do that thing now, is it okay if I sort this when I'm back?"  So, sometimes it can also be about having the confidence to keep recommitting to that boundary.

Helen Tupper: And the final one is missed deadline guilt, so that feeling like, "Oh, I should have got it done" and that moment has passed.  So, first action here, flag it fast, don't hope people won't notice because you're going to be worried and feeling guilty at the same time; that's double the bad emotion you don't need.  So, flag it fast if you think you're going to miss that deadline, or if you definitely have.  Two, back to what Sarah said earlier, acknowledge but don't feel like you always have to apologise.  So, I might say to Sarah, "Really sorry that I missed that date, here's what I'm going to do".  And the third thing is, let people know what's next and keep them updated as you go.  If you've missed a deadline, I think what is really helpful is to sort of over-communicate how you're responding to it.  So, I might say to Sarah, "I'm really sorry I missed that thing on Friday, this is my plan".  And at the end of Monday, I might give an update on how it's going.  So, I kind of need to rebuild a bit of that confidence.  But I would put your attention into action rather than apologising. So, hopefully that has been helpful for you.  We've covered quite a lot today, we will put it all on the PodSheet so you've got all those summaries.  And we're back with another episode for you next week.

Sarah Ellis: So, thanks so much for listening and bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.