Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo® – 2/2/26
I always thought “guilt” was a noun. Then a woman told me it was a verb. I told her that was untrue, and here’s the conversation:
Her: Of course it’s a verb: “I arrived too late, after she had already been guilted.” Between you and I, you should really know this, Alan.
Me: Wait a minute, you can use guilted in the pluperfect tense, but you use “between you and I” incorrectly!?
Perhaps I’m guilty (!) of not being hip. But in my investigation for my new book coming later this year, The Courage of Your Talent (“research” is too grand a term for me), I have found that guilt is an increasingly limiting factor in people’s behavior.
Some religions have formal mechanisms for atonement and freeing ourselves from guilt: confession (reconciliation) for Catholics, Yom Kippur (the holiest day in Judaism), and the Muslim Day of Ashura. However, not everyone is religious or abides by these rites even if they claim to be.
We’re often influenced by childhood experience of our parent and teachers looking for blame and not cause. Normative pressures today, especially on social media, can make us feel guilty for doing something others aren’t or not doing something others are (as I said above, I’m not all that “hip”).
No matter what the origins we can fight and overcome guilt, whether self-imposed or cast upon us. First, readjust your expectations from trying to please others to focusing on your own self-worth. We are worthy people, there is no score of wins and losses, or likes and dislikes that matters. Being wrong or in error does not make us “unworthy.” Humanity has inherent dignity.
Understand that someone, somewhere, will always be disappointed and feel poorly treated. Frankly, I’m not doing my job unless I’m ticking off someone, somewhere. I’m here to make people think, not to win a popularity contest. Stop punishing yourself and, if you’re wrong about something, fix it. (Definition of Puritanism: The dread fear that someone, somehwere, is enjoying himself.) You can never give an activist “enough.”
So stop guilting yourself (between you and me).
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Correction: In last Monday’s issue, this paragraph should have read like this— “Example: If a group of employees will likely accept a leader-alone decision without their input, then group meetings are not required. However, if they would not, then their involvement would be required in the feasible set.”
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer “Present” or “Not guilty.” —Theodore Roosevelt
Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief. —Dave Grohl
The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt. —Ayn Rand
Sometimes a little guilt can be a good thing. —Maria Weiss
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