Welcome to this episode of the podcast. 

So today we're going to talk a little bit about guilt, everybody's favorite topic. When I left teaching I had all kinds of guilt because I felt like I had left my calling my forever job. If you grew up thinking and knowing that you would be a teacher it's one of those things you know so many people in the world never know what they want to be when they grow up and I had all these feelings about this fact that I knew what I was going to be when I grew up and then all of a sudden I wasn't doing it. So, on this episode today we're going to talk about all of the flavors of guilt that come from come with the move from education into business and how to grow even though you have them.  Doing this is really vital to your success we're going to talk about not just the guilt that you're carrying around but what to do with it and how to move through it. It is going to stay, like we can't just banish it but we can still work and grow and do all those things and not feed it it's like a wild animal in the corner that we kind of let do its own thing. 

So for me guilt came in a couple of flavors and still does like I'm not entirely rid of it. Now, we all have some flavor - it's like Baskin Robbins you know guilt comes in 67 flavors or however many. I always knew, as I said before, that I would be a teacher and it was always going to be what I was going to do. I taught you know dolls and swimming lessons and kids in the neighborhood. I did all the things I had my own classroom right out of college  - it was great. And then the world presented me with an opportunity to coach teachers and I applied thinking that in a million years they would never pick me - I was young at the time I think I was 25. And when they did I was like stopped dead in my tracks because not only was I leaving the classroom that I had like dreamed of since I was five but I was leaving in February so I had to like say to kids hey I'm not gonna be your teacher anymore and hand them off to someone who you know was a lovely person but I didn't really have faith in. Oh, it was awful. So there was a lot of guilt there eventually one of the things that helped me as I transitioned into coaching was seeing sort of the ripple effect of the impact I could have by being in more classrooms. Eventually I left that coaching job because we moved states, and I moved out of the teaching world entirely out of school buildings into a job that was corporate. It was in the education space but it was in sales and marketing and doing all these things that I never in a million years expected to be doing and I had a lot of guilt about selling things and getting to travel and go to interesting places and really enjoying my work even though I felt like I shouldn't be because I wasn't teaching. 

And eventually I left that role because it was too far from teaching and because I really felt like I wanted to be in a classroom - it wasn't really guilt that drove that so much as I missed teaching and so I went back into a classroom this time with college kids, so it could be a little more on my schedule. At that point I've had my kids. My kids were really young and I was looking for flexibility as well as teaching. I wanted to be able to teach other humans things but still be able to like function in my household because that's important. And for some of you the decision to leave teaching and to move out of the classroom is about flexibility because it's not a super flexible job as much as you get defined breaks and summers and the rest the day-to-day doesn't allow for you know doctors appointments and sick kids and all of those things necessarily. So when I started moving into the business world when I started my first business I had even more guilt about what happens when I got successful as I started to make more money it's really you know evolved in a nice pretty package of more things to be guilty about - but what I've had to do is figure out what to do with it. 

So maybe these flavors of guilt are familiar for you. Maybe they're not what is standard for all of us is there is some flavor of guilt that we have to work through and working through is important because here's what happens if we're carrying around all the guilt. It slows us down, it makes it really hard for us to make clear decisions we don't get to be decisive if we're feeling guilty. We don't think logically all the time if we're feeling guilty and to be honest walking around feeling guilty about not doing all these other things is not a fun way to run a business. So being slow, being indecisive, being unclear, being worried all the time like that's not awesome  - that's not why you left teaching, it's not why you're running the business you are. It's not the life you're trying to lead you're trying to move forward and enjoy what you're doing and create the business and the life you want. 

One of the steps to doing that is working through the guilt and learning to function you know either with it minimized or letting go of it depending on how you look at it. So the first step in doing this is really admitting what you're feeling guilty about you have to know what you're carrying around. Think of it like a suitcase that nobody wants to take a suitcase on vacation. That's a mystery box you need to know what's in it you don't want to go on vacation to the beach and open up and find a parka - that's not helpful. 

When you identify what you're feeling guilty about it's not so mysterious anymore. Once it's less mysterious you can start to work to understand why it's there and what to do with it. It's sort of like you can't solve a problem if you don't know what the problem is - it's just it makes it, you just throw spaghettI at the wall. So for me one of the guilts one of the feelings of guilt one of the thoughts that drove this feeling of guilt that I identified really early on was that I was no longer doing what I was certified to do. I was still happy with my job but I put all this time and energy when I was younger and really like through all of my adult life to become a certified teacher to get all of the pieces of paper to you know get the certificates and the extra stars as it were and then I went and did a bunch of stuff where I didn't need them. Like ‘oh crud’. 

So I was feeling really bad that I spent all this time and energy getting the paper to just not use it and what I had to do, once I identified that that was - going on the next thing - I had to do was figure out the truth of it and that's really the next step for you. So identify what you're feeling guilty about are you feeling bad I don't know you tell me once you know think about the truth of it. For me it worked like this I was feeling bad that I had all these skills that I wasn't using but when I sat back and really thought about it I use my teaching skills every freaking day I use the things I learned in college, I learned the things I learned in a classroom, I use the people skills, I use the questioning skills, I use the organizational skills, I teach things to other people all day long  - I just do it in a different way now so maybe I wasn't using the piece of paper   - nobody's got my certificate on file right now (like none of my clients asked for my teaching certificate before they signed up) maybe there's someone who will I don't know but as much as I wasn't using the piece of paper I was using the skills, so none of the learning I've done up to this point, none of the classes, none of the experiences, none of the life skills, none of them are wasted.

I now just use them for the benefit of others in a different way. So when you think about whether or not your guilt is true think about you know are you using those skills is it just different now did you reinvent your calling? Did you reinvent teaching? Did you reinvent how you're being of use to others in the world? Probably. 

And then the third step is going to sound ridiculous but it's the truth - the third step is to keep going. So what happens with guilt is that it pops up into your brain when you least expect it you're moving along and all of a sudden you think everything's good and you stop and you go like oh gosh i'm not using the certifications I spent all that time to get, huh. Once you're practiced at identifying that as like ‘oh that's guilt I don't need - I know the answer to that’ is that of course I'm using all those skills i'm just not using the piece of paper everything's good. 

The more you practice identifying the guilt and testing the truth of it the more quickly the cycle happens. So now when I think things like I've left my calling my first thought back is ‘oh no I know I haven't I'm just teaching in a new way. I reinvented this. Oh’ and then I can move on. 

 I don't have to sit in it and be like ‘oh god did I do it wrong, like what am I doing with my life, did I make the right choice?’ I don't need to get lost in that circle because I know the answer - I know that that guilty feeling isn't true. So as you work through all this guilt is sort of an inevitable part of work and life and business. 

One of the things I talk about in my facebook group quite a bit actually but I also talk about it with my kids is one of the analogies I make for our feelings is that they all ride around our brains in a bus like a school bus. I imagine them all like packed in there you know sitting next to each other we've got confidence and we've got guilt and we've got worry and anxiety and all the really fun stuff and we've got you know consistency like all the great stuff all the bad stuff all the stuff. 

They're all on the school bus and what they do is they jockey for the driver's seat, so when you're sitting around and you're thinking like ‘oh gosh did I make the right decision, I don't know if I'm spending my time right, I feel like I should be doing it differently’ -all of the guilt - guilt is driving the school bus in your brain and guilt is a horrendous driver. Guilt doesn't make good decisions - he likes parks in the middle of the road, he gets lost, he does all kinds of crazy stuff. You would much be better off would be much better off pardon me having somebody like confidence drive or consistency or truth or trust. So when you are sitting in that sort of spiral of like ‘oh man’ you're letting guilt drive the bus of all the feelings in your body and in your brain and that holds you back. But when you kind of get aware of the guilt and you test the truth of it and keep that cycle going, you are transplanting guilt right out of the driver's seat of your bus and putting someone else more decisive, clearer, more effective, into the driver's seat - you actually get to go where you're going if everything isn't clouded by guilt. 

So keep in mind guilt is really normal. I keep saying this but it's because Ii really mean it and I want you to hear it. Sometimes as you work for this through the cycle the thing that you're feeling guilty about will sort of wane away and it won't be that big a deal anymore and something new will crop up. Like for me eventually it became like I'm making too much money - “What how is that a thing I'm thinking? How do I feel bad about that?  Like ‘oh boy whole new level of guilt’ great. So you have to work through something new or one of those old guilty thoughts that you thought you were rid of will pop back up and you'll think like ‘oh god again really do, have to do this again, why are you here like an uninvited party guest?’ Don't freak out - new guilt normal, old pesky thoughts like little weeds in the garden perking back up. Totally normal, this is what happens, this is how human brains work it's all good.

What matters the most here is that your feelings of “I'm not supposed to, I shouldn't be, what if I,  this is not my way I'm meant to be working, I should be teaching all these things’ - all this guilt all the things you're feeling like you shouldn't be doing - they don't define you. They're just part of what's in your brain. You get to be the person who decides to do it anyways. You get to decide that the guilt can sit out sit and hang out in the back of the bus but they don't get to drive. You can grow while keeping the guilt at bay you don't have to hide it you don't have to hide from it you can talk to it and have a relationship with it and be like ‘yeah no you're not in charge, cool that's fine.’ What matters in the end is that you continue to grow and you don't let those thoughts slow you down. They don't have to - it doesn't have to be like that, I promise done it for myself, I do it with clients I work with, people in my group on it. 

One of the things i want you to know here as we come towards the end is that I obviously have a window into the world that is moving from teaching into business  - if you're having all the guilt and all the thoughts and you're stuck in this cycle of like muddy yucky please reach out. I work with clients on how to let go of the things they can and manage the things they can't to continue to grow in spite of having guilt - sometimes it's part of normal business. I help them to grow businesses where the guilt isn't the driver where fun and happy and productive and consistent and confident are the ones at the front of the bus taking turns in the driver's seat. I help clients get focused in the noise and find the order in the chaos so that they can actually grow and then as they do we'll pick out those new things you feel guilty about and we'll deal with them too. 

You can work on feeling guilty about having too much money and then we'll not feel guilty about that either. So if you want to connect you can reach out and schedule a free one-on-one  conversation about coaching you can do it on my website which is torpey t o r p is in peter ey coaching.com or you can send me a message directly on facebook or linkedin both those places are great, or you can come on in and join my facebook community where we talk about all this kind of stuff all the time. it's called Teachers in Business just like this podcast and we'd love to see you there so here's to a little less guilt and a little more confidence have a great week.