July 27, 2012

Let's Make a Deal!

No, there's no need to peek behind a curtain, as in that insufferable show.


This is a different kind of deal-making.

Have you got something you've been feeling guilty about, even if that guilt is unproductive and is not actually motivating you to accomplish anything?

If so, would you like to put that guilt aside for a little while?

Well relax, we gotcha covered!


But wait... can't guilt be a good thing?

Sure!  If you're feeling guilty because you're planning to squander the last of your family's grocery money on lotto tickets, bon bons, whiskey, and tips for strippers, then yes, please continue to feel guilty until you come to your senses and get your butt to the grocery store and buy some broccoli or something.

And no, sorry, "beefcake" is not a legitimate grocery expenditure.

But sometime guilt is just demoralizing, distracting, and useless.

For example, let's you have some sort of injury that means you can't work out the way you're used to, but you still feel crappy that you're not doing your normal routine. Is feeling guilty going to make your injury heal any faster?  No it isn't... yet you do it anyway. And if you do enough of it, you may get fed up and decide to re-injure yourself and then put yourself out of commission for an even longer period of time. Thanks a lot, guilt!

Or say you know you need to start meditating, or stop smoking, or start a new healthy eating or exercise program, and you have definitely decided to make that a priority... but right now you're in the middle of a temporary family or work crisis and you don't have either the time or the motivation to deal with it.  If you're not actually going to do anything differently until the crisis is over... how does beating yourself up about it help?

For me, it's my usual breast-beating about how I should keep up the blog when I go on long trips, especially now that it's pretty much the only marketing vehicle for my life and wellness coaching practice (which I love and am getting fairly decent at but which could always use more clients). But guess what? No matter how sincere my intentions, I never manage much more than a few guest posts and travel photos when I'm on the road.

Which is weird, since I always write tons of imaginary posts, distracting myself from real life adventures by trying to describe them as they're happening to people who are not there.  Other bloggers manage to turn these into real posts, yet I can't! When I leave home, some mysterious travel vapor takes my brilliant ideas and turns them into trite and clunky sentences as soon as I try to write them up.  Even worse, all the "not posting" on the road takes up more mental energy than "posting" does at home.

So here's our deal: over the next day or so, Cranky Fitness can become your own personal and official Guilt Removal System.

Feel vaguely guilty about anything but have no plans to address it directly at the moment?  No problem!

Simply leave a comment documenting your misbehavior or slackitude or regret.    I will then ponder your situation and behavior thoroughly, evaluate whether it endangers innocent bystanders, and if not...

I will reply to your comment granting you complete absolution! You are now free to go about your life without beating yourself up.

To make this absolution Extra Specially Potent, you could also include an additional mention of how, eventually, when the time is right, you might take a simple step to actually do something to address  the source of the guilt. But that part is completely optional. Your absolution is unconditional.  Go have fun, drop the guilt, and put that pent-up energy to better uses.

In return, if anyone would just copy and paste this phrase into a comment (or make up something similar), I'd be most grateful:  "Crabby, don't bother feeling guilty about not posting much of anything on the blog while you're gone.  We don't give a crap if you post anything or not!"  I will then address my blog slackitude over the next few weeks by posting when I feel inspired, and saving any unused blog energy for when I get back.

Deal?

Two other random items:

Don't forget the Wun Jo giveaway, deadline is the end of today (Friday 7/27);

And remember my review of Rick Hanson's Enlightened Brain online course?  Bottom line: it was great! Well, I just noticed that it's now on sale over at Sounds True for only $29... a pretty good deal for a 6 week self-paced audio & video course.  Be sure you pick up the discount code at the link on the home page (for me it says SGCOURSE)  because you might not see that if you go straight to the page that has the course description.  Note: I don't have any sort of affiliate relationship with Sounds True, though now that I think about it, why the hell not?  I highly recommend their stuff.  (And not just because the gal behind Sounds True, Tami Simon, introduces a lot of the courses and has the sexiest voice I've ever heard, at least on a product as wholesome as a personal development course.  I swear that has nothing whatever to do with my enthusiasm. Er, probably.)

Anyone feeling any useless guilt about anything? Get your Complete Absolution here!

Let's Make a Deal Photo: I'm guessing from somewhere at Let's Make A Deal; Stripper pic from the movie "A Night in Heaven."

44 comments:

  1. I jettisoned GUILT and her bitchy BFF SHAME a while back :-)
    life has been far sweeter since.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Ah yes, SHAME is even nastier than guilt because it's not even your own demons at the wheel but worry about the arbitrary "others" out there and what they might think. Totally counterproductive!

      So you need no absolution? Cool, I'll spread yours around to anyone else who needs it!

      Delete
  2. Crabby, I don't feel guilt about anything in this life so you can spread my share around, too.
    Meanwhile, don't worry about posting. No one legitimately expects posts from anyone on vacation. I'll miss your posts, butthat means they'll be all the more exciting when you get back.

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    1. Thank you Leah, I appreciate your pro-active absolution!

      And seriously, I'm the only one who still bothers with useless guilt? I gotta either learn to let it go or hang out with less evolved folks. Oh wait, feeling guilty about feeling guilty... perhaps a bit f-cked up?

      Delete
  3. Dammit you are leaving again? I am going on a mini vacation to the cape and was hoping I could hook up with you for some chit chat and coffee. Say it isn't so....wahhhhh

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    1. Oh crap! Yep we leave this weekend for a house swap in Scotland (with a detour through Germany where we have a friend), gone all of August.

      But we're here September and most of October... fall is awesome on the cape, come out and play in ptown!

      However, I'm seriously disappointed in you people. Absolutely NO useless guilt so far? What a waste of my Superpowers!

      Delete
  4. I feel guilty about my habit of procrastination. I was going to put off writing to you about it, but that would just be feeding my habit. Please absolve me, Crabby - I'm afraid I have infected both my (grown) children with the same nasty habit and am carrying a heavy load of guilt.

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    1. Hooray, I get to use my super powers!

      Feeling guilty about it doesn't help, right? So go ahead, embrace your procrastination and laugh about it and know you are in very good company. Procrastinators are often perfectionists and have a lot of good qualities that go along with wanting to do things right.

      There are actually some good ways to combat procrastination--hmm, I'm probably due for a post on that, um, someday--and you will find that, for example, that by breaking things down into tiny little nonthreating pieces you can slowly build new habits. But not until you're good and damn ready. And if you're not, that's totally cool!

      You are a good person, I can tell, and you are hereby officially absolved of any guilt about procrastination. You may now stop beating yourself so you can at least ENJOY not doing something today.

      Delete
  5. In my attempt to get back to regular workouts after submitting my thesis, I have finally done so for 2 solid weeks. However, I keep drinking beer at the end of the day and eating crap food. I am cancelling out my hard work...Ze balance is missing...feel guilty about it, but not really enough to change. It's like I'm giving myself free reign to do whatever until my thesis defense in the end of august...

    ReplyDelete
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    1. You are someone with a long history of healthy behaviors and finding balance... your healthy eating equilibrium will naturally return when it is time, just the way your workout equilibrium did.

      Your thesis is top priority and if a diet of beer and crap food are giving you the mental resources to tackle it? Then I say drink up and munch with no regrets! We can only let ourselves feel martyred on so many fronts at once.

      You are officially absolved of any guilt about your beer & crap food until the end of August. When you are ready to get back on the wagon you will, so enjoy it!

      Delete
  6. "Crabby, don't bother feeling guilty about not posting much of anything on the blog while you're gone. We don't give a crap if you post anything or not!" ... or at least we understand you not posting, and we'll still be here when you get back.

    I often feel a little guilty for so rarely taking the time to comment on blogs that I enjoy reading (and not just this one!). Can I perhaps have one dose of absolution now, and one in a doggy bag for later?

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Thank you Shadowduck!!!

      (And I'll take a doggy bag of your absolution as well, because I often feel guilty about the same thing.)

      As it happens, you write such awesome and supportive comments when you do stop by that you have enough Comment Karma to last you several decades. So you are officially absolved of any Comment Guilt, with extra absolution packaged up to go.

      Delete
  7. Oh my goodness this is fun! I'm off for an hour or two but will be back to offer more pardons soon!

    ReplyDelete
  8. My exercise and food has been pretty good lately, so the only thing I've got left to feel guilty about is my (lack of) housekeeping - specifically, vacuuming. Ugh. Hate doing it, but love the results. I either need absolution, or pets that don't shed. Or, hey, I could actually DO IT, but that would take all the fun out of this!

    When I went on vacation earlier this month? I deliberately didn't bring my netbook so I couldn't blog - and it was wonderful. I was available for everything, and came back with lots of blog fodder. So please don't feel like you should be blogging on your trip. We'll be here for you when you come back. :)

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Oh shoot, I tried to fix a typo and lost my comment!

      Anyway, there is no use feeling guilt over cleaning... because it's never done! No matter what a great job you did today, tomorrow they'd be pet hair everywhere. If the folks from the health department haven't boarded up your house yet, I say you're doing fine.

      I hereby absolve you of any guilt you feel over cleaning. Feel free to go about your life in happy oblivion to any mess... the way most guys have learned to do since birth!

      Delete
  9. Crabby, as much as i love your posts, please don't feel guilty about not posting while on vacation, as i equally love the idea of you getting away and having a great time, thinking up new material for when you get back.

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    1. Thank you messymimi, that indeed makes me feel much better!

      Delete
  10. I'm feeling guilty because a couple of years ago I wrote a novel and got it published in the ebook world and it was pretty well received...so I wrote another with the same characters, and that one was liked also. I developed a bit of a fanbase.

    So, I plotted out the third novel, and assured everyone it would be coming along, and I really REALLY intended to write it and keep going....but I haven't. I got caught up in work, and researching nutrition, and taking care of a bazillion other things - and I haven't touched the third book in at least a year or more. Even if I got it done in the next few months, it wouldn't come OUT for nearly a year. But that's IF....I just have no writing mojo to be working on it, and I feel hugely guilty that I'm letting down a lot of readers, and letting myself down because you can't really get away with this stuff and hope to KEEP getting published.....*woe*

    So...or course I absolve you of any guilt over not posting while you're on vacation! :) I totally understand.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Ah, how frustrating that your very success in creating a fan base is fueling guilt for pursuing other things instead! But weird, isn't it, how unhelpful that guilt is in getting another novel written?

      I suspect that if you could disentangle the next novel from the guilt in not having written it, there would be MORE energy for creative projects, not less.

      So taking a complete break from worrying about it might lead to either: realizing you really don't want to spend the energy writing that third book; or realizing you really, really do. Out of excitement, not out of guilt. Either way, wouldn't it be nice to stop feeling bad about it?d

      I hereby absolve you of any guilt whatsoever about writing that 3rd book. You can go about your life, your fans can go about theirs, and you need feel no obligation to write anything else. And hell, if there is an exciting new book you find yourself writing in the future your fans will be thrilled to see you back. And if they've forgotten you, f-ck em, you'll find new fans!

      Delete
  11. Haha! Crabbycab Confessional!

    I think my guilt (which I like to bathe in because it smells like teen spirit) stalls my getting better. As you know I am malady laden lately. Plagued.

    This morning I thought I might get on the eliptical with my giant boot. I decided against it and instead exercised my way to the basement where I have hidden crackers from myself and ate half a box of Asiago crackers. A small box, but still. I then filled myself up on regret and castigation which - strangely - also has a whiff of teen spirit.

    ps - I have written many brilliant mind posts while away from the computer. But they are like vapor.

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    1. It so sucks that you are maladen of late, and for guilt to sneak in and take advantage of that is quite evil. To flog you for not trying to elliptical with a big freakin' boot on and then stuff crackers down your throat as punishment? That's just MEAN.

      You are hereby absolved from any guilt for not undertaking boot-defying exercise heroics. Get better first! No guilt about exercise until you are well. And no extra guilt for the crackers either, there is the Asiago defense as well as Special Circumstances.

      And feel free to hop in the CrabbyCab anytime you need a free ride!

      Delete
  12. You know I don't do guilt. Why bother? is my attitude. We prefer your posts inspired AND guilt-free.

    Have fun. Bring us back lots of memories.

    Mary Anne in Kentucky, whose comment problems continue. This one refused to post for about twelve hours!

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    1. I will promise to have fun if you will absolve me of guilt for the stupid way that blogger gobbles up comments on my blog... yours in particular! They must be especially tasty.

      Delete
  13. I am Jewish - need I say anything else! ;-) Honestly, I have lots of things I feel bad about - guilty - not quite the right word but what the hell... I work every day on trying to put behind me those things that I do feel bad about or haunt me...

    As for you missy!!!!! "Crabby, don't bother feeling guilty about not posting much of anything on the blog while you're gone. We don't give a crap if you post anything or not!"

    I really do care BUT I think unplugging & enjoying life is more important!!!!

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    1. Well, for any of those non-specific things that might be trying to haunt you... I declare you NOT GUILTY! You are free to go about your evening.

      And thanks!

      Delete
  14. I absolutely love this post!

    I'm pretty good about the guilt thing but...

    feeling a little bit guilty about not dropping the car at the garage tonight. I'll do it tomorrow morning.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Oh goodness, that one is pretty minor! Don't you guys know how to misbehave properly??

      You are completely pardoned for not picking the car up tonight, don't give it another thought!

      :)

      Delete
  15. You timed this perfectly! Yesterday I was feeling like I was being asked to do the King Solomon thing and divide a baby. Two close freinds of mine have a history. In the past a group of my friends have had monthly dinners that have included both woman. This month one gal asked that the other not be invited any more. I got a bit snippy and told her either she had to talk to her enemy and work it out with her who gets to go or she had to bow out herself. Well now I am feeling guilty about speaking for the group out of turn. Oh I hope this does not blow up in my face!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. So it sounds like you were trying to be inclusive and encourage this woman to work out her grievance in an adult manner? You horrible person you!

      Sounds like a no-win situation in which you tried to do your best. And it also sounds like you're open to listening to other's concerns and are mindful that others in the group may have different feelings and will listen to what they have to say. Yet you're still feeling guilty?

      I say cut yourself some slack!

      I hereby absolve you of any useless guilt you might be feeling for not finding a "perfect" solution to a difficult situation. You are now free to use that fretting energy for something more fun!

      And thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  16. "Crabby, don't bother feeling guilty about not posting much of anything on the blog while you're gone. We don't give a crap if you post anything or not!"

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Thanks anon, I feel better every time i read it!

      Delete
  17. "Crabby, don't bother feeling guilty about not posting much of anything on the blog while you're gone. We don't give a crap if you post anything or not!"

    That being said, I still feel guilty about avoiding a new transfer to our jr. high who was trying to hang out with me and my friends. Sherri B. was from the east coast, and said, "I was all...She was all like...They were like..." and talked about her ballet abilities. My little group (not the popular girls) barely tolerated her, then actively hid from her at lunch. Mean.

    Last week, I met with a friend from back in those days. I asked her if she felt bad about Sherri all these years. She said NO! Sherri was really abrasive, pushy, and obnoxious and it had never crossed her mind since jr. high. But, I also need the Crabby absolution to seal the deal on this bit o' guilt.

    What say you Crabby?

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    1. Ah, this is a good one... and hits home a bit, because at that age I did similar things myself. Like you, not actively being mean (as many were) but not having the social graces to deal with difficult interpersonal situations. I also recall saying unkind things about those who "deserved it" behind their backs. It was hard time to find a lot of extra compassion for annoying people because of developmental limitations (and for me, being pretty miserable myself).

      And come to think of it, it's still tricky. Do people who are pushy have the right to command your unconditional friendship just because THEY want it? Er, no. Establishing and enforcing interpersonal boundaries is normal and healthy. Negotiating these without being unduly cold and blunt is always tough if you're dealing with someone who doesn't respond to subtle social signals.

      The fact you still feel bad about it suggests that you are a person with a lot of compassion for others!

      You have complete and total absolution for any lack of skills you may have had as a young adolescent in dealing with a difficult person. There is absolutely no need or productive reason to feel guilty now, you did your best at the time and are free to go about your life without feeling bad about it.

      And if that guilty energy comes back, I suggest dispersing it with kind wishes towards Sherri B, hoping she's having a happy life wherever she is.

      Delete
  18. I feel guilty for thoroughly enjoying this post! I have no plans for absolution form laughing my booty off!
    and BTW
    Crabby, don't bother feeling guilty about not posting much of anything on the blog while you're gone. We don't give a crap if you post anything or not!---well....I may not give a crap but I will miss ya! Have fun!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Crabby, you read my mind. I recently had a hysterectomy and still have 3 more weeks until I am cleared to exercise. I am also struggling with smoking agin for the zillionth time in my life. I was just telling my husband how guilty I feel. I don't want to be out of shape and unhealthy but I am feeling no motivation to change right now. Thank you so much for absolving my guilt. I really needed that right now.
    As for you, I just re entry discovered your fabulous blog so I won't even notice if you don't follow your usual schedule. So save your own guilt for something else. Thanks for the exact words I needed to hear rigt now.
    P. S. I am now feeling a little guilty about the typos but technology is preventing me from fixing them for some reason.

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    1. Hi Jonnabelle--
      I am now in a hotel in Prague giving you extra special Medieval European dispensation, complete with religious icons, cobblestones, towers and spires, and just a whiff of body odor. It is extra potent because it seems Guilt and Punishment may have been something of a concern back then so these vibes contain Fearsome Powers.

      In your case especially: DO NOT DO ANY MORE THAN YOUR DOCTOR SAYS TO! And yeah, I know it sucks and is hard. You will be sorry later, however, if you let stupid guilt push you into hurting yourself. And I suspect that once you're further along the way to recovery, you will naturally feel much more motivation to tackle the smoking.

      You are hereby absolved of any further guilt! And if you haven't already caught this post, here's a little more on hysterectomy recovery. Hope yours goes smoothly and thanks so much for stopping by!

      Delete
  20. Guilt, I am sure I have some of that around here somewhere, I just have become so good at ignoring it, I can't find it right away. How about a blanket absolution for me?

    Crabby, I will miss you, but, please don't feel guilty about not posting while you are away. Just remember to take lots of photos and share them with us when you return.

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    1. Hi Reb!!!

      So glad you are already able to ignore useless guilt, but sure, you get blanket absolution fresh from Prague too! And thanks for saying hello!

      Delete
  21. Thanks for sharing this to us! Nice post!

    ReplyDelete
  22. i really think you deserve your holiday!!! we are going to reread a couple of old entries to keep us from flipping out!

    have a great time and tell us all about it afterwards!

    im definitly counting on belated absolutions in september when ill call!!!!

    puja from berlin

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    1. Oh dear, I totally missed this post, and I hereby absolve you in advance, though I am very much looking forward to your call!

      Delete
  23. I'm very sorry that I missed this...I'm good at guilt! Alas, you posted this on the Friday before I went on vacation and I was soooo exhuasted and it took me 4 days to feel normal again, and then we went away....so no blog reading while I was on vacation. Hope you have a great trip - it sounds fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. No Blog Reading on vacation sounds like an excellent policy! Thanks so much for stopping by JavaChick.

      Delete

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