Pushkin

Nearly every night before I had to bed, I pull out my little red date book and update my to-do list for the next day.

The list is usually pretty long, but if I actually put down everything I wanted to get done,

I would probably sound something like this.

Meditate for 10 minutes. Go to a yoga class. Prep for my happiness course. Bring the car in for an oil change.

Think about some cool new guest for the podcast. Don't get behind on that inbox. Get in some quality time with my

make time to have more fun. Get 8 hours of sleep.

And so on.

Now, when I think about it rationally, I realize it's literally impossible to get all those things done in a single day.

But no matter how much I do, I constantly feel bad about how much I didn't do.

And that is the awful, yucky, not good enough feeling that we'll be digging into today.

Because in this episode, in our season on difficult emotions, we're going to examine guilt.

I think guilt showed up in a lot of ways for me that I wasn't even noticing as guilt, but on one particular morning when my son was in kindergarten,

I think it was just kind of the epitome of guilt taking over.

This is Valerie Burton. She's the author of Let Go of the guilt.

Stop beating yourself up and take back your joy.

She hit her rock bottom with guilt.

We're a bowl of cereal.

We were getting ready. And my son always wants just some cereal.

Like he wants to dry cereal and a cup of milk, which for me is guilt inducing because my mother made a full-out

Southern breakfast, Britz, eggs, bacon, orange juice, toast.

So cereal for me was always just a snack.

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