Guilt Is Selfish

My biggest flaw in life is probably the fact that I create so much anxiety and stress for myself that I lose focus on what is staring me right in the face - the present. Today I couldn't stop stressing about a situation I was going through and something that happened, specifically someone else's reaction to me and my reaction to theirs. Does that make sense? Anyway, getting into my truck this afternoon it hit me like a ton of bricks - all this over-analyzing and worry doesn't affect anyone else except me. I could finally see that all the anxiety that I create for myself is a form of guilt because all I am doing is going over and over something that happened to me, something that obviously bothered me. You see, when you are sure of your actions you don't go back over them again and again questioning yourself time after time. It is only when you have doubt about your actions that you look back, and then as well if you feel bad about your part in how a situation turned out. If you felt you had done everything right there would be no need for you to doubt yourself. That guilt that we drag along everywhere with us is for one person only, ourselves. Everyone else keeps on living their life and yet we find ourselves stuck and upset, stuck of our own volition. Guilt serves only to weigh us down and yet we seem to continue to create our own cages. Guilt is selfish and focuses only on how you feel about a mistake or conflict. It's like someone told me today, if you spend all your time in the past or worrying about what could happen in the future you really do lose out on today. People can go their whole lives never being alive because they can never learn to just be in the moment. That's another whole idea and living in the moment is a topic that can be explored infinitely, for another time. Right now it's important to make yourself realize that guilt is toxic and eats us from the inside out. Guilt is a metal gate blocking our way on the staircase up, a gate put there by us. We have the key to it already, the tough part is realizing not just that you put the gate there but that you are also the only person who can open it. Catch yourself when you are looking back with question or regret and stop - live in the now. Focus on what's actually happening around you at this moment in time. That's what living is. And what makes that so damn precious? The fact that our time to live is limited and infitismal in comparison to the big picture of everyone and everything.