Did you know that guilt can affect your health? Negative emotions and thoughts will elevate your adrenaline and cortisol. These are stress hormones that cause our bodies to respond when we encounter threats. But when high levels of these hormones last too long, we get high blood pressur...

• And base them on analysis rather than hope or guesswork.
• Setting unrealistic — or unexamined — goals is a huge barrier to success.
• Make your goals small and then hit them out of the park.

• Writing is time-consuming and make sure you allow yourself a reasonable amount of time to get the job done.Instead, as the old expression goes, “under promise and over deliver.”
• Track how long it takes you to write and build in plenty of extra time for researching (first) an...

• Striving for perfection is totally unrealistic. And, most important, mistakes help us learn. You will learn far more from every screw-up than you will from any laudatory achievement
• Allow yourself to see how a mistake that made you feel guilty has helped you become a better, more ski...

• These people will always find more than one way to make you feel guilty.
• If this person is your boss, seriously think about looking for another job. The market currently favours job seekers over employers.

• You are you. This makes you different from everyone else around you. Decide how much time you’re able to spend researching, writing or editing and start smaller than that. Yes, smaller.
• Even a five-minute-a-day writing habit is infinitely superior to a no-writing-per-day habit. (And ...

• If you think guilt is stopping you from writing, consider whether the real problem might be fear. Or impatience. Or anger
• Deal with the real problem and the guilt should dissolve.

• If you’ve made a mistake, then apologize for it and figure out how to avoid repeating the problem in the future. Everyone makes mistakes. We’re all human beings.

• We’re all different and we all have our own strengths and weaknesses. Looking at what another person can accomplish will not help you in the least
• Break the bad habit of comparing yourself to others and, instead, focus on competing against the old you
• Did you used to be able ...

• If you feel guilty about your lack of productivity, you’re not going to be productive at all — you’re far more likely just to be busy.
• Productivity means doing what you really need to do to reach your goals

• I’ve always loved the quote (that’s been attributed to a wide variety of writers): “I believe in inspiration and I see that it’s available at 9 am every day.
• Set up the conditions under which creativity can thrive.

• Most guilt simply makes us feel bad about ourselves. Instead, figure out how to build a sustainable writing process, so that you can do what you say you’re going to do.

• Of course, you’re responsible for your actions but they don’t make you a bad person. Or a bad writer. In fact, the belief that you’re bad is precisely what contributes to your “bad” behavior.
• Change and learning occur when you recognize you’ve made a mistake, and when you develop a s...

• Torturing yourself won’t make you a better person. Learning will. You may resist examining what you did wrong but performing a thorough analysis of your mistakes is what will help you to stop repeating them.
• Remind yourself: I don’t need to do good all the time to be a good person.