Maybe the source of this guilt is not you at all but is via comments from others. As I’ve said many times in various articles on this website, we all have our own view of the world. We all have our own version of reality. This is formed via our beliefs and via various filters that ‘shape’ the information we get about the world, people and events around us.

That’s all fine as long as we can appreciate that we have such filters.

But what if we think our version of reality is the only reality.

That’s where things get a bit messy.

It’s where those nasty comments come from.

Sadly, it’s all too often that people will resent your success, wealth or happiness and make assumptions and form judgements based on the very limited view they have of your life, your decisions or your behaviour, projecting their own world view or expectations onto that very limited view that they see.

A few articles back, we looked at expectations, which are also formed as part of our own reality. These expectations may be based on our own experiences, our beliefs or desires and when others don’t meet these expectations, then we may start to form an opinion about that person. Through confirmation bias we are likely to reinforce that opinion. This goes for our impressions about pretty much everything, our beliefs about people, events, religions, places, you name it.

A lot of this can happen at a sub-conscious level. Certainly confirmation bias does.

So what happens when someone forms a view about you? About what you do?

Both Sides of The Argument

This article has two sides to consider.

1. How we all judge others based on our world view, expectations & filters and with our biases… and how we need to understand and be wary about that.
2. How other people’s biases can lead them to judge us and prevent us from being happy and why, if we recognise that, we should continue doing what makes us happy anyway.

So let’s take a little look at both…

Judging Others

Let’s say you are a wife and you go out and spend some money. You spend a few afternoons over consecutive weeks buying some clothes.

The comment from someone local to you is something along the lines of “…have you seen that woman, always out shopping, spending all that money and her poor husband works his fingers to the bone, she should be ashamed of herself…” something like that.

In this scenario the person making the comment likely does not know very much about the lives of the wife and the husband in question but has made a judgement based on what she has seen. She may have heard that the husband works hard or worked long hours but doesn’t truly know the context in which he did, whether he did so out of choice.

A few more comments like that (gossip) and opinions are formed and before we know it the woman has something of a reputation locally which can all be traced back to the bias of the first observer making the first comment. The way confirmation bias works, the recipient of the first comment may well look for evidence of the same thing, so if that 2nd person were to see the same woman out shopping shortly after it would likely confirm the previous view they’d been primed with. Imagine that the woman the 2nd time is out shopping and visits a charity shop, she then leaves the charity shop with a cheap purchase but given a re-used carrier bag from that shop which is branded from a more expensive shop – what is an onlooker going to assume? That she has been shopping in the more expensive shop which she seemingly has the bag from.

Suffice to say you can see here how people form opinions and don’t need much of a nudge to confirm these opinions. They will look to do so anyway due to confirmation bias but it’s also possible that this is made worse or facilitated with misinterpreted information along the way.

This is just an example and involves a judgement about money & how others spend it. It may just as easily be a judgement about parenting (how others look after their children), generosity, intelligence, selfishness, political views, prejudices (someone attributing sexism, racism, ageism, narcissism, chauvinism or any other prejudice incorrectly to someone based on what they see – or what they think they see informed by their own filters, confirmation bias and the very limited view they have in front of them).

We all do this. We all make judgements and from time to time we all judge others. We form impressions of others. We do this constantly.

People often love a bit of gossip too. What’s the harm? Well the harm is gossip is the start but iut forms opinion and it can get out of hand. So if we want to be fair to others we just need to be a little careful with that.

The thing to do if you find that these judgements (i.e. your judgements of others) are a bit harsh, or if someone doesn’t meet your expectations of them is to first of all check your expectations. Are they fair expectations? Should you have these expectations in the first place? Secondly, give that person the benefit of the doubt wherever possible. The reason for this is the following:

You have a very limited view.

You simply do not know what else might be going on in their life at the moment and in fact you also most likely have a very limited view of their life full stop.

Do What You Love

So now back to doing what you love.

Back to the initial question, have you ever felt guilty doing something that makes you feel happy?

What led me to write this particular article is personal experience. This has actually happened to me personally quite a lot.

I have had people make comments about things I’ve been doing and how I choose to spend my time, people making judgements based on what they see or what they think they see.

In my case it’s actually fairly easy to see where such comments and observations come from. We hardly lead what most people would class as a ‘normal’ life. That doesn’t make the comments and observations correct though.

It’s usually based on what people think you should be doing.

So even if I feel these judgements are wrong or misplaced, even if I know I’m not hurting anyone, these people don’t know me well enough to make such judgements, comments or observations, even if I think it’s actually none of their business and they of course have no place deciding what I should or shouldn’t be doing with my life…

Even knowing all of that these judgements still have an effect and I have still found myself feeling guilty doing the things that make me happy (which obviously puts the dampers on that happiness).

When this has happened I have from time to time cut back on what I’m doing, effectively giving in to the misplaced perceptions of others. Most of the time though, I don’t let these misplaced judgements stop me because it really doesn’t make sense to.

I do what makes me happy.

I do what I love – and I encourage you to do the same:

Do what you love.