This is an 8-part Antihero Overview Series, where you’ll learn and quickly apply key concepts at every stage of the Antihero’s Journey. You can find links to previous parts of the series at the bottom this newsletter.
Approaching Your Guilt the Right Way
Remember Mark from Stage 4? He went from Rockstar to Rock Bottom. The ruination in Stage 4 can create a vicious cycle of guilt of shame, which causes you to rebel (Stage 3) against your calling (Stage 2) that you were given (Stage 1). It’s a cascading effect. Dealing with your ruin is one thing, but actually overcoming it is another experience altogether. Sooner or later you’ve got to move on from managing Stage 4 to leaving it behind. But how should you leave it?
Stage Five: Repentance
When you see the word Repentance, you probably think of religion. But it's much deeper than a confessional booth or an altar call. It's an ancient word that means “to turn.”
Think of Stage 5 as you doing a 180-degree turn away from your old self in ruin. Repentance is the type of turn that leaves no room for even the peripheral vision of what you turned away from. Your back faces Stage 4 as you move through Stage 5.
But how do you begin to successfully turn without looking back?
Use Your Guilt Constructively
Guilt, regret, remorse, self-reproach, contrition, pangs of conscience—they all mean the same thing. These, however, don't automatically lead to fully turning for better.
When you've reached a point where you positively act on your guilt, versus using it as a crutch to stay in Ruin, then you've entered the Repentance stage. Here's how to handle your guilt:
Confront your guilt head-on. Stop guilt dead in its tracks and ask yourself, “What do I regret more: The hurt I've caused others or the consequences for my actions?” Be honest. You need to know what you feel guilty about.
Analyze your guilt objectively. After finding out the course of your guilt, ask a simple question: Why? Found out why this is eating you up inside and preventing you from moving on. You're not a robot, emotions will leak. But do this as objectively as possible.
Challenge yourself. You can't challenge guilt. It wasn't designed to be challenged. But you were. Ask yourself, “So what am I going to do about it?” Then make a list of all the possible actions you could take. Finally, divide them into honorable vs. cowardly acts.
Go Deeper. Take the honorable list you created and for each one, ask yourself, “What makes this so honorable?” If the answer caters to your sole benefit, rethink your honorable act. Selfishness is what got you here in the first place. Strive for a reason greater than yourself.
The transition from Ruin to Repentance can be brutal or a smooth changeover, but that's up to you. Typically, for the antihero, it's a strenuous process.
It's filled with false starts, half-turns and 360º turnarounds (meaning you end up where you started—ruin) instead of the 180º pivot.
There are other keys to working through your ruin stage to repentance, but this is just a kickstart for the overview.
Change is coming,
Chris Bartley