Guilt is a negative feeling that most people have experienced before.

It's also one of the biggest things that holds us back from being happy and successful in life.

For example...

You might feel the guilt of not giving your children the love, opportunities or time you would like to; maybe it's the guilt and shame over an incident with a relative, friend or loved one; the guilt might stem from not standing up or speaking out at a time you know you should have; or something minor like eating chocolate when watching your weight.

But here's the thing...

Guilt does not serve you in any way...it does not change the circumstance or results of the things you feel guilty for. And although it might make you aware of what you might want to change next time, the feeling in itself does nothing to make the change.

Guilt robs you of feelings of self worth -- it affects your self-esteem and confidence. And we can end up punishing ourselves by not forgiving ourselves or allowing ourselves to move on. This often results in conscious or unconscious acts of self sabotage -- in the form of drinking, drug abuse, bad relationships, feelings of un-deservedness. etc

Whilst going through the process of turning my life around, for many years I carried guilt and shame for things done or said in the past.

And in an attempt to get rid of those feelings, I became the extreme opposite of what had caused me to feel that guilt in the first place...

So where in the past I used to take without giving, I became the type of person who gave without taking; where my needs, wants and feeling used to come before everyone else, I started putting everyone else feelings, needs and wants before mine.

During that period, I did not allow myself to receive things or compliments because I felt I did not deserve them. As a result, I lost out lots of money, opportunities and allowed people to take advantage of me.

And as you can imagine, adopting those extremes seriously affected my confidence and self-esteem. Until I recognised it's more empowering to adopt a healthy balance by being fair and considerate to others as well as self.

One of the ways I eventually overcame the guilt and shame -- and you can too -- is to stop categorising things/events as either good or bad; right or wrong.

Instead, learn to accept things as 'they are'. Because in reality, nothing is good or bad, right or wrong -- we are the ones who label things based on our perception and social consciousness at the time.

Life is about growth and change...it's about learning from every incident.

Understand nobody is perfect...that although your intentions might be good, sometimes things will not work out the way you intended. When this happens, do what you can to correct things. Learn from the situation and promise yourself to get better results next time around.

Once you can truly move beyond classifying things as right or wrong and see every event as an opportunity to learn and grow, your feelings of guilt will disappear.

Because in that moment of commitment to better future action, the negative feelings of guilt are transformed into positive feelings of aspiration.

So take a moment now to think about all the things you might be feeling guilty about.

Ask yourself what lessons you can learn from those incidents, and more importantly, what you would differently next time.

Then think of ways you can put those lessons into immediate action today.

Do this and you'll soon find that rather than living with the guilt of past mistakes you can not control, your focus changes onto those things you can control that'll create better, more empowering outcomes for you in the future.

Then the verdict is sure to be...

'Not Guilty!'

Ade Shokoya is a Keynote Motivational Speaker, Empowerment Coach and Author. For a limited time only he's giving away FREE copies of Think & Grow Rich, The Science of Getting Rich and The Richest Man in Babylon. Get your 100% FREE copies at http://www.AdeShokoya.com.