Key Facts:
- Regrets arise from decisions that didn't go as expected and can lead to self-blaming and decision paralysis
- Every present action and behaviour has its roots in a past where they served us well
- Regrets should be opportunities for growth and learning
It's Tuesday evening, and I carefully fluff my pillow before gracefully dropping my bottom on it. I settle down so I can enter the realm of meditation. Today, Andy will talk about regrets. That's gonna be interesting; I have enough of them, I say to myself.
Understanding Regrets:
As Andy describes it, regrets arise from situations that didn't go as we hoped. Oh yeah, I can relate to that! There are so many situations in my life that didn't go as planned. For each situation we experience in life, we make one or more decisions. From these decisions a regret can arise, when we are unhappy with the result. When you see it like this, regrets have a lot to do with the decision making process and with how we cope with decisions.
Andy goes even further and he explains how having regrets often leads us to replay them in our minds over and over again. Touchdown! Wait... what!? I am not the only one doing that?
By replaying regrets in our minds our decision making process gets overloaded with anxiety. Which will slow the decision process a lot. I know from experience that having unresolved regrets will inevitably lead to self-blaming and feelings of inadequacy. This in turn triggers a deep desire to change the course of those past experiences, but I can’t, can I? What I always failed to understand is that regrets are a thing of the past, and they can't be undone. Unless, of course, I can teleport myself to a parallel universe where the event unfolds as I wished.
The saddest part, once I’ve experienced regret, I enter a new problem: decision paralysis.
Have you ever been undecided whether to buy from this brand or another? Even though the price was €10? I know I have fretted about this small decision many times in my life. Why do you think that is? For me, I didn’t want to regret buying the wrong product. I didn’t want to live through another regret. My process was already full of regret. So I chose to freeze, which, as my therapist would say, means certain death.
Embracing the Present:
The relief is that the past is only in our head, but at the same time we live too much in that realm, when we should be more here, in the present. This is the place where life is alive.
If that is the case, what can I change? For starters I can alter the way I deal with regrets. Instead of holding onto them, I can acknowledge and accept them. Just like a good parent, I can nurture them for a while and then let them go. Letting them go is the only real option I have if I want to avoid them overwhelming me.
I know, first hand, how obsessing over regrets for too long can cloud the mind and turn even the simplest thoughts into full blown nightmares. It's like accumulating technical debt in software development—the more regrets we hold onto, the slower our progress becomes. I was afraid of making another decision that could ultimately lead to regret. I didn't have any capacity left to do that. Anxiety pushed me little by little to the brink of breaking, which eventually happened. But that's a story for another time.
New Wisdom Was Bestowed Upon Me:
A few months ago, I gained a valuable insight that helped me start to unjumble my thought process. I learned that every action and behaviour I possess today made sense in the past, they served a purpose. I got to learn that, in general, we don't act without reason, there is always meaning to our actions. This new insight helped me to look more compassionately to myself. Then I started remembering what Rahul, one of my very close friends, always says: there is no such thing as good or bad decisions; they are just that, decisions. At the time we make them, they are right for us. The true value, though, lies in how we live with them. Whether we see them as opportunities for growth or impediments to a fulfilling life.
What I've experienced is a paradigm shift: I trust that every regret I carry with me, will bring growth in due time. The clarity of this might not be apparent for me today or tomorrow, but I know that it will unveil itself eventually.