What if? Ah, the eternal question we all would like to answer. What would have happened if I did or didn’t do such and such? Most of us have thoughts like these. But our regrets don’t always have to drag us down. We have a choice whether or not we are productive or unproductive with our regrets.
You’re probably very familiar with the names Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, but you may be less familiar with Ronald Wayne, the third co-founder of Apple Computer. Wayne chose to bail out early, selling his 10% stake in Apple for $800. Had he kept it, his share would be worth over $35 billion today. His is an epic regret story. But even though he may regret foregone income, Wayne says he doesn’t regret his decision. Doubtless he would say it was the right one for him at the time and that he learned a lot from it. This is an example of a productive regret.
In contrast, I had a client not long ago who once had a great job that he didn’t appreciate. He lost the job, and to this day, he blames his job loss on everybody but himself. He mourns the past with such a deep sense of loss that he is unable to move forward. In fact, he is afraid of getting a new job, because he thinks history will repeat itself. This is an example of an unproductive regret. We use unproductive regrets to avoid taking scary or difficult actions. My client is afraid to move forward because of the past. He is unable to regard the past in a useful way, unable to learn from it and use it to build his future.
When you remember the past and use it in a negative cialis online for sale way, mourning every “bad” decision or “wrong” choice, you are choosing to use your regrets in an unproductive way. Instead, we can put our regrets to work for us. Rather than emphasizing that the past is the past and there is nothing we can do about it, we can use the past to build the future. We can use our experiences to make wiser decisions in the present. The future starts today and grows from the lessons we learned in the past.
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You can’t change the fact that you stopped exercising and now you weigh 300 pounds, or that you lost your job, or your spouse left. But you can take those regrets and put them to work as lessons. You can use the past experience in a way that is positive and uplifting. I lost my first wife to a divorce, and for a long time I regretted many things in the marriage. But once I decided to learn from the experience rather than regretting it, then I was able to learn about myself and what it was about my marriage that didn’t work. This in turn helped me identify my core values, find myself, and eventually find a new companion.
The most important lesson on regret is to use it to help you build a rich and more satisfying future. We wouldn’t be who we are without our past experiences, even the bad decisions and wrong choices. Every time life puts you in a position to choose, you can choose to use your past experiences to make wiser decisions today. Choose to take the lesson and move forward.
Skillfully edited by Tara May
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