A few weeks ago I received an email, and I immediately clicked reply. I wrote a response email, I thought it was going to go only to the sender, but I didn’t realize I clicked the reply all button, and it went to a bunch of other people. Fortunately, it wasn’t something bad, but I was embarrassed because the nature of my email was a little personal. Two nanoseconds after I clicked send I regret it, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I tried to recall the email, unsuccessfully and at that moment I wished I were using Gmail and its “undone” button. Ugh, how I hated myself for doing that, it was so stupid.
There is an old saying; “you should not have any regrets, looking forward is the way to go; what is done is done”. Thinking back on my life, I realize I have a couple of regrets. One has to do with education and another of financial nature. I regret not following a particular profession, and I regret buying stock of from a certain firm. We would have to be immune to learning from experience to say that we never regret something we have done.
But the thing is I did everything I could do to make the right choice when I had to make it. It wasn’t until later (which is usually the case) when I thought, OMG, what was I thinking.
The truth is that we all have those thoughts. The only people that usually don’t regret much are sociopaths and murderers, individuals with no regard to right and wrong. I am not a sociopath, neither are you (I assume) so it is perfectly ok to feel regret. We are not alone, the amount of people that got tattoos and then regret it is in the millions, just ask Jonny Depp.
Some regrets are easy to overcome and forget, like the “reply all” incident I had, some, however, are more serious, and we tend to think that by beating ourselves up they will teach us a lesson. But how long must we beat ourselves up with regrets to learn from them? I think the right question to ask is, is there any advantage to continuing feeling that regret?
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We make decisions all the time. If you are a stock trader, you will lose some, and you will win some. When dealing with finding a life partner, some won’t work out, only one will. If you are looking to lose weight and start a new diet, you are likely to hit roadblocks. You can’t make decisions without accepting some negative outcomes. And the truth of the matter is, many of our regrets are not as bad as we think they are.
I have a friend that found “the one” until she found out that he wasn’t. She regretted to have trusted him. But here is the thing, she went with the information she had at the time. Our decisions are made with the information that we have at the present time. We can’t know everything. We may experience the “I knew it effect” thinking that we knew all along after the fact, but we didn’t and we can’t. You only know what you know at that time. Accepting that limitation doesn’t mean that you are not good at making decisions. It only means that you have to live in a world of uncertainty. The secret is, however, making the best decision you can today to diminish the number of misses, therefore, regrets you might experience in the future.
I could lament the loss in my stock portfolio forever, or imagine a million scenarios of what would have happened only if I did this or that. Or I can focus on making my life better now by learning to make better decisions. The great thing about making your life better now is that you have control over what happens today. You can’t control what happened in the past unless you have a time machine and as far as I know, that hasn’t been invented yet.
Do you have regrets?
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