When You Should Regret

Do you ever wonder about how your life could’ve turned out a different way? Do you have regrets yet feel like the world or community around you tells you that it isn’t good to regret?

In this article I’m going to share with you the wisdom of regret, the importance of regretting, and how to regret the proper way. Finally, I’ll share with you the negative way of regretting and how not to get sucked in too deep which can lead to depression and defeatism.

Many people think that regret is a bad thing. In our culture we hear it all the time, “Live life with no regrets.” While this has good intention, like many things in this world, it is shortsighted. Regret can be an incredible gift. Regret is the door to wisdom and eventual success.

In the modern world we can get so worried about regretting our lives that we end up being indecisive. Never before have humans had so many opportunities available to them.

It can be overwhelming. At anytime that you want you can pack up, leave, and create a whole new identity and start a whole new life. That’s pretty amazing and unheard of up until 30 years ago.

In the marketing industry there is a phenomena called buyer’s remorse. Buyers remorse is when a person has too many options, buys one thing, and then regrets buying that very thing later. It is the same with life. Everyday we are faced with hundreds of opportunities to change our life. How do we know which one is right? How do we know which one will make us ultimately happy?

But before going into this deeper let’s first define what regret is exactly.

Regret, is the contemplation of our past experiences and then subsequently feeling that life didn’t deliver what we thought it would. Simply put, it’s the feeling that we get when something didn’t turn out how we thought it would.

Regret is inevitable in life. In fact, it is absolutely necessary. Hindsight is a real thing. Many of the times we are too enmeshed or caught up in a life situation to see all the determining factors that are shaping the way our life occurs. Whether it’s in a relationship, business or job opportunity we all get caught up in life, do things that we didn’t expect ourselves to do, and can end up regretting the way we have acted towards others and ourselves. This is a natural process of life.

Regret is viewed as something by our culture to be avoided. We see it as a negative thing that colors our experiences. However, if we were to be completely honest with ourselves I’m sure most of us have some things that we wish we’d done in the past, or didn’t do. And there is nothing wrong with this. Because the great thing about the feeling of regret is that it’s trying to show us something that could’ve been. It’s trying to show us an alternate reality, a possible better way of life.

As humans we want to live the most fulfilling life possible, and there is nothing wrong with this. We all want to. Sometimes we make poor decisions and other times we make brilliant decisions. If you look back at your life and regret something you did or didn’t do then don’t avoid that feeling and just say, “Well this is the decision I made and I’m sticking to it.”

Your emotions are valid in the sense that they’ve determined so much of how you’ve experienced reality. Dive fully into the regret because once you do you will find a pearl of wisdom. And when you have that insight you can apply it to your life now to change it for the better.

Regret has a valuable place in our lives. Too many times we avoid regret because we like to think we’re making all the best decisions in our lives. Rarely is that ever the case. Usually, life brings us to a point where we realize that we cannot go on the way that we’ve been living, and we are forced to change. Then when we look back we can see how there were signs all along the way however it wasn’t slapping us across the face hard enough.

Beyond regret there is wisdom. There is the wisdom of what it takes to live a better life. Maybe you regretted not pursuing a relationship or business opportunity. Whatever the reason may be go fully into the regret and feel into the emotion of it. When you do this you may experience pain but on the other side you will now know what makes you more happy and fulfilled. And now you can pursue that fully with more clarity and focus.

Some people regret staying in an abusive relationship for too long but they don’t want to admit to themselves that they should’ve got out earlier. They secretly feel as if they stayed too long and wasted a part of their life. Go into that pain. Go into the part of you that said you wasted a majority of your life. It can be extremely painful, but remember pain is a teacher. If you fully feel into that pain then I can guarantee you that you will never repeat that same pattern. The second you start interacting with someone who was like your last boyfriend or girlfriend you’ll tell yourself, “Nope, I’ve already wasted time on this type of relationship and I refuse to do that to myself again.”

The reality of life is that we can make mistakes and we can have regrets. But the beauty of life is that we can learn from them and implement new ways of living and interacting with the world which bring us closer to true fulfilment and joy.

Now, there is a point where regret can get bad. Feeling into this emotion needs to be from a grounded and clear state because if it isn’t then you can get caught up in solipsistic thinking and become depressed or defeated. Regret does not mean feeling into all the possible opportunities that you may have or haven’t missed and then beating up on yourself. You need to lay the proper intention down before you go deeply into this so you don’t get lost in a ocean of self-loathing which we all have the ability to do at times. There is a bad way of regretting.

If you look back at your life and have many regrets and then tell yourself, “Well, there is nothing I can do about it now,” and then you choose to be sad about it and live there then your cutting off your own two feet. The purpose of regret is too look back at your life, see what could’ve been better, and then enact change in the present to make you happier and more fulfilled. Regret isn’t meant to be used as a free pass to playing the victim and getting down on yourself. It’s a free pass to access wisdom that shows you how to enact change in the present to make your life better right now.

Do you have any regrets? Is it more painful to regret something that you didn’t do versus something that you did do? What has regret taught you in terms of building a better life?

Deepest Blessings and Pranamams!