Lost opportunities & regret

A wise man once told me, we don’t regret the things we do, we regret the things we don’t do.

This is so true.  Think back on your life and your regrets. Most, if not all of them, have to do with lost opportunities.  I try to live my life without regret. I don’t always succeed and I do have a few regrets in my life, as I think we all do. So it’s probably better to say I try to minimize my regrets.

The problem we all have is how to not dwell on the past and all those lost opportunities.  How do we continue living in the present and moving forward despite the fact we have regrets?  As with everything, I take a reality based approach. I accept the regret. I missed an opportunity. I can’t go back in time. No amount of wishful thinking will make that happen. And really – even if I could – would I really want to?

I am now 50 years old. I have a lot of paths I didn’t take that I occasionally wonder about.  What I do know is that at the moment, I like where I am. All those “lost opportunities” brought me to my present. If I had taken that job in Japan, I would have never met my husband or had my son for instance.

The reality is that all our choices have costs associated with them. We chose one thing and not another. All the time. Even when the choice is what we are going to eat for dinner. Or are we going to wash our hands after using the bathroom. We make big choices and little choices all the time. Every choice you make negates a different choice. Sometimes you can go back and change your mind and sometimes you can’t. But this is the reality we find ourselves in. Our choices have consequences. At the end of the day, the best that any of us can do is try to make choices that will maximize the good and minimize the harm. And we won’t always succeed.

I find that doing the best I can to make good decisions helps free me of the guilt that comes with the opportunities I have lost through those choices. Because that’s what our grief about lost opportunities is. Guilt. Maybe if we had made a different choice things would be different. Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't. The reality is we have no real way of knowing.

To help me assuage my guilt I rely on a quote.  “All I can ever do at any time is what I think is right.”  I don’t need to feel guilt for doing what I thought at the time was the right thing to do.

I hope this helps.  If you want to learn more about how to make good life decisions - check out my online course - Planning for Personal Success - https://humanistlearning.com/planforpersonalsuccess/

Sexuality, Freedom and Choices

Question:
I've never been interested in sex and relationships. I didn't even think about sex until I was 21, I'm 23 now, but people and the beliefs of society have caused me to doubt my ways. Sexual stuff has always caused me grief. How can I go back to the time where I was happy and didn't think about it?

Answer:
It's hard to answer this question without understanding what the problem is. If you are asexual and wondering if there is something wrong with you - the answer is no - there isn't anything wrong. Different people have different libidos and for some people, sex is not a big deal at all and not something they seek out.

There is an old saying - 20% of the people are having 80% of the sex. Most of us aren't having sex and aren't obsessed with it.  We like it when it comes along but it's not an all-encompassing obsession as it seems to be for some people.

Conditioning and Choices

Humans have the ability to choose whether the conditions we find ourselves in will condition us.

I was reading Viktor Frankel’s book The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism (Touchstone Books). In one chapter he talks about how our situations condition us but that as humans we have the ability to choose whether the conditions we find ourselves in will condition us.

I wanted to share this with you because understanding how animals, including human animals are conditioned by the conditions around them helps us better choose whether or not to allow that conditioning to occur. This is why pretty much all my courses at Humanist Learning Systems are about how to manage and control behavioral conditioning so that you can recognize it when it is happening and control the process and thereby gain control over your life!

So let’s start with what conditioning is. Conditioning is a behavioral process whereby a response becomes more frequent or more predictable in a given environment as a result of reinforcement, with reinforcement typically being a stimulus or reward for a desired response. To give you an example of what this mean in a practical way:  if you train a dog to sit when you say sit, you have “conditioned” it to respond this way to the stimulus of your command and you did this by reinforcing the behavior you wanted by rewarding your dog either with a treat or with love every time they sat when you said sit.

This sort of active intentional conditioning is called operant conditioning because it involves the conscious use of rewards to create a specific behavior by an operator.

However, that’s not the only way conditioning occurs. It also occurs without us knowing or intending for it to happen. For example, PTSD  - is a conditioned response to a traumatic stimulus. No one chooses to get PTSD – it happens because of our natural responses to the conditions around us.

Once you understand how these rewards and reinforcements work, you can see them happening in your own life all around you and in how you respond to what’s happening around you.  And, when you can see it, you can control it. Which is why – we humans have the ability to choose whether or not the conditions we find ourselves in condition us or not. But the only way to exercise that choice – is to be conscious you have a choice.

Knowledge and wisdom really is the key to everything.  Once you realize you have a choice, it changes everything. How you respond to interpersonal situations and how you respond to situations beyond your control.  I liken this to becoming like Neo in the movie The Matrix. It really is astounding how much control we really do have. Is that control absolute? No – but it’s still pretty powerful.

To learn more – consider taking some of my courses at Humanist Learning Systems. Specifically:

• Living Made Simpler
• Why is Change so Hard, and
• Ending Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace

All of these courses will give you a basic understanding of how conditioning works so you can be more conscious of your choices.

Choice, Feminism and Humanism

Why having a choice in life matters.

I have a friend. This friend is a woman who chose not to have children. Her choice was not to be child free, just to not have children of her own. Her choice wasn’t even to have an abortion; it was a choice to not get pregnant in the first place. For some reason that choice was and is still considered radical. It’s one thing if you can’t have children of your own. That makes you an object of pity, but to choose to not have your own children ever? Well, that just isn’t normal. Is it?

And this gets to the heart of the matter and why choice, feminism and Humanism are so important even now. I am a mom. I love being a mom, but that is a role I chose for myself. I choose a lot of things for myself, like what I will eat and wear. Where I want to live, who I want to live with and what sort of work I want to do. Every day I make a slew of choices. Most are mundane, but sometimes, they are life altering, like the decision to get married and another decision to become a parent.

My friend took the decision to be a biological parent seriously. After all, it’s a big choice and it has a huge impact on your life and so of course you should have the right to choose it.  Except that when it became publically known she had chosen not to be pregnant, not because she couldn’t, but because she didn’t want to, she lost her job as a teacher and ended up becoming an advocate for a woman’s right to choose to be childfree.

I take my ability to make these choices for granted because I grew up in a household where I was given autonomy.  I was not indoctrinated in religion because what I choose to believe is just that, my choice. So it shocks me when I meet people whose choices, that impact them and them alone, are not accepted by others, like the reaction my friend still gets as a result of making her choice public.

Her story is a fascinating one and I highly recommend you read her book: Confessions of a Childfree Woman: A Life Spent Swimming Against the Mainstream 

My Happiness Project

Finding balance between work
and family is the key to finding
happiness.

I was talking to a friend the other day about balancing work and life. We are both self-employed stay at home moms. A big part of the reason we choose this path for ourselves is so that we can have more time with our families. We are also both encouraging our husbands to make similar choices.

Why? Because money isn’t everything.  We need enough money to live off of, but we would rather not accumulate money at the expense of quality family time.  Why?  Because I married my husband because I actually like spending time with him. I like spending time with my son too.  Excessive work gets in the way of that sometimes.

We both realized we are embarking on a personal happiness project. Our goal is to find a balance between work and family that works for us. I don’t want to have it all. I want a little of everything and that requires me to make choices that will help me realize the balance I seek.

And yes, it does mean I’m not looking to make a 6 or 7 figure salary. Mid to high 5 figures is fine with me and much more realistic a goal anyway. As long as my chosen career affords me the time I want to spend with my family – I’ll be happy.


Image: "Businessman Thinking" by 89studio FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No Regrets

Your Choices Can Change Your Life

Once again The Atlantic Magazine published an article that created quite a stir amongst feminists – it was about how women still can’t have it all. Unlike some, I really liked the article. I thought it was a nice change of pace from the rather pessimistic feminist fare they’ve had of late. (And yes, it is interesting that I interpret the frank pessimism of the article as optimistically realistic.)

Anyway – I agree because I think the idea that anyone can have it all is a fantasy. Living a successful life consists of making choices. Some of these choices necessarily close off future potential in other areas of our lives. For instance, when I chose to get a degree in Hawaii, I was also choosing not to take a job in Japan. It was a choice I had no choice but to make. I couldn’t do both. I could only do one or the other or neither. That choice most definitely change the trajectory of my life.

It seems to me that the key to being happy in life isn’t in somehow managing to have it all. Rather, the key is learning how not to regret the choices that are the turning points in your life. 

Image: "Past Present And Future Signpost" by Stuart Miles FreeDigitalPhotos.net