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.

Order Out of Chaos: Business Ethics and Priorities

Business Ethics and Priorities: a lesson in humanistic management.

In a previous post I discussed how business ethics and human ethics. http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2015/10/business-ethics-are-human-ethics.html  I want to expand on this concept here.

It isn’t enough to have a set of ethics and values. You have to live by those ethics and make decisions consistent with those ethics to be an ethical person. How you choose to act matters.

Deciding how to act and what to work on is where things get complicated. This is especially true in business.

I’m an entrepreneur. I have a lot of demands on my time. In order to be effective, I have to choose what I work on and what I don’t work on. The ONLY way I can make such decisions and have those decisions help me and my business and my customers is if I have my priorities straight. And the only way I can have my priorities straight is if I have my ethics straight.

I can’t create order out of chaos unless I have a firm grasp of my ethics. My ethics dictate my priorities.  In my case, my family comes first, then helping others through my business. What I am looking for is balance.

I think the thing people have trouble with is that they think of ethics in black and white terms. Either something is good or something is bad. Those questions are easy to decide. Where morality requires extra thinking is when we are forced to choose between the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils.

What causes problems in our personal and professional lives is when we are confronted with a variety of tasks, all of which are good. How do we choose?  Of what do we do when all of our options are bad?

The chaos in our lives almost always occurs when we are confronted by these greater of two goods or lesser of two evil situations and we chose not to choose.  Some people just can’t say no to a good request. So they become overwhelmed by the demands placed on them. They aren’t capable of saying no or prioritizing between the greater of goods. They have chosen not to prioritize their lives. And they live with the chaos that results.

We also get stuck in chaos limbo overload when all our options are bad. So we choose to do nothing. And instead of working our way out of the bad situation we find ourselves in – we live with a status quo that sucks.

Not choosing is a choice. Not prioritizing is a choice. If you want to create order in your life, you have to step up to the plate and start making decisions, even when the decisions are hard. Do your best. Set your priorities as best you can based on your ethics and see what happens.  It’s very rare that a decision can’t be undone if you change your mind later.

What I can tell you is that based on my personal practice, making choices helps me stay sane. I rarely know if the decisions I made are the right ones. It’s more that they are right for me in that moment. What I do know is that despite the chaos around me, I feel centered. Most of the time. And that’s at least something.