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/

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

Letting Go of the Hurt

Image: photostock /
 FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There are a lot of people in the world who have been hurt by bullying, physically and emotionally. As I say in my book, The Bully Vaccine, I seem to have escaped that. Sure, people were mean to me, but I never took it personally because I had been taught by my mom that when people behave badly towards you it is because they are dealing with issues and fears that usually have nothing to do with you.

And, in my experience, my mom was right. I don’t really remember being bullied as a child, though I know there were people who were mean that I didn’t like being around, but I never took it personally and so was never emotionally troubled by what they were doing. I mostly just thought such individuals were pathetic and felt sorry for them.

I bring this up because it is clear that a lot of people are harboring hurt about what happened to them into adulthood and I genuinely want to help them release that pain.  So here goes.

In order to let go of this pain you have been holding on to you have to choose to let go of it. The reason you are finding it so hard to let go of it is because to do so requires you to accept that what happened to you wasn’t really about you. And that’s really hard to do. Most people would rather cling to their pain than let it go because at least, it’s their pain and it’s about them.  

To let go of your pain and no longer require closure or an explanation or an apology from the person who caused you that pain, requires you to accept that what happened, despite how horrid it was for you, wasn’t actually about you.  It was about the other person and the fact that their obnoxious hurtful behavior was all about them trying to take their pain and put it onto someone else. In essence, you bully was desperately trying to offload their pain onto someone else and just got in the way.

The question you need to ask yourself is this. Would you rather feel hurt or would you rather feel compassion for someone else? Because for all these years, you took the hurt someone else placed on you and owned it and made it all about you. Because the idea that you might not have mattered was too scary to even contemplate you held onto that pain longer than you should have.

This really is a rational choice you can make. But to do so, you need to let go of your hurt and that requires you to let go of your ego and realize, what happened to you wasn’t about you. Yes, it impacted you and you were hurt by it. But as soon as you get your ego out of the way and allow yourself to really understand that the person who hurt you must have been in tremendous pain to do what they did, you will find you can let go of the hurt you have been carrying around and you will be much much happier.