How To Deal With Regret

And live your life peacefully

At some point in my life, this was my most googled question.

In my early 20s, I realized that I had been living my life for others: based on their expectations, on what they thought I should be doing and avoiding whatever would bother them.

There I stood at one point, full of regret, obsessing over what I should have done in the past.

But this was the wrong thing to concentrate on: you cannot fight regret by focusing on what is gone.

Actually, you cannot fight regret at all. The only way to process it is to accept the feeling and let it go.

Letting go of regret

Having ruminating on this feeling constantly at one point in my life, I have three reminders that help me deal with the regret:

#1 Forgive yourself

Understand that you are not the person that you used to be and give yourself permission to not be that person anymore.

Forgive yourself for relapses as well — they happen and they don’t mean that you are flawed. They just mean you are human.

Don’t feel that because you are going back to the feeling of regret, you are not healing anymore — it is difficult to break from something you have done for a long time.

Be kind to yourself.

#2 Focus on the present

A cliche and a typical phrase nowadays, but still true.

It is also the reason why meditation has become so famous in the latest years — with constant reminders of the past (yes, my iPhone also does collages with pictures of my ex), and questions over your future, it seems impossible to concentrate on the present.

But this is the only moment that can exist at this point — memories of the past or expectations for the future are not real.

Regretting and focusing on another moment will only take you away from the present.

“There is no such thing as letting go; there’s just accepting what’s already gone.” — Brianna Wiest

#3 Think about the future, but do not obsess over it

Whilst the best way to avoid regret is by focusing on the present, I feel like this tip alone does not help — if we want to move towards a direction, we need an aspiration for the future.

This is where this lesson comes in — think about the direction you want to move towards, but concentrate on what you can do NOW.

Leave behind the future uncontrollable. By starting something today, you’re letting your path drive you.

The use of regret

Every time we struggle to let something go, it is because it’s serving us a purpose.

In the case of regret, it allows us to have some sense of control over our life.

We suddenly realized that our past life is not the one that we wanted: either because we did or we did not do something (most likely, because of the later).

In order to get some kind of control of the situation (that does not exist anymore), we focus on regret: IF we had done that, IF we had taken that opportunity, IF we had not befriended that person…

We mull over the idea that our past self could have taken a different decision.

However, we are only getting to this conclusion because of who we are now. If we had not made that choice, we would have not ended here. We would have not become who we are.

By focusing on the feeling of regret, we are keeping ourselves from taking action again, because of the fear that we will, well, regret it once again later.

However, if we do not act, we will never be able to change, evolve, or experiment.

“Regrets Are Stupid — the past doesn’t exist anymore, and it never will ever again. You don’t know how things would have been different so stop wasting calories worrying about it. We are the sum of our experiences, including the not-so-proud moments we all go through.” — Humble the Poet

No Regrets

As a cliche phrase and a very common tattoo, this sentence could not be more true: have no regrets.

Having regrets is a way of getting stuck in suffering. Ruminating on your regrets will only make you feel worse.

Yeah, maybe you dedicated a lot of time to a person who did not reciprocate, or you did not get that promotion you were working so hard for. It sucks.

You can get mad and cry about it, hate the moment and process it the best you can. But please do not regret it — you would not be who you are today if you had not done what you did.

Let go and concentrate on the now. Don’t waste this precious moment.