Have You Made Any Mistakes In Your Life? Then It’s Official-You’re Human

It’s good to think about your Regrets once in a while

Oh, those pesky regrets. We all have them. Some of us more than others. In the song My Way by Frank Sinatra, he sings, “Regrets, I’ve had a few.”

Really Frank?

And a good guess is that Old Blue Eyes had more than a few regrets. Noone’s life unfolds in a straight upward incline with wise decisions.

Some of those regrets involve major life decisions, like the career decision you made to forgo college and jump into the “real” world only without a plan or training of any kind. You had an adventure but no degree or career. It’s been eating you all these years.

Or how about the time you never called back that man or woman whom you regarded as kind of nerdy. Right now, they look like a pretty good life partner instead of the clunker you ended up with.

Then we have the not so consequential ones that come up more often. We have these little regrets every day. Lashing out at someone you love or not being there when a friend or family member needed you. They usually don’t change the course of our life, but they sure make us feel like a dolt.

No one gets through life without regrets. What to do about them?

The common advice is to put it all in your past. Don’t dwell on those regrets. Think of only the future or the present. Upon reflection, I believe there may be another track with more benefits in your present life.

We all have a way of defining ourselves in the present. Who we are, whether or not we are a good person or a bad person, our prospects for the future. Whenever we discount the regrets we’ve made or the poor decisions we’ve made in the past, we are eliminating part of ourselves. You are still that person who made those mistakes in the past; only now can we look back at them to see how we’ve changed because of those bad decisions.

It’s important to become aware of why you made those decisions that you now regret and that changed the course of your life. Why did you shun college or that job opportunity that would have made your life so different? Often it's a fear of failure. Other times you were under the emotional influence of someone else. Where did that fear or emotional dependence come from? What do you need to do to overcome that now? Have you?

As you discover the answers to your past regrets, you are in the process of becoming a stronger version of yourself. You can look back into the past and see that you now have control over your decision-making.

If you are someone who has 20 years of procrastination holding you back from doing the things you’ve always wanted to, then realizing who you are and what challenges you need to overcome that procrastination can be extremely helpful to your present self.

Many people on Medium, including myself, would probably say they regretted not starting to write earlier. What could you have done with your life if you had gone to a school and studied journalism and creative writing? Maybe now you would be writing exquisite novels in addition to the wonderful articles we read here every day. Guess what? You can’t magically be a 20-year-old again, but you can still start that writing career.

Every regret we have can be a motivation to change and be what we really want to be. We shouldn’t put those old regrets completely out of our minds. Instead, they can be a catalyst as we go forward in our lives.

If you regret something you did in your past, it most likely gives you a lower opinion of yourself now. It’s a good opportunity not to take yourself so seriously. The good news is that everyone has regrets, and you are just one of the billions of people out there with the same feelings. So take the opportunity for a little self-deprecation. It’s the opposite of narcissism, that ugly personality trait that seemingly affects so many. And if you can laugh at yourself, you’ve taken a major step toward confidence and self-acceptance.

A common thread that runs through all regrets is that it is a truly human feeling. And those regrets have made the world we live in today. Every decision you’ve ever made has put you on the course that brings you to the present. We don’t realize that our regrets have sometimes led to events or happenings in our lives that we would never change.

If you are someone, like myself, who loves time travel stories, within these stories, there is always the element of going back in the past to undo a major event. As do the characters in the fictional story, we think that if we could fix this one choice we made, our lives would be all ice cream and roses. But every time the filmmaker or author allows their protagonist to change a past event, the ramifications in the present are disastrous. And that’s what regret is. We run this tape over and over in our heads, wishing we had made a different choice in our past, but we have no idea how that choice would have turned out in our present lives.

If you have a particular regret and there is still an opportunity to reverse it, you can make a course adjustment anytime you want. I wish you took that journalism course in college? Take it now. Still thinking about an old love interest, you let slip through? If possible, give that person a call.

Make a habit of learning from your regrets, and don’t put them all out of your mind. You can laugh at some of them, and some have major implications in your present-day experiences. Never start a sentence “If only I.”

You are still that person who made a mistake, but now you have learned from it and made a course adjustment. The drag on your success is behind you, and you are on the way to becoming that better version of yourself.

Be Open Says;

Proudly we present you 1 of Be Open Platinum Stories created by: Nilesh C

Approved by Be Open’s Editors: A Shayens Abran & Priya Tandon