No Regrets

Do you spend more time looking regretfully backwards than hopefully forwards? Are you constantly tormented by thoughts of "what if?" and "if only…"?

When things go wrong, it's totally natural and normal to spend some time going over what happened in order to understand it and learn from it. You ask yourself "Was I to blame?" or "Could or should I have done something differently?" You learn what you can and you move on. But sometimes you can get so caught up in focusing on the losses and errors of your past that you can't really 'get going' on your future.

No regrets? If only!

It's as if you get stuck in a fantasy of what life would have been like if only that particular thing had not happened, or you had not made a certain blunder, or those good times had not ended, or whatever it was that's now eating you up. And of course that 'other life' has a sort of glow about it, so much more appealing than the actual life you now feel condemned to lead. No wonder you are consumed with grief for what you have lost.

The real meaning of regret

Because that's what constant regret about the past is - unprocessed grief. You may be experiencing it as anger, with yourself or others, or shame, or self-blame, or any number of other negative emotions. When we lose what our lives 'would have been', it is very much like a bereavement, and grieving is a process by which we separate ourselves from what has irretrievably gone and begin to face the future again.

What it takes to live life with no regrets

Grief and regret are not instantaneous processes. They take time, but they don't take forever. So if you find yourself after a significant length of time still caught up in bitterness, it's time to take stock and see what can be done to free yourself from the grip of the past. Liberation comes in two ways. It involves interrupting the habits of regret, the automatic thoughts, and developing a new vision of what the future can be.