Regret is a tough beast to live with. It stands there, skulking in the shadows ruining moments of happiness. It stops us from being comfortable with our own thoughts - how many times has something from the past been bothering us to the point where we turn on the TV just to drown it out? Or maybe turn to alcohol or have something to eat?
We might regret opportunities that we’ve missed, hurtful things we’ve said to other people, the end of a relationship or something embarrassing we did. We can’t help turning it over in our mind obsessively, like a puzzle that there must be an answer to. Again and again coming back to the same question - why didn’t I act differently?
An example of that is someone who feels like they’ve wasted part of their life. Some people feel like this when they hit 30 or 40, maybe they’ve spent too much time in the office and not enough time living life. Or conversely, that they’ve screwed around too much and not built up a career. Both groups of people, looking at the other thinking they’ve made the wrong decisions!
Which surfaces the most fundamental question about regret - is it true? We assume that the alternative path of action, whatever that is, must have been better, but that's an assumption. Realising that you cannot know the choices you made were wrong is the first step in reducing the power of regret over you. Regrets are not facts, regrets are not knowledge and your memory of the past is flawed and incomplete.
Secondly, we tend to forget the circumstances surrounding the situation we were in, as a result we’re not as kind to ourselves as we should be. I read a story about someone who deeply regretted not seeing their mother one last time in the hospital when they were eight. This had haunted them their entire lives - but if that was a friend of yours of course you would tell them that they were just a child, they were scared and its understandable. But when its ourselves in the dock, we are a hanging judge and we show no mercy. Instead, imagine its a friend you’re talking to and show that level of compassion.
Finally, sometimes we do have something to apologise for, when we’ve hurt someone. Regret doesn’t help that process, instead of expressing how bad we feel for what we’ve done we internalise it and choose to beat ourselves up for years. Regret impairs our ability to learn and stops us from making things right with people we care about. If you have something you need to make right, do it and let go. If you can’t reach that person, write them a letter expressing what you would say if you could communicate with them.
The key to letting go of regret is acceptance. Accept that you don’t know all of the facts around what happened and your memory is selective. Accept that you are a human being that isn’t perfect. Accept that in difficult circumstances you don’t make perfect choices and that you, along with everyone else is doing the best they can. Accept that we can make mistakes - we can apologise for them. And finally accept that you are a good person. Because you are.
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