Screw you regret

Any regrets in your life?

You know, like regretting not sticking with learning Spanish, or playing harder on the football field, or persisting to get that date. Or for not saying goodbye that last time you saw your mom or dad before they died. Or… Or… Or…

It’s easy to think of all the things you wish you had said, thought, and wrote.

Think of the tales of deathbed confessions: I wish I repaired my relationship with my son. I wish I wasn’t too afraid to start my business. I wish I found true love.

And regrets needn’t be that grippingly sad. Think of the last time you reached for that extra piece of pizza. And the too-full gut shame that followed. Damn, I wish I didn’t eat that last piece. Or accepted that last drink at the bar. Damn, I regret that last drink.

It really is easy. Go ahead. Give it a shot.

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Think of some? Great!

Now forget about what you just thought. Crumple them up and throw them in the garbage.

Regrets are beasts. Gross and bitchy weights that hang around our necks and stop us from moving anywhere away from shame and sadness.

Those regrets you were able to list? If you sit and think about them, I almost guarantee you will feel a weight in your chest and a sadness course through you.

Just thinking about what could have been can sink us into a pit of despair.

I have my share of regrets. I wish I picked up that call on a Friday night in 1998: by missing it I missed a chance at a last conversation with my mom. I wish I had the strength to admit that I wanted to write and help people when I left my PhD program. I wish I didn’t eat those chips. I wish I didn’t have that last drink.

Even just writing that caused sadness to grip my chest.

The good news though? The news that I used to defend from those piteously sad thoughts?

Stoicism.

Yeah, yeah… I’ve talked about the awesomeness of Stoicism before. But, true serious, hear me out.

How can Stoicism help? In two ways.

1)  Is it in your control?
When it comes to regret the answer is no, it is not in your control. Why? Because it is in the past. What you didn’t do years ago cannot be changed by the regret you feel today.

Read that again.

What you regret cannot be changed. It is in the past. It is done.

2) Change your mindset
Our minds are powerful. And we can be the bosses of them.

A cool way this can happen is by changing how you think about your regret as a negative to a positive.

“I am such an idiot for not picking up a paintbrush sooner” becomes instead “I am grateful that I picked up a paintbrush when I did.”

“I am pissed that I didn’t get that promotion - I should have worked even harder so my boss could have seen I deserved it” becomes instead “Welp. I worked my hardest."

The goal here is to out-think your brain by shifting away from unhealthy negative thoughts to more healthy positive thoughts. Look for what you learned rather than what you lost.

So hooray? Is it just that easy to let regret go?

Of course not. It takes effort and vigilance to stop regret. How?

One way to get regret to go away is to just start doing what you regretted not doing now. Like, right now.

Start taking tennis lessons. Start reading that book. Start taking more care of yourself. Start working out. Start looking for better career opportunities. Start painting.

Starting from whenever and wherever you did is when you started. Full stop. There is little to be gained by dwelling on what you didn’t do, throw regret out.

You are in control of the present. You have learned from the past. Now set up your future.

Marcus Aurelius, one of the Big Three Stoics, has a deliciously simple way of putting how we should deal with regret: “No longer talk at all about the kind of [person] that a good [person] ought to be, but be such.”  (Meditations, X.16)

Start today. Be a better person today and stop regretting not being that person earlier.