Celebrate Your Mistakes!

Image Courtesy: Mother Nature Network

“I wish I had educated myself a little more.”

“I wish I was not such a terrible teenager.”

“I wish I could climb Mt. Everest.”

“I wish I were more confident and self-assured and not care so much about the judgment of others.”

How often have you found yourself thinking of things from your past that you did or didn’t do that make you feel sad or guilty or embarrassed? Pretty often, I am sure. The reason is Regret. Regret is rated highest from a list of negative emotions. Whether we acknowledge it or not is a separate issue. Regret involves blaming ourselves for a bad outcome, feeling a sense of loss or sorrow at what might have been or wishing we could undo a previous choice that we made.

The Butthole Surfers, 1980s punk rock band, describes it in a song called “Sweet Loaf”:

“Daddy, what does regret mean?” “Well son, the funny thing about regret is, it’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done.”

If you are someone who believes that you have no regrets in life then you might be surprised to learn that the Butthole Surfers are not the definitive authority on this subject.

According to Dr. Todd B. Kashdan, a clinical psychologist, regret is a useful emotion because without regret you are done evolving, and you will be ineffective coping with an uncertain, unpredictable world where mistakes are inevitable. Admitting that you have regrets makes you open-minded and willing to take calculated risks with a desire to continually grow and learn. So, it’s safe to be skeptical of people who claim to have no regrets.

I recently met an acquaintance after ten years. And while waiting for him at a Starbucks, I had moments of doubt and confusion. I regarded him as a decent person and thought I had behaved badly by cutting him off from my life without any goodbye or explanation. I thought I had made a mistake and was willing to open channels of communication that I had severed a decade ago. While we were requesting for our respective coffee, casual chatter and finding a place to seat ourselves, I suddenly had a moment of discovery. There was a reason that I shut him out of my life the first time. For all the years that I distanced myself from him, I always had a nagging irritation about it. But the truth is that it was not a mere casualty. It was meant to be that way. Some doors are closed for a reason. And that reason eventually became visible to me that day. He was as annoying now as he was back then. The most self-consumed person, who did the courtesy of asking about me but was least interested in my response. But the deal breaker was when he said, “I have no regrets.” And in my head I thought, “Yeah, right! And I am Jesus Christ!” It’s just not possible! And I can’t stand liars or people with double standards, more concerned about preserving their public image.

I couldn’t put it more accurately than Mario de Andrade in My Soul has a Hat; “…I no longer have the patience to stand absurd people, who despite their chronological age, have not grown up…I want to live next to humans, very realistic people who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their own triumphs and who take responsibility for their actions…”

The truth is we all have a series of should-haves, wish-I’ds, what-if’s. From a simple action of yelling at your kids to hurting someone or breaking someone’s trust, we have all experienced regret in all shapes, sizes and form. We regret the things we didn’t do, act weird when we should have been more compassionate, let down someone because we lacked courage, married the wrong person, didn’t spend enough time with someone we lost, let our ego come before friendship, didn’t get through our first career choice, etc. etc.

But regret on its own is not a bad thing. Dwelling on it is.

So how does one deal with regrets? According to Melanie Greenberg, a clinical psychologist, some of the effective ways of overcoming regret are:

1. Harness the Functional Aspects: Read it as your brain’s way of telling you to take another look at your choices, a signal that your actions may be leading to negative consequences.

2. If there is nothing you can do to change the situation, let it go: Find a way to forgive yourself and let it go.

3. Make sure you are not taking too much blame: consider the circumstances at the time that may have made it more difficult to make a better choice or the fact that you had limited knowledge at the time or were under time pressures.

4. Re-frame the situation more positively: Life is a journey and we all take a few wrong turns. Don’t be so hard on yourself.

Personally, it’s a mixed bag for me when it comes to dealing with regrets. It means that most of the time I live in the moment, without looking back and self-judgment. I attribute this learning from my dogs. I feel blessed to wake up to my husband, children and dogs. I feel lucky to enjoy the simple pleasures of life like a hot cup of coffee, a beautiful home and a comfortable life. Good health, decent wealth and happiness.

Then sometimes I find opportunity in my regrets by analyzing my behavior, its consequences and learning from it. For example, the many times that I have upset my daughter because of my rude exasperation. She has been kind to put up with it and given me the opportunity to be more mindful of my unreasonable and unmet expectations.

And on other times I consider it my good luck to not receive the things that I wanted because I get the chance to broaden my limitations, recreate myself and become the source of my own luck. Some of the things that happened to me or didn’t happen seemed first as bad luck, but now I see them as good luck. Why? Because the times that I was being denied something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better. I have come so far today and it wouldn’t have been possible without those moments of rejection or denial or just “bad luck”. For example, I stopped chasing the people who made be feel bad about myself and made way for people who didn’t.

To sum it up, we can let regret take us towards positive change or unhealthy rumination. We can either learn from it or punish ourselves or see it as a stroke of luck. Whatever it is that you choose to do about the things that involve blaming ourselves for a bad outcome, feeling a sense of loss or sorrow at what might have been or wishing we could undo a previous choice that we made, remember this: You can look back at your regrets as a process to grow and understand that your past has given you the strength and wisdom you have today, so celebrate it. Don’t let it haunt you.

"There are always going to be things you look back on wish you did differently, but those very choices made you exactly who you are today."