Is it okay to have regrets?
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| photo by Susan Yee of En Pointe Photography |
Something happened three years ago that, to this day, I still regret.
I know it's important to accept the past, to move on, and learn from our experiences
but with this incident I cannot seem to do any of that.
I believe that an essential part of learning from mistakes is also the hardest part:
forgiving yourself.
The positive person in me thinks I should have done that a long time ago.
The perfectionist and slightly neurotic part of me doesn't think that will ever happen.
Another part of me thinks I should just live with that regret and let it be.
Would that be so bad?
The world tells us we should live without regret but I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Another part of me thinks I should just live with that regret and let it be.
Would that be so bad?
The world tells us we should live without regret but I'm not sure how I feel about that.
What about you?
Do you have any regrets?
Do you think it's okay to live with them?
You are welcome to leave your comments anonymously (or not anonymously).
Just click on the anonymous button on the comment screen.
What was my regret?
It'll be in there. I think anonymously is the only way I can tell you about it.
30 comments:
I think every one has regrets, none of us are perfect...and its really the only way to learn and move forward, from our own life's mistakes.
I kind of hate the overused line "never regret anything because at one point it was exactly what you wanted." I think that is just a nice way of avoiding living up to things that you shouldn't have done. It also just doesn't work. Sometimes you just make the wrong decision, not because it was what you wanted, but because it was easy.
I think its okay to have regrets. I think we should embrace them and learn from them. There is no sense burrying them away and never think about them - that does us no good. But to reflect on them and use them to make us a better person? That is a good way to live with regret.
To live without regret isn't human.
I feel like I have too many regrets to name; however, I think that you need to move past them. You could, potentially, allow regrets, and the past, to rule your future; or you could take them in stride, accept that they happened for a reason, and move forward. I choose the latter. :)
Well, about time someone raised this question! It seems to me that in this modern and sometimes fake society we live in, having regrets is the equivalent of peeing in your pants (excuse my language) I just saw it the other day, in the TODAY show when they asked Kardashian if she regretted marrying that basketball player (ok, you can tell, I don't know the names right, that's because I don't watch the show) but she said she doesn't regret it, yeah right, of course she does, she just won't admit darn it!
Why are we so afraid of admitting we regret things. I regret a ton of things, that doesn't make me immature or impulsive or clueless.
I live with my regrets and I want people around me to learn from them too, that's why talk about my regrets with people I love.
Thanks for this great post!
I think its ok to have regrets because we learn from that sitation or experience and hopefully we avoid that situation. However, I wouldn't want those regrets to weight down on everyday life.
i believe you should because if you dont that means you didn't make mistakes therefore you didnt get to learn anything... right now i'm seriously regretting doing something that cost me the job interview i've been waiting for a long time and now i cannot schedule another one... but i learned my lesson!
I have a lot of regrets. But one of my biggest is losing my best friend. We'd known each other since junior high and went through a lot together. And rather than fighting for our friendship I let it go because I was too hurt and stubborn to do anything else.
I miss her a lot. I tried to reach out to her last year but although she did respond back, her response basically told me she didn't want to reunite.
It hurts a lot. I don't have any close girl friends now and certainly no one with the kind of history that I had with my old best friend. I honestly believe I will forever miss her.
You are right in that the hardest part is forgiving oneself. However, I do not believe that it is right to continue to punish oneself, nor to fill one's being with regret forever. If you are truly sorry for the incident, then I think that you can leave it in a safe place and let it go. You have learned from your mistake. There will be so many positive aspects to your life that you will need room for in the future.
I think to regret is normal...as long as you don't hold on to it forever!
Absolutely too many, far from perfect...
Try not to be so hard with yourself... I know it is difficult but it helps:)
Baggage, shadows in the closet, wrong decisions, regrets. If we learn from a mistake or something we wish we hadn't done, then we will hopefully grow through that experience and become a better person.
enjoy your day
I find the hardest thing for me is not allowing regrets to create new regrets.
I did something 2 ½ years ago that seemed life shattering. For the most part I’ve forgiven myself and done a lot of healing, but it also influenced me in ways I haven’t fixed, or gotten over, which I hadn’t realized. It was slightly paralyzing in a couple areas of my life and destroyed a sense of who I am and my worth that I didn’t know the regret had eaten away until I needed to draw from it and couldn’t find the strength of confidence I needed. Last year I let that regret influence something in my life that had the potential to be extraordinarily wonderful. I missed an opportunity that, in the long run, I will likely regret more than I will ever regret what I did in the first place that shattered my confidence in my ability to trust myself.
Now I am aware that there are still pieces of me that still need to heal, and the struggle is not to let the new regret prevent me from addressing the residue of the older one. Because if I get a second chance at this missed opportunity I want to be the person I need to be.
I try remind myself, just like the song, that nothing is quite as sure as change, so as long as I learn from and don’t repeat regrets so much is possible.
I like the anonymous above lost a very close childhood friend. I feel I did my best to include her and support her ever changing lifestyles, but when she found out I was engaged on fb - she cut me off. It hurt, but it was also a bit of relief. She chose to cut me off and I could not do anything about it. I have no hard feelings toward her, just miss her friendship (really the friendship from a decade ago).
People also ask me if I regret my first marriage. The answer is always no. I loved him, I have a beautiful daughter and I have found peace now. I do regret his choices. Are we allowed to regret what someone else did? I know I was not perfect, but, ultimately I have no regrets about the choices I made - and I believe it is because I make all my major decisions prayerfully.
This is a really beautiful post. We're always so afraid to have regrets, but I can't imagine that we really don't wish some things happened just a bit differently. I regret the way a very close friendship ended, but I also know that the relationship wasn't healthy, and allowed me to experience new, positive things.
It's natural and only human to have regrets, however the trick is not to let them cripple you.
I'd rather try something and regret it than not try it at all...
love this photo !!xx
I feel like I don't really have regrets because I've learned to move past them. After reading all these comments, it makes me feel like I have the wrong outlook but I truly feel that certain bad decisions or disappointing times have made me who I am. Of course I wish I did certain things differently at certain points, I am by no means perfect, but I don't think I regret all those things. I think because I have been able to move past my bad decisions, I no longer 'regret' that they happened. I've learned from them and bettered myself and have become who I am today.
My only real regret is the way I handled moving out with my boyfriend (now husband). I am happy with the outcome and I certainly learned from it but I know I hurt my mom with the way I did things. I certainly wish I hadn't and had had the sense to be kinder about the situation. I wasn't able to think for myself and was so influenced by what everyone else told me I should be doing that I put myself in an awkward situation and created fights that shouldn't have happened. I certainly regret that I hurt people so close to me.
I think in writing this out, it's made me realize that maybe the regrets we hold on to are the ones that hurt other people - the others are easier to let go (and for me, no longer are regrets) but when there are other people involved, it becomes that much harder to move past. Just a thought...?
No regrets! :-)
I try not to have any but there definitely are a few I have. One major one from years ago. The regret isn't the experience but the pain I caused someone else. I try not to think about it but I will never forget. I think it's important to remember as to never make the same mistake again.
I say regret nothing. Perfection is in impert living. XO.
I love how 9 out of 10 I forget the anonymous button...
i like your blog!! and you automatically win HUGE brownie points with me with the grishko 2007 pointe shoes(?). the 2007's are my favorite!
I never had any until this year and now it's haunting me every day.
I try not to have regrets really... there's lots of things I would change if I went back in time but then again I think maybe if I changed them things would end up worse. xx
I don't know. For me it goes in phases... for a while there are regrets, but then I just try to learn from them and move on (and leave the regrets behind).
I HATE when people say they have no regrets. i think that is total bullshit. we all make mistakes. the key is to learn from them.
some things i have done or said in the past still make me cringe.
i think my regrets mostly revolve around not standing up for myself when i could have/should have. i was always good about loving others and apologizing when i made mistakes, but with myself? there were so many times i wish i had used my voice to advocate for myself and the things i now know i deserved. these situations in the past i will just have to learn to live with, but at present i can practice doing things differently, which i hope will make up for all those regrets.
Dear Dancing Branflakes, it was like you were writing the very thoughts from my heart. I was nodding along like yep, yep!! I get that!!! I totally get it.
I've had a similar experience that I regret and have struggled to find a place for it in my my life. I want to forget and move on, but I want to carry part of it with me as a reminder... I've handed it off, been forgiven, but I worry about forgiving myself. Will I ever? I summed it up in my journal the other night that my twenties were huge for learning to live with regrets and be ok with them. Embrace even.
I love your blog so so much for the thought provoking questions you ask. Thank you for sharing you heart with us.
We all have regrets. That's life. Some are worse than others. It is about forgiving yourself but it's also about accepting what you cannot and will never be able to change. That's what I had to do with something that happened 4 months ago. Now I am thankful for the experience and all that I learned from it. I will never get into a situation like that again.
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