The experience of regrets
Do you ever wish you could go back and turn the hands of time? You know...Get a do-over? Have you wondered what would life would be like if you hadn’t let “the one” get away? Do you beat yourself up for not taking school seriously enough? Did you not love enough, risk enough, or laugh enough? I know so many people who believe that if they could go back and change that one thing that they did or did not do, their lives would be so different...and so much better.
Regrets. Disappointments. Heartaches. We all have them. Most people stuff away their regrets in a closet in a dark room in their minds, refusing to acknowledge them. Yet they live in the pain of those regrets every day, allowing them to affect their mood. Depression, anxiety, and chronic stress are just a few of the ways we suffer when we have unresolved regrets.
While things may not be how you planned them, such is life. There are no replays or do-overs. And despite the fact that is not possible to physically go back and reverse the effects of our choices, we can work to change how we feel about those choices. Reverse the pain of regret by choosing to learn from your experiences while making the needed repairs and resolutions. Remove self-blame and allow yourself to use your experiences to make you a better person. Replace the sense of loss of what might have been with gratitude of what is possible to do today. And know that compassion, meaning “to suffer together,” only comes from having suffered the injustices of life. We need more compassion in this world as compassion generates mercy and inspires justice. Maybe it is time to give compassion to yourself for all that you have suffered.
Author and motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, wrote, “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” Well, if I’m going to give a pound of flesh to something, I will choose discipline over regret every time.
It is experience that leads us to compassion. It is experience that gives us wisdom. It is experience that makes us experts.
Learn your limits and never push them to your breaking point. Live a life of no regrets and find purpose in all your experiences. Remember that Christ died so that we could live... REALLY LIVE! And when you choose to live life to the fullest, you’re bound to make a few mistakes now and then. Such is a great life of experience!
Mother Owl
