CHAPTER 11


Accept That You’ll Have Regrets

We hear it all the time … “Don’t live your life with regrets!” And as a life coach, I feel it is my duty to preach this as well. Regret can be an awful feeling to live with because 99 percent of the time we can’t go back and change things. A decision has been made, and looking back, it may not have been the best one at the time.

I always tell people that if you learned something from it, it’s not a regret. Take, for instance, a relationship or marriage that ended. A part of you might be bitter and angry. It might feel like those years were wasted and, quite frankly, you’ll probably be pissed about the time gone by and want it back. But in reality, I’m sure there is a long list of things you learned, and if that’s the case, you don’t need to regret it one bit.

But that’s easier said than done. Sometimes when I hear, “Don’t live life with regrets,” I still feel a little panicked. Because in reality I do have regrets, and you probably do, too.

After my marriage broke up, I met a guy. It was a completely unhealthy relationship, yet it was what I thought I needed at that time. I had gone back to school to finish my bachelor’s degree and looked into spending a semester abroad in Australia. I had always wanted to visit and this was the perfect opportunity. I wasn’t married, I didn’t have kids … I felt it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip. I had all the information I needed to sign up, and my student loans would cover it.

But Mr. Unhealthy Relationship didn’t want me to go. So I didn’t.

To this day, I totally regret this decision. I should have gone. I should have done what my heart was telling me to do. I shouldn’t have chosen him over the trip. But I didn’t go, and since no one has invented time travel yet, there is nothing I can do about it. Sure, I can travel to Australia in the future, but I can never have that time in my life back with that choice in my hands. And to think that I need to have a life with no regrets makes me feel bad about this.

I’m sure you have at least one regret, too: a missed opportunity, a decision you made that you can’t take back. Maybe you have an entire list of them. If you do, here are some things to help you get through, and hopefully over, them.

• Grieve it. Maybe your regret is that you didn’t get to tell someone something so very important before he died. Or you passed up on a job opening that you’re seeing now was a major missed opportunity. In other words — it’s a big one. Take your time to grieve it. Be mad, sad, frustrated, and, well … regretful.
• Learn from it. Like it or not, we tend to learn something from difficult situations. In my example, I learned that my intuition was right, and that people pleasing never wins. You might learn the same thing from your regret, or something as simple as “I’ll never do that again.” Whatever it is, the learning is perfect for you.
• Make peace with it. You may still be beating yourself up for your regret. Thoughts like, “I was so stupid! I can’t believe I did that!” You already know you can’t change the past, nor can you change your decision. What you can change is how you talk to yourself about it and how to speak about it out loud to others. Give up the dialogue that goes in circles about what happened.
• Forgive yourself and accept that that outcome can never be different. In Chapter 34, I talk about how to forgive yourself for past mistakes. This is imperative here. If you’re having a lot of trouble with this one, ask yourself what exactly you’re making this regret mean. Are you coming to conclusions about your future because of it? Or are you putting labels on yourself about it (loser, flake, bad decision maker, etc.)?

Remember that most, if not all, of us have regrets at the end of our lives. It’s futile to pretend you don’t. There comes a time when you just need to call a spade a spade and have a regret or two. Or ten. Everything in your life — even your regrets — have in some way shaped you … but you get to determine in what way.