On Regretting the Decisions We've Made

Each of us has those moments when it feels like: “I could have done it differently.” And now that weight sits on the heart — somewhere light, somewhere genuinely heavy — trailing after us as a vivid parallel reality that never quite came to be. I’m no exception. Some of these memories reach all the way back to when I finished school, and a voice in my head goes: “How would my life have turned out, if only?..”

Picking apart the psychology of all this, I’ve landed on three key pieces:

— At times we really do make mistakes. But if we’ve come to see them over time, that’s no reason to beat ourselves up — quite the opposite, it’s a reason to give ourselves some credit. It’s a sign of growth. We’ve changed; we’ve started noticing what used to slip past us. The past can’t be undone, but we can act differently now — or in the future.

— Almost always, the truth is that at the moment of the decision we acted from the best of intentions, on the information we had at hand, and the feelings we were living through. Put another person in the same context, and they’d most likely have done the same. Of course, later on, once we know how it all played out, things look different — with hindsight. But can we really blame ourselves for not being fortune-tellers?

— If we’re honest with ourselves, if there was no ill intent at the moment of choosing, if we were reaching for some inner wholeness — then how can we regret having moved forward? Sadly, whatever decisions we make, there may always be those who meet them with resentment and pain. But if in that moment we were sincere, walking our own path toward happiness — what exactly did we do wrong?

Nothing is ever for nothing. If we did something, then at that particular moment of our life there was meaning in the act. And if it seems to us that we could have acted differently — we couldn’t have.

Regret is born from the gap between our expectations and the reality that actually unfolded. But what if the real secret is in letting go of the expectations themselves? “Do what you must, and come what may!”

Here’s to drawing our conclusions — and letting old regrets go! 😎