REGRETS

Carl Gustav Jung on regret: We think that when we experience regret, it's somehow an aberration, when in fact everybody experiences regret. Regret makes us human; it is part of the human condition. What’s more: we think that regret makes us weaker, when in fact the research shows that regret can make us stronger. We can enlist our regrets as an engine for forward progress! 

In the west, it has become popular to espouse the NO REGRETS philosophy. The problem is: it’s not possible (or even realistic) because we all have regrets. We should try to minimize our future regrets, but the idea that you should never look back on your life and wish that you had done things differently is actually a terrible blueprint for living. It's a formula for stagnation. 

Regret teaches us. it instructs us. It clarifies what we should be doing and how we should be doing it. We have just never been taught how to learn from regret. We need to properly understand how to deal with our regrets. 

Neither should we ignore our regrets (like the NO REGRETS lifestyle), nor wallow in them. How they best serve us is in allowing them to help us make better decisions, solve problems faster, be better strategists, and find greater meaning in our life. 

Regret hurts, but regret also instructs... and you can’t have one without the other. 

If you avoid the pain, you don't get any of the learning, but you can process the pain and begin to see your regrets as signals.

When you reveal your regrets you are revealing what you value the most. 

If we understand what people regret the most we understand what they value the most. So regrets become a pointer to what makes life worth living. 

These are the four regrets (as outlined by philosopher Alan Watts):

• Foundation regrets- small decisions you made when you were younger that accumulated into bad consequences when you were older
• Boldness regrets- if only you had taken the chance… but you chose the safe path instead
• Moral regrets- if only you had done the right thing... but your didn't
• Connection regrets- if only you had reached out (to a person)... but now it’s too late

Three simple steps to process the regret (again as outlined by philosopher Alan Watts):

• Reframe the regret and the way that you think about yourself. Put down the bat; pick up the feather. Treat yourself with kindness and self-compassion. Think about your missteps as part of the human condition; not some thing that only you did. Don’t make the misstep your identity.
• Disclose your regrets. Disclosure is inherently valuable. It relieves a burden. When we talk about our regrets or even write about them, we convert a negative emotion into words which makes it less fearsome & less of a boogeyman. Then it becomes something you can try to make sense of.
• Move forward by way of taking a step back and extracting a lesson from it. What would you tell your best friend to do? If you were looking back on this decision 10 years from now, what would you want to have done?

We, as a society, need to normalize this process because the only people in our society without regrets are toddlers, people with brain damage, and sociopaths. The rest of us have regrets.