The Gift of Regret: Forgive Yourself and Let It Go

They say there are only two certainties in life: Death and taxes. I would like to offer a third: Regret. You will have many occasions in life to reflect and conclude:

“Crap! Why did I have to go and do or say that? Of all my options…why that?”

There are plenty of other worse experiences in life. Obviously. Trench warfare immediately springs to mind, for example. But when it’s happening in real time, regret can be unbearable. It’s like hitting your emotional funny bone. Really, really hard. The jarring, electrical suffering keeps reverberating. And the only way to make it stop is to try to drive it out of your mind. But, there it is again, when you’re thinking about something else…presenting itself with a friendly “howdy” like Toy Story’s Sheriff Woody.

Who would ever call the experience of regret a gift? It’s a humbling, humiliating, often financially expensive emotional reaction to one bad decision, which leads to a series of cascading other bad decisions, which then lead to wasted money, wasted years, wasted focus, emotional exhaustion, self-recrimination, and often, deep sorrow. And hollowed out self-esteem. After all, the decision you had originally made that had put you on the path to regret was what you thought was the best decision at the time. What does that say about your judgment?

But, if you give yourself a moment of grace to think about it, regret can also be a gift. It teaches you important things about yourself, what you need that you’re not getting from healthier sources, how you need to armor up to prepare for the next time when the stakes are likely to be even higher.

A friend of mine got taken for a ride by scam artists this week. She’s not anywhere near the age where it’s time to take away her phone, credit cards and car keys. But she’s also at the age where the more professional, creative and ambitious con artists might figure, “It’s worth a shot.” And so, as she puts it, “I got got.” Result: a $199 estimate for an unnecessary service the scam artists convinced her she needed became a $560 bill in the blink of an eye.

The details as to how it happened are too cringey to go into here. But instead of beating herself up mercilessly about it, she hopped onto Facebook to tell all her friends about the scam scheme so they’re prepared for that possibility as well.

She also sat down and drew up a list of rules of thumb for herself to commit to memory so this particular version of a fleecing doesn’t stand a chance of happening to her again. It’s very similar to the HALT rules I learned in AA: ?Don’t take an important action when you’re hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

Here’s her list based on her experience this week:

1.???? Don’t agree to a purchase under time pressure.

2.???? Don’t feel bad about not understanding someone with a thick accent who is trying to upsell you.

3.???? Don’t make a purchase decision when tired or overwhelmed.

4.???? Listen to your still, small voice who is saying, “Maybe we should sleep on it.”

5.???? Don’t let someone else’s priorities (a selling incentive, for instance) drive a decision because you want to be nice.

No doubt you have your own list of do’s and don’ts to add to her list. If you do, please contribute them in the comments!

But the real point here is that she chose not beat herself up for falling victim to a scam despite her intuition screaming, “stop!” She chose instead to use the regret as an opportunity to give herself the gift of understanding her motivations and weaknesses better. There was the gift. Self-awareness. Which then leads to the grace you need to arrive at self-acceptance.

Self-acceptance isn’t the prize you win for achieving perfection. Or even for learning how to be your own best friend, “warts and all.” It’s the journey of coming to know who you are, how your desire for emotional connection with others drives your decision-making, how your stern self-talk pushes you into making decisions before you are really ready to, of how coming to grips with the fact that the way others treat you (or manipulate you) isn’t a reflection of your value as a human being.

Self-acceptance is your portal to living a full life, jam-packed with experiences and relationships that are good, while some are, well, regrettable. The fuller your life, the more regrets you’ll have. It’s a numbers game.

When they show up at your life’s doorstep, just say, “Howdy partner. What can I do with you?”