How regret can be your friend

Can’t agree more with Manfred that regrets can become an impetus to finding new constructive solutions and moving forward. Self-awareness, courage, and resilience are some of the critical leadership qualities. Authentic leaders build self-awareness by standing on a place of truth to reflect on their accomplishments — and their regrets — and what they’ve learned from these experiences. Courageous leaders ditch their rosy eyeglasses and look at the not-so-pretty regret things with honesty and integrity — and just like roses, engage in a photosynthesis process to transform life-endangering carbon dioxide into life-giving oxygen. That authenticity, that courage, that honesty in dealing with regrets and applying the learning to build a better future version of oneself is what the R word — Resilience — is all about! So yes. Definitely. As Manfred said: “the insights revealed in our regrets will help us elevate our decisions so that we won’t regret tomorrow how we lived today.”

Being in the Now I don’t have regrets. I am in this moment and not thinking about 10 years ago. It’s about conscience and awareness.

And more generally how can we stay with negative emotions for a while and deal with them rather than try and bury them as they resurface one way or another.

For me, self-compassion is the most effective way to cope with emotions related to regret. I understand that I - in this very moment - did what I thought (for whatever reason) was the best option given all the circumstances. And if I can learn how to increase my confidence into my own decision-making (by optimizing self-awareness); I can reduce feelings of regrets as I shifted my behavior and reflection from ex-post (reactive) to ex-ante (active).