How to Deal with Regret

BY SOFO ARCHON

This is the transcript of a spontaneous talk.

Regret is often seen as something bad, as something negative, that we are not supposed to experience, and that we should get rid of as quickly as possible once we experience it.

But in my view, regret is not bad. Regret, just like any other emotion, is there for an important reason. It is there to point out something that we need to pay attention to, so that we can improve the way we are living.

If you think about it, regret brings our attention to something that we did in the past that we would prefer not to have done, or something that we did not do in the past that we would like to have done. So regret, in other words, brings our attention to our mistakes. Why? So that we can learn from them and not repeat them in the future. So what is wrong about that?

Nothing really. The problem, however, is that sometimes we tend to ruminate so much about our past mistakes, our past decisions, our past behavior, that we cannot let go and savor the present moment. This usually happens when we create some narratives around our past, around our mistakes, and most importantly, around ourselves. Narratives that involve a lot of self-judgment and self-blame. When we say to ourselves, “Look how bad of a person you are to have done what you did. How evil of a person you are, or how stupid of a person you are.”

This is when regret turns into self-hate, self-loathing. And that kind of regret can be crippling, suffocating.

If you are struggling with such crippling regrets, don’t be harsh with yourself. Whatever you have done in the past was a natural result of the understanding that you had at the moment, and the social circumstances that you were living in. In other words, you acted as best as you could at the moment.

Once you are able to see that you are a flawed, imperfect individual, just like any other person alive… everybody is imperfect, everybody makes mistakes. Mistakes are an inevitable part of life. So if you see your mistakes as an inevitable process of the spiritual and psychological journey of your life, then you will naturally let go of self-hate, self-blame, self-judgment, and you will start to forgive yourself. You will stop being so harsh on yourself, and you will stop being fixated on your past.

And the thing is, you cannot go back to your past and change it. What you can do is understand why you did it and learn from it.

Once you see your mistakes for what they are, and you are able to extract the lessons that are contained in them, you will be able to use them as a stepping stone toward a better, happier life.