More reflection, less regret

"Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting." - Arthur Brisbane

Thinking of things in hindsight is actually pretty useful, because it allows us to learn lessons we missed while the event was happening to us. This is however harder to do when regret is involved. Regret is small amounts isn't bad and might help us mend broken relationships, but sometimes we tend to regret things we have no power to change or fix. We constantly rebuke ourself about how stupid it was and how badly it makes us feel, almost like to linger on it would make it better. The thing we sometimes forget to do is to actually learn from our mistake rather than berate ourselves about it.

The easiest way to let go of past regrets is to reflect on them, not from a regretful perspective, but with a shrewd detached eye to see what can be learn from them. This kind of reflection allows us to learn how we made the mistake in the first place, what we learned from it and ultimately how not to make the same mistake again.

How to reflect rather than regret

I've learned in my own experience that to replace chronic regret with something useful like reflection is much harder than it sounds. So in that vain I decided to list my tips on how I get my mind out of regret and on to reflection:

1. Write it down.
2. Remind yourself to reflect.
3. Just move on.

1. Write it down.

When it seems to make allot of sense to have those regrets in your head try writing them down. I found that when I write down my the things I regret about, it tends to be allot less of a issue that it was in my head and sometimes that's enough to make me realise that I should rather just take what I can from the experience and just let it go. Writing also seems to help me order my thoughts better and makes it easier to make sense of some things.

2. Remind yourself to reflect.

Regret has a way of sneaking up on us, so when you find that regret is creeping into your head, the best way to make it go away is normally just to remind yourself that there is probably something to be learned from it. Sometimes just looking for the lesson in it, tends to turn your regret in to something more useful. I have found that even in the worst and hardest experiences in my life that I learned allot from them, even giving me skills I would never have learned in any other way. I could go on regretting those hardships in my life, but then again, it was those same hardships that made me the person I am now. In that way I'm grateful for it and I'm grateful for what I learned because of it. Remember, even with the worst things in life that there is something your learning from it, maybe even without you knowing about it.

3. Just move on.

This is probably the hardest tip to follow and I tend to make this mistake allot. Even with reflection on something that happened to you there will be times it will just be hard to let go of it. I had moment in my life where I wish I said or did things, which now I will never get the chance to do. When I reach this point, I tend to try doing the above two tips again and again, but ultimately, I just needed to move on. The thing about regret is that it's a very attractive and safe thing to do while moving on is allot harder because it requires courage. I find this courage by telling myself that no matter what, I can't changed what happened and probably will never be able to. The best thing for me would be to just move on, allow the ghost of my past to rest and bury themselves while I get freed from them. This tends to work when you truly try doing something to make it seem like you already moved past it. It sounds weird, but sometimes we need to pretend until it becomes real.

I leave you with the words that regret is a powerful thing and can cause us to be stuck in the past, but reflection can turn those moment of regret in to moment of character building. We don't need to regret things that make us stronger and better people. You are the person now, because of what happened to you and that even though you regret them it still made you the great person you've become.