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.

Stop living in the past

"The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour" - Dr. Phillip C McGraw

This is one of Dr. Phil's famous sayings that has made him such a iconic figure in selves-Help circles today. It's also really bad advice when used out of context. It seems that it's one of many excuses for people not to try at all, but give up because they've failed in the past at it. We all figure that the best way to move forward is to keep avoiding our past failures and hurts to which our past becomes our yardstick to which we measure our current success or failures. It's a vicious cycle which can easily destroy our happiness or any joy that may comes into our lives. The only cure to this is to learn to let go of our past, forgive ourselves and choose to live in the present.

There are a few benefits to not living in the past and they are:

1. We stop measuring our happiness by our past.
2. We free ourselves from regret.
3. We take more risks.
4. We allow ourselves to be more present.

We stop measuring our happiness by our past

We've all seen it happen, our best friend gets broken up with and suddenly their ex becomes the perfect man or woman. What happens? They ruin every relationship they have after that by comparing their current with their idolised (as in imagined) view of their ex. This might be a extreme example, but we all do it to some degree and the outcome is always the same: dissatisfaction, disillusionment and destruction of our happiness.

The funny thing about memory is that it's subjective, so we only remember what we want to remember and our brains has the amazing power to tweak our memories to fit out expectations of them. So that perfect person we've created in our mind is just a illusion, a mix of what we wanted them to be and who they really were. The reverse is also true when it comes to making a ex the reincarnation of the evil, they may have been a coward, they may have freaked a bit, but their still pretty much human, like you and me.

Ultimately, letting our past have a say in our present only ruins our happiness. So by letting go of the past we allow ourselves to forgive ourselves, move on and find ourselves again. It opens us to the joy and love of today's moments, which is the building blocks of true happiness.

We free ourselves from regret

Regret is a terrible thing to have to live with and like I said before, our memory is subjective, so the thing we regret doing seems worse than it really was. I think regret is pretty useless, it makes us feel worse for something we've done wrong, which messes up our happiness and makes us less incline to risk it again. I deal with regret differently. I take it as it is, figure out how it went wrong, learn from it and then move past it. The only function regret has is to teach us; other than that it's pretty useless. We cannot change what happened and if scientists can be trusted, we'll never be able to go back in time to change it. So let's learn from our mistakes, accept them and move past them, anything else is just a waste of our happiness.

We take more risks

Bad experiences have a crippling effect on our ability to take risk, they make us give up before we succeed and make us act irrationally with fear when having to face them again. Taking risk is how we grow and succeed in life and by fearing past failures repeated, we stop ourselves short of winning in life. Helen Keller once said that the bold gets hit just as much as the careful, which means that failure is part of life, if we take risks or not. Haven't you ever noticed how the one thing you try to avoid happening, you ultimately make happen?

What is the difference between the bold and the careful? The bold expects failure and have prepared themselves for it, while the careful, believing themselves safe, have not. Risks may lead to failure, but they also lead to success. Learning from our past failures makes the chances of us succeeding greater next time around. Letting go of our past mistakes and learning from them, makes risks much easier to do and ultimately allows us take more of them. The matter of when we'll succeed, then just becomes a matter of time.

We allow ourselves to be more present

Living in the moment is the key to all success, because we grasp at the moments that make our lives and the opportunities that present themselves. Living in the past does the exact opposite. We constantly regret moments we forget to grasp and opportunities we missed, which in turn blinds us of those moments and opportunities presented now. Do you see the vicious cycle living in the past creates?

Letting go of our past frees us from this cycle by allowing our attention to focus on the now rather than the could-have-been's. Living more in the moment makes us instantly aware of the things that can help shape our future, the risks needed and the opportunities that come from it. It's like waking up after a bad dream to a wonderful warm spring day, life just seems more promising and it becomes easier to let our past rest in peace.

I won't say I have all the answers yet, because I'm still learning to live in the present too. What I have found is that my life seems like a much happier place, I'm doing what I enjoy, I speak my heart and mind and opportunity is just a risk away. Living in the past only messes up our lives, but living for the moment might just save it.