Your Biggest Regret In Life - Day #19

Blog Challenge - Day 19

 ~Your Biggest Regret In Life~

I regret a lot of things I've done, but the things I regret more are the things I didn't do and the things I didn't say.

I ran across this article  from Psychology Today that summarized research results from hundreds of people on “the biggest regret of their life.” I wasn't all that surprised to see where most people's regrets stemmed from.  The article showed that people’s biggest regrets were in one of the following four categories:

1. Education — In one of two forms: 1) not getting enough education or 2) not applying themselves more in school.
2. Career — Not pursuing the career they really loved. Instead, they chose something more practical or one that paid better.
3. Romance — Marrying the “wrong” person, not putting more effort into their marriage, doing something to hurt their partner, or letting someone special slip away.
4. Parenting — In one of two forms: 1) spending more time with their children or 2) wishing they had waited longer before having their first child.

I read a comment about this article that I found very enlightening.  It said:
"If I know anything, this I know for sure: my list and your list and the person next to you’s list will all have one thing in common. Each of our regret lists will contain someone who we love — whether it’s wishing that we spent more time with them, hadn’t lost touch, took back something hurtful that we said, shared more loving words, etc."

I believe that is true.  So much of our life is about our relationships. The bottom line is, the relationships we make while here are the most important things we will do.  Relationships affect us more than the others combined.  We can always get another job, or get more education, but when it comes to our children or our spouse/partner, sometimes we miss out on things that can't be re-captured or say things we can't take back or miss opportunities (forever) to say those things or do those things we wish we had. And so that is where most of our biggest regrets lie. 

This challenge really got me thinking and so I started to make a big huge long list of my regrets, but as I started to think about all of them, I stopped.... I decided that regrets are a waste of time.  Regrets are like dead flowers.  Most of the things we regret we can't change and so it serves no purpose and keep us stuck in the past.

 

There is really nothing to be gained from regrets other than the lessons we can learn from them.  I have also learned that when we get caught up in them, we start to beat ourselves up  thinking we should have done better.  But we did the best we could at the time with the information we had.  We need to let it go and have compassion for ourselves at that stage in life.  We can't rent a time travel machine and go back and un-do them, so why keep revisiting them when nothing can be done about it anyway? We are all human and make mistakes and do stupid things, but dwelling on them is pointless.  That is why we are here, to make mistakes, so we can learn from them.  That is how we learn best.  Yes, we are human and full of flaws, but we are also full of wonderful things as well.

 

This is where the atonement comes in.  We have been given this priceless gift of the atonement because Heavenly Father knew we would mess up and make mistakes.  That was the plan.  And if we take advantage of this amazing gift, all will be made right.

All we have is now.  The present moment.  And hopefully the future if we are lucky enough to have more days in store for us.

Now is the only moment we have that we can change.  The past can't be undone, but we can forgive ourselves for being human and move on.  

The future is still ours to do with it as we wish.
  

I found a great little article about how to live without regrets.  Check it out HERE.