A life without regrets

Day 140 / 365

Living life to the fullest is to live one with no regrets. To not care about the past, not blame yourself for your decisions, to have no remorse. That’s what people would have you believe right? Well, I think that’s total BS.

Regret is probably the most common negative emotion we feel. We start feeling it when we are little, and we feel it right until our last breath. What is regret? Regret is feeling bad about how things turned out. But there’s a catch here. You don’t regret over bad luck. If you didn’t win the lottery, you will feel bad about it, but you won’t regret not winning it. Cause it was out of your control. More often than not you would regret about something where you know you didn’t give your best. When you know you could’ve done better, but you didn’t. That bad feeling is regret.

But if you think about it, is it really that bad? I think it’s quite the opposite. Regret is proof that your life is in your control, and if you want, you can change things for the best.

If you regret not studying well for a test, that’s an opportunity for you to study well and do better next time.

If you regret getting angry at your loved ones and saying harsh words to them, that will serve you as a reminder to think before you speak next time.

You don’t need to run away from bad feelings. Life is just as much sadness as it is happiness. If you keep yourself in denial, keep burying negative feelings, what good could that possibly do for you?

Every time you feel regret, it’s an opportunity for you to do better next time. Every time you feel sad, it gives you a chance to self reflect and learn something new about yourself. People learn way more from hard times than they do from happy ones. So embrace all of your feelings, and remind yourself that it’s ok to feel bad, it's ok to regret about the past every once in a while. Just as long as you can learn something from it and move on.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Anhedonia — losing the ability to experience pleasure in anything