Can You Say, You Have No Regrets?!

What does regret mean to you? 

Do you have a lot of regrets? 

Do you wish that you would’ve, should’ve, could’ve done things differently? 

What if you changed how you thought about regrets? 

Do you think that would change how you feel about regrets, about your past? 

NO REGRETS! 

(If you have this tattoo, you probably have at least one! Lol) 

Looking at Regrets Differently (A Personal Story)

When I was younger (early 20’s) I remember often saying, I have no regrets. My long time friends remind me of this younger very brazen me and how I would tell them that I just always try to learn from my experiences and do better. Seeing what I had been through as lessons that I appreciated, learned from and therefore did not regret. 

But as I got older, I had more experiences and more importantly more consequences of those experiences and choices I made in my life. I started to realize I had REGRETS. And lots of them!

…Because I kept doing the same stuff and often getting the same results AKA consequences. 

I guess you could say it was a “fool me once, twice” kind of thing. 

We Can’t Change the Past…But We Can Learn From It

Jumping to the present time, 10+ years later, (I know/hope I have many more years to go this could change), I recently started to feel that I am back to that NO REGRET mentality. 

I think this is because I’m actually paying attention to and learning from my experiences and choices.

Therefore, making different choices based on these resulting more often than not in positive outcomes. 

So my point of talking about myself AGAIN lol is basically to say that all we can do with our past is to be open to looking at ourselves and our actions, learning from our experiences/choices and hopefully continuing to improve the outcome. 

Where Do Regrets Live? 

So if we see our experiences as something that we don’t regret, because “I learned this…” or “it taught me this…” or “I realized this…,” the list goes on, REGRET HAS NOWHERE TO LIVE.  

How Do You Tell Your Story?

We typically tell others our experiences with mostly facts of the situation. In other words, the details of what happened, if you will. 

Now, if you were sitting with me telling me your story, I’d ask about how you experienced “the story,” opposed to the facts or other’s experiences/outcomes of it. 

I’d ask questions like…

• What effect did that have on you? 
• Did that change how you took your next step? 
• How would you do things differently (if you would), now that you know what you know about everything and it’s outcome AND now that you are the present you? 

Sooo my challenge to you is to start thinking about all of your stories from your perspective. 

Dive deeper into how the situation, people, places, etc. affected you and what you learned from them. 

Look at how you are going to take that knowledge and bring it positively into your future. And once you found that lesson from your story, you’ve done it.

You’ve turned a regret into a learning experience, which is extremely valuable to your personal growth. (Therefore, should no longer be something that you regret!)

If this all sounds great to you, but you’re looking for a little help along the way, please feel free to reach out to me. 

My Hit Your Goals Life Coaching Program can help get you to where you want to be.

Victoria