Turning Regrets Into Opportunities

Do you have regrets?

I do.

Most of them are from my late teens and early twenties, and most of them concern relationships. I was a late bloomer in several aspects, especially emotionally. Unfortunately the self-absorption and emotional immaturity of my early adulthood led me to mishandle most of my relationships - with family, friends and boyfriends.

I definitely regret these mishaps because they have led people to feel hurt.

At 40, I still make mistakes but now I can usually recognize them earlier and therefore self-correct pretty quickly.

But what to do with missed opportunities and old mistakes?

We can turn our regrets into development opportunities.

Step 1:

The first step is to identify what we regret, take responsibility, accept that we have missed some opportunities or made mistakes, and seek understanding of what went wrong. Understanding helps a lot to accept regrets and mistakes and it can serve as a foundation to the difficult process of forgiving our self. It's a really crucial part of learning from mistakes, both small and big.

Step 2:

Because it’s never too late to start doing things in a more mature way, we need to identify what must be learned and develop a strategy to make progress. It might be useful to seek the support of a professional or of a group, or it can be a self-directed project. A daily practice is required to sustain and nourish the new actions we want to take.

Step 3:

Depending on what happened in the past and whether our regrets are about mistakes we made, we might want to apologize to the people we have hurt. Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not; this must be decided based on what's best for the other person, not for our own self. When it's best to not re-involve the person or the old feelings, we can write a letter that we don't send, or more meaningfully, we can commit to doing things differently with the people who are in our life today.

Every regret, missed opportunity or mistake is a rich source of learning and growth if we are up to the challenge. We grow more from mistakes than from success. Rather than brewing in old stories and feelings, we can pause, reflect, make an intention, and start taking new actions, based on a deeper understanding of ourselves, others and life itself.