The mistakes of our past can obscure our present and future. How we can learn to let go of them.
“If only I hadn’t…”, “What would have happened if I…?”, “How would my life have turned out?” – Thoughts and questions like these are familiar to most of us. They all revolve around the same thing: a (perceived) mistake we made, something we regret, a situation that didn’t go the way we would have liked and that haunts us. Some for life.
Regret can hurt us, it can trap us in unhealthy mind-carousels where we go through the same situation over and over again, it can rob us of hope for a bright future by obscuring our past, it can turn fears into wake us up that at some point we will no longer be able to control.
But regret can also be a motivator, it can make us think through our decisions carefully, it can help us to be more mindful of ourselves and our surroundings, and it can inspire gratitude. In short, regret is what we make of it, but sometimes we fail to free ourselves from the negative thought spirals that often accompany regret. We’ve collected a few tips to make it easier for you.
why do we repent
Nobody is flawless, people have rough edges and each of us has probably made a decision, made a statement or done something at least once in our life that we later regret. Sometimes the consequences of such “mistakes” are only temporary, they teach us some wisdom for the future and we can get on with our lives quickly and unscathed.
But some decisions, statements, actions have profound consequences that we may not have been aware of at the moment. And it is precisely such things that can haunt us for a lifetime. As a study found that people who experience great regret tend to be depressed and hopeless, with suicidal tendencies at worst. Such people often brood over their past, having the same grueling thoughts over and over again.
We mostly regret the things that have betrayed our ideals, like one study could find out when we couldn’t achieve our own goals or didn’t behave according to the standards we set ourselves. In a study summarized the most common reasons for regret:
- Decisions that broke with one’s own “rules of life”, i.e. contrary to our morals and values
- Decisions related to the relationship with our fellow human beings
- Decisions that (perhaps only afterwards) were not justified
How we can learn to get over our mistakes
As already described, regret can be an important support for our psyche in a healthy amount – ultimately it is also impossible to banish it completely from our lives, since it is an integral part and we can only develop further in the areas in which we make mistakes make.
But since remorse also has dangers if we give ourselves completely to it, it can help to be aware of some techniques to assist in letting go of one’s mistakes.
Get into the feeling
At first glance, this may sound contradictory: Shouldn’t it be more about putting your own mistakes behind you? While it may not seem intuitive, surrendering fully to the emotion can be tremendously helpful in overcoming regret. Because we tend to view feelings that we classify as “negative” as something bad and then tend to push these emotions away from us.
But that only makes the feeling worse and more present. Instead, acknowledging the emotion and working to learn to accept it can help. Feeling remorse for making mistakes – that’s not something that makes you idiotic, just human.
Try to draw something positive from the experience
This isn’t about compulsively extracting the good from everything negative in life, but as discussed earlier, mistakes and regret can also be guides for us and teach us valuable lessons. For example, the emotions sometimes lead us to apologize to the people we have hurt with our behavior – and perhaps to have the clarifying conversation with them that was long overdue.
Practice self-love
Building on the first tip, looking kindly at ourselves can help overcome regrets, as well as different ones studies found. It is not for nothing that the saying goes: “Before others can forgive you, you must first forgive yourself.”
In this context, too, try to answer the question “What if…?” to avoid. It may be seductive, but life – our limited time on this planet and with our fellow human beings – does not take place in our heads, not in our past or the fantasies we want to be reality, but in the here and now.
Sources used: psychcentral.com, psycnet.apa.org, frontiersin.org