I am far from being a perfect person. I’ve made mistakes; mistakes that hurt myself and others. I’ve said plenty of unkind things. I have stumbled, blundered, tripped, and fallen. I have failed to meet my high expectations and let myself down. Regretting things you can not fix, always bothers you. You need to head forward in life with a positive change.
I’m not proud of my mistakes, but I don’t regret any of it.
Those events are in the past, and there’s no point in wishing them away and turning these situations into regrets.
Regret is utterly deconstructive because it makes us focus on the past, which in the present is just a thought. Thinking about the past and how we could have acted differently isn’t going to help us in the future. Like a disease, regret takes us hostages to uncontrollable circumstances: our memories of the past.
I used to regret plenty of things. I would lay in bed at night, thinking of what I have done wrong and how I could have done better. These thoughts ate away my internal peace and caused me to resent my past self. I hated the Avery who hurt herself and others, and, by extension, I didn’t fully love myself in the present.
Bad Things take place always
The thing about our past selves is that they cannot change their behaviour. Our past selves are only figments of our imagination. They don’t exist in the here and now. Getting angry at the previous version of Avery doesn’t make me a better person today, it just puts me at odds with the person I currently am.
Why do we sometimes make such harmful mistakes in the first place? Why do we hurt others with our actions? Aren’t humans inherently good?
Yes. People are good, but that doesn’t mean we are known to react well to all situations. We must learn through experience to channel our inner goodness into positive action – and this cannot be done without making some mistakes along the way. I can’t go back in time and fix my mistakes, but I can use them to my advantage now.
Replacing Regrets with Positive Change
Before a few months ago, I decided I would convert my feelings of regret into a positive change. I took my previous failures and sought out to ensure that I don’t make the same mistakes again.
I can not change my past, but I can change myself and my actions in the here and now.
All of us, from all walks of life, are in the process of learning how to be kind and loving to ourselves and the world. This is a lifelong process that takes trial and error, and we should embrace the fact that we are bound to make mistakes in order to learn from them so we can evolve.
Mistakes are the proof that you are trying.
Next time you find yourself in the depths of regrets, reminiscing over mistakes you’ve made in the past, remember: you are still here. You are still alive, you are not the same person you were ten years ago, ten days ago, ten minutes ago!
You have the power to determine your own course of action tomorrow, and don’t have to punish yourself for yesterday. And trying your best to be a good person and do what’s right, but sometimes it’s hard at the moment to tell right from wrong, and that’s okay.
The beauty of failure is that it’s not permanent; there’s always a future to make it up. We can all be a little better tomorrow, but only because we know how to, thanks to our mistakes yesterday. The future is wide open for us to make it all up if we can stop living in the shadow of our past.
When past is calling
Remember, you wouldn’t be the person you are today if you had never failed to meet your own expectations. You wouldn’t have the knowledge, capacity for kindness, or love you have now without having learned to achieve it. Do not regret the past you, because he or she helped you get to where you are today – a place that you can only make better tomorrow.
My mistakes, while they hurt me in the past, have made me able to achieve greater heights in the present –and for that, I do not regret any of them.
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