Any large life success will have made mistakes and experienced failures.  Regret can be inevitable. What doesn’t have to happen is you holding on to it forever. Ruing your decisions; spending energy reliving the past is the surest way to waste your current fuel – your time and energy – on the past and sabotage moving forward. Learning to release regret is important.

The idea that we can avoid regret is not functional or realistic.  It’s simply human nature that AFTER everything is done and we know now how things will work out… that we’ll have feeling about the past or wish we’d have chosen otherwise.  A continuously circulating meme on social media says, “Our life’s largest regrets will be the things we didn’t do.”

It’s a ridiculous meme: no matter WHAT you do… by definition you’re choosing something ELSE that you didn’t do.  Of COURSE, the things we regret are things we didn’t do:  EVERY decision means, by definition, that there is something we’re choosing not to do.  And in the light of failure, it’s natural to regret not having chosen otherwise.  It ends up being what we didn’t do that sticks out most.

You definitely can work to make better decisions.  But as long as you are taking action – a necessary prerequisite for success – there is no way to avoid regret. 

Which leaves the process of releasing regret as our best bet to clear ourselves and redouble our forward momentum.

Releasing regret is a process, one that is different for every person and every situation. However, a powerful step towards the success you want is working to release regret.  By giving various forms of releasing regret a try you not only learn more about yourself in the process… you free your energy to continue stepping forward to the success you’ve been called to.  Here are 6 surefire ways to release regret:

1. Practice Daily Gratitude

Practicing daily gratitude is a great way to consistently remind yourself of all that you have. Family, friends, a home, food to eat, maybe even a cute puppy to come home to. Whatever your gratitude is toward, reminding yourself of it is a great way to reflect on the good in your life and make the regrets seem less important in the grand scheme of life.

2. Trust the Journey

Reminding yourself that even the adverse events in life are part of a bigger journey allows you to look at the larger picture. Yes, you regret this one mistake. But, did that one mistake lead you down a different path that had good outcomes? While not everything happens for a reason, good can come out of what happened. Trust that in time you will see how your journey allowed and maybe even created a larger success.

3. Learn to Release Emotions

Emotions in the grand scheme of life (once again; are you seeing the bigger picture yet?) are fleeting. Learning to release your feelings when they are not serving you will aid you now and in the future. Acknowledge them, don’t avoid or try to block them. Channel them productively, into journaling, a talk with a trusted friend or counselor, through art or music. Give yourself time and self love. Schedule time to grieve and remind yourself, outside of that time, that you’ve chosen to focus on life but that you will schedule and give yourself time when you’re not required to be on the ball, to grieve. Then… stop beating yourself up for something that happened in the past and choose to move on with dignity, grace, a clear mind and focus.

4. Stop Evaluating Past Decisions Based on Future Knowledge

You’re playing a mind game with yourself if you evaluate your past decisions with future knowledge.  AFTER you discover new information, after new circumstances become involved in an outcome, after you discover the result of a choice is NOT the time to regret that you made the best decision you could at time, with limited information and without the foresight of how new circumstances and the results of your actions would turn out.  NONE of us can foretell the future.  ALL of us are doing the best we can.  Stop pretending that you could have made a perfect decision that would have resulted in a perfect out come if you perfectly knew everything that was going to happen.  It’s *possible* that regret might offer a lesson—if so, the BEST way to learn that less in not by pretending that you could have made perfect choices.  Continue living and implement what you learned into your future life.

5. “Should have-ing” the Past Doesn’t Change the Future

Living in the land of “I should have…” is tempting. However, “should haves” literally mean nothing in the practice of daily life. You can spend hours or even days guessing at a different outcome, but it doesn’t matter. Those should-haves will never directly impact your future other than to steal from your current peace of mind that you did the best you could at the time, with the information you knew. Stop reliving the past and move on.

6. Watch Your Self-Talk

Self-talk, for those who don’t know, are the messages we give ourselves in our mind.  We all do this and we all do this nearly 24/7.  Think about the times you’ve made a mistake and thought to yourself, “Dammit… what’s wrong with me?” or “Why do I always do this!?”  Many of us have repeated such messages so many times that they’ve become nearly automatic AND incredibly subtle: so often repeated we don’t even realize we’re thinking them.

Changing your self-talk can be MASSIVELY empowering.  The key is to begin listening to the messages you give yourself inside your head.  Notice your thoughts and notice both what they say and the tone.  Journaling – simply keeping a notebook on you and jotting down what you caught yourself saying – can be a very effective technique to quickly hone in on your inner self-talk. 

Once you’ve begun noticing what you’re saying, then you can begin working with your language, either choosing a new, more empowering statement to yourself – something like, “There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with me, I’m doing the best I can,” – or choosing a positive reversal of whatever the negative self-talk was:  “The only way I can succeed is by taking action; taking action means that sometimes I’ll fail. Failure is evidence I’m growing towards success… not that I’m a failure.”

Keep listening to the messages you give yourself and keep shifting them and you will notice, not only greater willingness to take action, but far better feelings about yourself and life.

If you are living your life being swallowed alive by your regret, start exploring ways to release it and move on. You deserve a life that is fulfilled and happy, not a life that leaves you stuck in the past and wallowing in disappointment.   Return to this article and practice these 6 surefire ways to release regret and notice the improvement it makes in your mind AND your life!

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