How to Use Regret Instead of Wallowing in It
Looking backwards doesn’t have to feel like standing still.
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Regret, my colleague Julie Beck wrote in 2016, is “the emotional price we pay for free will.” If we were just pawns tossed around on the chessboard of life, she explains, there’d be nothing to regret. Most of us would probably take that trade-off: Better to make mistakes than to have no control at all. But even so, none of us enjoys the experience of regret.
Looking backwards can be an act of desperate refusal to accept the passage of time: What if? If only. I should’ve. I could’ve. But maybe there’s a way to make regret less about the past—by giving in to those feelings of sadness or disappointment or guilt, just for a little while, we might learn something new about ourselves right now, in the present.
On Regret
The Problem With ‘No Regrets’
By Arthur C. Brooks
If you never pine for a different past, you’ll stay trapped in a cycle of mistakes. (From 2022)
Dear Therapist’s Guide to Dealing With Regret
By Rebecca J. Rosen
Moving forward doesn’t mean leaving the past behind—it means figuring out how to make sense of it in the present. (From 2021)
Regret Is the Price of Free Will
By Julie Beck
Feeling in control of your life is good for you, but it can also lead to heartbreak over mistakes and lost opportunities. (From 2016)
Still Curious?
- “The only two choices I’ve ever made”: Honor Jones on the radical romance of motherhood, and how it changed the way she sees every other relationship. (From 2022)
- The two choices that keep a midlife crisis at bay: Middle age is an opportunity to find transcendence, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2022.
Other Diversions
