Memories & regrets

Some things are easy to erase; like words in a document, or a piece of paper that you burn. But haunting memories and lingering regrets are much more stubborn.

There are things that happened in the past and no matter how hard you shake your head you can’t undo them and the memory remains. There are regrets; things you knew you could do but didn’t, and things you wish you didn’t do but did. Regret is a stubborn stain, annoying like nails on a chalkboard, infiltrating your memory like a dripping tap.

I wish that no one had to live with regrets, but suspect that we ALL do to some extent. Regrets come in all shapes and sizes. 

As the playwright Arthur Miller said"

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

Times of major change, health crises and near death experiences are some of the times we tend to reflect on life, realise times in the past when we were neglectful of our priorities and commit to living differently. These are the 5 most common regrets-

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

It’s a powerful list. Point 5 is fascinating. I wish I LET myself be happier. 
Happiness is partly a choice to accept what you can’t control and take control of what you can. You can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can always control your response to what happens to you. This sense of power and freedom to choose is the basis for happiness.

It has become a bit of a cliché to say that you should live ONLY in the present. Any mention of the past is looked down on. From one perspective this is true. This is the only moment that exists, the only opportunity you have to make empowering choices. The problem is that our relationship with the past is mostly unconscious. Even if we SAY we are fully in the present, we are often dressed in clothes from the past, likely carrying baggage from the past. We wheel the baggage tagged regret behind us, not knowing why we feel heavy or burdened. Who’s to say what physical and mental disease we suffer because of the baggage we haul around!

Memories and regrets circle around the carousel of our consciousness like unclaimed baggage. If the baggage is not named, addressed and claimed, it can’t be healed and transformed. Sometimes we mistake our baggage for someone else’s and ignore it. Sometimes we wish we could take someone else’s baggage; the luggage is always cooler on the other side of the carousel.

Denying the past in the guise of living in the present is not truly living in the present. It is hiding in the present. Events from the past can’t be undone. What happened, happened. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. A healed memory is a transformed memory, a reframed belief, a mindful thought, a chosen action. You don’t have to forget the past AND you don’t have to be ruled by the past.

It’s worthwhile to spend SOME time thinking about the past. That’s how we learn and understand why things happened the way they happened. How do you know when your regret has become a problem? When you can’t shake it. When it begins to take over your waking and sleeping life. When you feel powerless to make different choices now. This is no way to live, in fact it is barely even being alive at all.

When regret is ruling your life, you know that it’s time to change the story you are telling about past events; change what you are making them mean. It’s with the story that you get to start over like an etch a sketch. It’s the messages that fill your mind that can be transformed. You can start over when you shake out the cobwebs of self loathing and allow yourself a clean slate to build the thoughts, actions and life you want NOW.

Remember that the past helps to make you who you are, but you are MORE than your past. You are here NOW with incredible power to choose a life that you can look back on with great pride and satisfaction.