Using Your Biggest Regrets To Change Your Life

We’ve all been there. You messed up royally, hurt someone’s feelings, or missed a big opportunity that could have made a significant difference in your life. You made a mistake. And now, you are living with regret for your past errors.

While some may choose to use their regrets to as an excuse to stop trying or give up on pursuing a dream, it is possible to use your biggest regrets to transform your life for the better. How you feel about your past mistakes or missed opportunities depends entirely on how you view these adverse outcomes.

Regret is a combination of guilt, self-loathing, and fear that can combine to halt your progress and leave you feeling unhappy and undeserving. But, harboring these negative feelings about your past is just creating even more problems and bad emotions, so it’s time to let go and use those regrets to transform your life.

Viewing Mistakes as Positive

These words from author Rita Mae Brown provide guidance on how to handle regrets. “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” We actually have a lot to learn from our past experiences, especially the ones resulting from poor judgment.

Mistakes are how we learn and grow as humans. But, you have to learn to change your mindset about mistakes to move past regrets in life. Here are a few strategies for learning to do just that.

Remember That We are All Imperfect

Every single person on this planet makes mistakes. We are humans, and we are fallible. You will continue to make mistakes as you get older, so it’s time to let go of the fallacy that somehow, you can just learn everything you need to know and stop messing up in life.

Regrets mean you care about something or someone, which is a great thing. It’s the light in the darkness. Accept that you are a human and you make mistakes but also that you are nonetheless caring and compassionate, which is what is important.

Stop the Negative Self-Talk

Engaging in negative self-talk is one way we keep perpetuating our regret. We tell ourselves all sorts of bad things based on our regrets. When you hear yourself doing this, stop it in action. Pay attention to how you talk to and about yourself, and when you notice the negative feelings surfacing, halt them in their tracks.

Challenge yourself to turn that negative self-talk into positive statements about yourself and what you have learned from your past transgressions.

Pay attention to what triggers the negative self-talk, as well. Give yourself positive affirmations you can repeat when you know you’ll be in situations that tend to trigger your negative inner monologue and be proactive about staying away from situations where you know it will be difficult to stop this self-hating talk. Your thoughts and words have enormous power to shape how you feel and what you think, both about yourself and the world. Change your thoughts, and you can change how you see yourself.

Be Grateful

By focusing on all the things for which you are grateful, you learn to embrace the positive aspects of your life. Start a gratitude journal, and write down several things each day that you appreciate or find important in life. Focus your energy on the positive aspects of your life, and you’ll soon notice your regrets feel less important.

Use your gratitude exercises to learn to appreciate your strengths and best qualities and focus on your contributions and what makes you unique. By shifting the focus, again, to what is positive, you’ll have less room in your heart and mind for those regrets and negative thoughts.

Forgive Yourself

Sometimes, we can’t make up for our past mistakes. It’s time to forgive yourself so that you can move on. Offer a genuine apology to yourself and others whom you wronged, admit your mistake, and forgive yourself for the past.

We are all imperfect, we all have made mistakes in the past, and no one expects you to be infallible. You have learned from your experiences, you are working to make better decisions, and that is all you can do. Forgive, and move on.

Final Thoughts

If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t living. Mistakes happen when you are changing, growing, and learning. Let go of those regrets and turn your mistakes into a new chance for a better future.