Ep 165: The Role of Regret and How It Can Empower Your Future

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello , friends . I hope you had an amazing week . Welcome to February .

Today is February 4th , the day that this episode will air , and we're early in the year and I know a lot of what we've been talking about is preparing ourselves for the year to come .

But we are early in the year and I think for a lot of my clients , there's a lot going on and a lot of times when we're looking forward at what we want to do and where we want to go .

Sometimes those goals come from a place of excitement and pure next leveling , but many times they have to do with changing or fixing something from our past , and so I thought it would be valuable to talk about regret , maybe through a different lens , because I know for me , I spend a ton of time coaching people on you know , yes , let's , you know , sort of

take the lessons from what we learned and let's focus our energy forward . So coaching is about it's really not about walking down memory lane . That tends to be what more therapy is about like examining and exploring your past . As a coach , we really focus on moving forward .

But I want to talk about how can regret be good Meaning if it's , if it's something that you're feeling right now about any part of your life . How can you turn that into something valuable , something that can really enhance your life moving forward ?

And to start the episode , I wanted to share a quote from James Joyce , who was an Irish author and poet , and this quote says mistakes are the portals of discovery , and I think that really is where regret comes from . Usually is that it comes from , you know , we had a choice . You know , for regret to happen , there's an either or .

We were standing at a fork in the road and we made a choice and the thing that we chose didn't have the outcome we were hoping for , and so we feel like we got it wrong . And then we start . You know , I wish I would have done this , I should have done that , I could have done this , and then all of these feelings of regret come up for us .

And the truth is , life is just one continuous stream of choice . You know , we are always making choices every day . Little choices like what do we wear for the day , how do we put ourselves together to how do we spend our time , to what kinds of things do we eat . Everything is a choice .

And then we have big choices that we make in our life like where to work , what business to start if we're an entrepreneur , what partner to choose , do we have children or not ? Like who do we spend our time with in terms of a friend group . Those sorts of things have bigger , more sweeping changes on our life .

But the whole thing is a series of choices and the truth of the matter is we are going to get some of those choices right in terms of they might lead to the outcome we're hoping for , or something similar or maybe even better . But many times the choices we make are more unfortunate .

You know , things just don't turn out always the way that we wish they would .

You know , life is a series of good and bad , highs and lows , things we want and things we don't want , and the choices that we make have consequences , and we all know this , but the reason I wanted to talk about this today is that I don't think that it's healthy to not ever look back . I think regret is something we need to pay attention to .

It's trying to tell us something you know about the outcome , and that means that there's something to take from it from that choice you made and even from the set of circumstances you were dealing with .

And there are things that you could take from that choice and the outcome that could lead you making more powerful in the future , could lead you to a much better place , and so I think , in that way , regret is actually a good thing . You know it can be . It just depends on how you frame it .

Regret can also be the place where you get stuck and you spend .

There are people who , in certain areas of their life , get stuck in regret , and I don't want that to happen to you , and that's why , at the start of this shiny new year , I wanted to talk about this topic , because I think it's really important to look at your life and to say what are the things that I feel good about and what are the things that I

don't , and where might I be stuck in regret . You know , we know those people who get divorced and 25 years later , they're still talking about that situation . And listen , I've been divorced . I get it and it wasn't necessarily a good thing , a pretty thing .

It was something I initiated , but after a long , painful introspection and anyone who knew me at the time will tell you I tortured myself . But I decided when I did that that I would not be the person who , five years , 10 years , 20 years , 30 years , is talking about my ex spouse in a bad way , or even thinking about him in a bad way .

I married him for a reason and I've learned to not regret that , even though it didn't last forever , lasted nine years , many of those years weren't great for either one of us and I choose , instead of focusing on that , I choose to focus on who I became because of it and what I learned .

And honestly now and if you had told me this back then when I was deciding to leave , if you had told me , hey , you know , because it's been 20 years , it's been a long time since I've been divorced and if you had told me then that I would look back on that time , not focusing on all the reasons why I left the marriage , but on some of the good times

because there were good times I would have said you're crazy , that's never going to happen . But it did happen because I worked on it and I made a choice .

So that doesn't mean , though , that just because I don't have those lingering feelings of bitterness or anger or blame or all the things that we go through when a decision that we've made doesn't turn out well , it's kind of natural human instinct to devolve into it's their fault , or it's my fault , or they're good and I'm bad , or I'm good and they're bad .

Like that's just , I think , a cycle that we go through , but the key is to figure out how to move beyond that and into an era where it's like well , why did this go the way it went , and why did I have the outcome I had , and what can I learn from that ? And I think , when you reframe it in that way , there's really no reason to be angry about it .

It's just a lesson granted , a lesson that probably came after a fairly significant undesirable impact in your life .

Like that was not a great time for me , but I don't regret it because on this side of it , I'm still harvesting the lessons from it , cause I do feel like when you have something that didn't have the outcome you wanted , especially if it's something big , I do think that you can look back at different points in your journey , especially as you get further from

it and you have more clarity , there's less emotional attachment to it , and you can look at it from a higher level , a bigger picture , and really harvest the lessons .

And I am still I don't think about it honestly very often now , but sometimes I do , and I have myself go back there on purpose , not because my thoughts are drifting back there or because I live there .

I don't and I don't really ever think about my ex-spouse , but when I do and I really decide to take a look at it , I think about it in a way filled with compassion For him and I and I try to really think about my role in it and in his role as clearly as I can , so that I can take those lessons from it and do something with it in the future that

is useful for me . So that's how I think it can . Be good is that regret helps us understand ourselves in a deeper way . It's one of the ways we learn more about ourselves and what we really want right . Because if it's something that we feel regret for , there's something in that situation that isn't aligned with what you want or wanted for yourself .

You would have wished it turned out differently . I wish the marriage had turned out differently . If you'd asked me back then I would have said I wish I hadn't married him , but I don't even wish that anymore . Well , I wish I wasn't divorced , because that's not really aligned with who I am . I'm not making a judgment about it .

If you're a divorce , I'm trying to say anything . It's just not what I would have wanted for myself . But I will say I don't regret it because I think , especially now as I harvest even more lessons , the things that I learned from that about myself and some of the things that I needed to work on , which were deeper lessons for me , I would not have .

I don't know how else I could have learned it . Honestly , maybe , maybe something else would have happened that would have delivered that lesson to me , but there were really valuable things coming out of that marriage and divorce that I needed to know to make the rest of my life better . That's how I feel about it now .

So I don't have any regret and when I think about him . I wish him nothing but good and I hope he's very happy and I hope his life has turned out the way he wanted

to .

So that's where that outcome led to me , and there was a ton of exploratory I had to do to clean up my thoughts around the situation and both of our roles in the situation and what I wanted to feel about it , because it really is a choice , and I've decided that that was necessary for me to learn the things I needed to learn about myself , for it to reveal

things to me about who I was being at that time in my life and how I needed and wanted really that if I wanted a different outcome , I needed to be a different person , right ? A person who well , that's a whole other episode . I won't go down into it , but I will say it was very valuable to me . So that is what I want to say to you .

If there's anything happening right now , whether it's from last year , last week , 10 years ago , 20 years ago , if there's anything you regret , my bet is there probably is they could be big things or small things or both I want to tell you that that is a very valuable psychological tool that , if you look at it in a very purposeful and intentional way , it's

going to tell you more about yourself . It's a clue that maybe you want to do things differently next time .

It can help you know more about yourself if you go deep enough and the things that you want to change about yourself , so that next time you make a different decision maybe a decision that is going to better serve you and lead you to an outcome that you want .

So , in order to do that , I want to offer you up four things to think about if you feel like you're stuck in regret . So , as we go through this , I want you to think about anything in your life . It can be from your career , you know . Maybe a choice you made to take a different job or a certain job . Maybe it's about where you live .

Maybe it's about your partner . Maybe it's about a friendship . Maybe it's about money . Maybe it's about a business you want to start and you haven't . Maybe it's about a decision to have children or not . It could be about anything .

I want you to have one specific thing in your mind , because that'll be really helpful as I walk through these four things for you to keep in mind . So I hope you have the thing in your mind . Number one you have to get to a place where you're accepting that it happened .

And when I say accepting , what I mean is you got to try to get to a place of neutrality on it . You have to be able to look at it more clinically . If you're looking at it through the lens of blame , victimhood , anger , you're probably too emotionally charged to see things clearly .

And if you don't see things clearly , you're not going to be able to take all of the valuable insights from it . And that is why , like I was saying , I continue sometimes to purposefully take myself back to that , and not just that , that situation , but others in my life . I try to do it on purpose .

Sometimes , if I'm going through a period where I'm just trying to grow , I like to look at big moments in my life that were either good or bad and go deep on those . That's kind of what the benefit of time will get you .

Is it generally , if you've made a decision to not stay living in that place of blame , anger and victimhood around a regretful outcome in your life ? You can see things more clearly with time . But even if it just happened and while you might be still working through your emotions .

I think you can carve out little pockets of distance where you're carving out space between you and that , almost like distancing yourself from it , almost like you're observing it happening to someone else .

It can be hard to do , but it's a really valuable thing if you can do it and I'm not saying pretend or anything , because I think it's really important to work through your emotional cycle on it . It's fine to feel anger for a while .

It's fine to feel in victimhood for a while , like unfortunate things happen right and we're human beings , so we're going to feel what we feel .

But what I'm saying is that whether it's for a brief moment call it 15 minutes while you're trying to see if there's any lesson there , or whether it's something that happened a while ago , you can just decide to accept that something unfortunate happened . You didn't want it . When you made the choice , you were not hoping for that outcome .

You may have wished with your whole being that it was different , but if the outcome is here , you have to accept that it happened and that acceptance , that surrender to the outcome , is really important . That's where a lot of people get stuck is that they don't accept it . They're so angry .

And when you're in anger and victimhood and blame , you are too energized around it to be accepting of it and it's hard . It is really hard to have an outcome that you don't want , especially if it's a bigger impact thing in your life .

It's hard to accept it because acceptance and surrender to it feels like I think it's sort of along the same vein of forgiveness . It feels like we're saying it's okay and I'm not saying that , but it happened and it turned out the way it turned out .

So it is what it is and there's a lot of value in just surrendering to it and saying it may not have been what I wanted , it may not have been what I hoped for , but this is what happened .

And here I am , and when you get there , that's the beginning of all the good that can come from that situation and that's what the other three things I'm going to lead you through do . So acceptance and I would say like if it's a recent thing the last thing I'll say on this is acceptance is a choice and at some point you're going to have to choose it .

If you want to move past it , if you don't want to stay stuck or anchored or tethered to that bad thing . You have to set it free in your life and in order to do that , you have to decide to let it go , to accept it , to see it for what it is , without emotion , without anger and blame and victimhood .

And he did this and I didn't do that , or whatever . Whatever it is , you just have to say it is what it is . I made this choice , I wanted it to be this . It is not this , it is that , and that is where we are and when you can get there . That's the beginning of all the good that you can get from feeling the regret , right .

So , number one , except that it happened , this unfortunate outcome that you didn't want . Number two you need to manage your thoughts around it .

So when you think about that thing , when you're looking at that thing , when it comes up for you , when you decide to explore it , you need to manage your thoughts around it , meaning , don't devolve back into blame or victimhood . Right , just know that not every decision you make is going to turn out the way you want .

It doesn't matter how much you obsess about it . It doesn't matter how much you work at it . It doesn't matter how much you analyze it up front . Usually , other people are involved in our decisions and we don't control what they do . So we cannot make everything okay .

All we can do is the best work we're equipped to do at the time , and there's a lot of lessons to learn from it , which we'll talk about next . But first , in order to get the good from it , from the bad outcome , you have to clean up your thoughts around it . So acceptance is part of that .

But I think it helps to philosophically just be able to say listen , this is not what I wanted , but it's okay . It's kind of tied to number one in that you're trying to accept it . Try to get philosophical about it . Life is a series of good and bad things . This was one of the things that I would put in the bad pile .

It isn't the outcome I wanted , but I can still learn something really valuable from it and I'm going to try . That's a really good , helpful thought to have around the thing . Another one is it's going to sound like a cliche , but it's one of my favorites which is a very philosophical kind of spiritual belief , which is this happened to me for a reason .

You might not like that thought , but I find a lot of peace in it . This one might be a little harder to take , depending on what you're going through , but I will say it helped me , so I'm going to share it with you . I like to look at especially the bigger regrets of my life . I like to look at them as inevitable .

It's more of a spiritual thing that I feel like I was put on the planet and I feel I feel this way for everyone . So I think this is true for you too . You can choose to believe it or not , but I do find this helpful and it helps me get to a place of peace . So that's why I'm going to share it , because it might .

When I say this , I'm not trying to trigger you at all , because lots of unfair , terrible things happen to people and happen every day . So I'm not saying please hear this in the right way . I'm not saying this is it's good that it happened or it's no big deal . I'm not saying that .

What I'm saying when I say that it's inevitable is that I feel like as humans , like we come into this world and we don't choose our parents , we don't choose our socioeconomic thing , we don't choose our race , we don't choose any of the things about our early environment . We have no choice .

We're just born into it and some of us get lucky and have a nice thing and some of us don't . And whatever that is that sets the first part of our path , the part we can't control . So they always say we're a product of our environment .

Well , those early childhood experiences , the things people said to you , even the people who your parents were all of that imprinted on you . And it's not saying you can't change it , because we can .

When we're older and we have more choice and agency in our life , we can and , I believe , should ideally evolve from that and become the person we choose to be , not the person that we're living as by default , but earlier on and this is good for those regretful things you have , maybe from your teen years or your 20s or even your 30s and that's when my

divorce happened , was in my 30s I think it's good to look at it as inevitable because it's like , spiritually speaking , I feel like experiences are delivered to us to show us more about what we really want at a deep level and what's aligned with us or not , and so like , if I go back to my divorce , I have gotten to a place with that where I think I

don't think there was any other way for me to learn some of the deepest , most core things about myself and what I need to work on and needed to work on and change . It showed me a lot about the evolutions that I needed to make in terms of my self image .

It's one of the core reasons I started this business is that I believe that so few of us have a self-image that serves us to its fullest degree . Some people do , maybe because of the environment they grew up in and they were fed that , their spirit was fed that , but I think a lot of us don't have it .

We've got holes in our game , we've got missing pieces and for me , because of all the data mining I've done of that experience in my own life , I realize now I like to think of it as inevitable .

I think that's one of the reasons I've been able to get to a place of complete peace with it and with him and honestly with myself is that I needed to know this , I needed to experience this in this way and I needed to mine all of that deeply for the lessons .

I'll have to do a whole episode on it , if you're interested , because it really revealed to me something that I don't believe there was any other lesson .

There's nothing else that could have happened in my life other than that particular situation and divorce that would have delivered all of those valuable lessons to me that now are serving me and , honestly , have formed the exploratory that led me to this method of coaching , that led me to doing self-image based work across not only a person's life but their career .

Because if we don't think about a career in that way , we think about our career as , oh , I need to network . It's more clinical .

We think about , oh , the skills I need to acquire and the decisions I need to make and the people I need to get to know , and we don't really realize that , yes , you need to do that and I help people with those things , but really what you need to do is be very intentional about who you intend to be and how you want to try to show up every day and

let that try to be your beacon or your north star , because life is going to blow you around . Your relationships aren't always going to go the way you want , your career isn't always going to go the way you want . Your boss , your industry there's so much out of our control that the only way to really weather it is a really strong , powerful self-image .

And so back to the inevitability thing . That's one of the ways that I really thought oh , I only came to that as I really got past the surface level mining of the lesson and into the deep , deep parts of what did I really learn here ?

And then I started to connect those lessons into other experiences across other parts of my life and I thought what is the one common thing here ? And it was things about myself that I wanted to next level and that I needed to fill holes . And that's deep , deep self-image work . And I would have never learned it if I hadn't gone through something that painful .

What do they say about ? The deeper the trauma ? And the deeper the wound , the taller you grow . I really believe that if you choose to , you know , but you have to really want to learn from it , and that is going to .

So number two was manager thoughts around it and be very intentional about how you want to look at it . So some of the philosophical things like life is a series of good and bad and I need both in order to become who I intend to be . Everything happens for a reason or , like I said , this was always inevitable . This was always going to happen .

So that's number two . Number three and I sort of alluded to this in number two . You see , they're all connected . But look for the lesson . That is a big one and in order to do that , you have to first accept that it happened and to manage your thoughts around it , get to neutral , Right .

But then what you want to do is really look for the lesson , and I'm not talking platitude like cochi cliche stuff here . I want you to really ask yourself what did I learn from this about myself ? What did I learn about what I actually want for my life that this didn't deliver Right ?

What do I now see clearly that I maybe didn't see at the outset , when I was making the choice in the first place ? What does this tell me about who I am in the positive and maybe the more negative ? What holes do I have in my game that I need to fill now so that next time something like this comes up , I'm approaching it differently ?

Right , that's how you learn the lessons , and I think the longer you go , like I said , between the unfortunate outcome and when you're mining , the deeper the questions can be , because it's easier to go deeper when you've taken all the emotion out of the situation . It's really hard if you're in the middle of it .

You can still try to carve out a little emotional space , you know , by managing your thoughts around it and just trying to be a little more philosophical . But I think it's hard to stay there because we had to just process through that pain . And so I'm not saying deny that it happened or deny you don't feel the way you feel . I'm not saying that .

But the further you get from it and the deeper the questions go .

And you know , when you're asking yourself that these questions that I just posed , I would say , like , try to do it from a place of pureness , meaning you're not answering the questions from anger or blame from either the person or persons involved or yourself , that you're truly just trying to rise above it and , through compassion , try to see it clearly and look

for the little nuggets of gold in there , because they're there in the worst situations . There are things to know from that that can make your life better going forward . What to do differently next time , what are the things you missed , the flags that you missed . That next time you'll see , because you've paid attention .

Now you know that kind of thing and I would say do this from a place where you're not blaming yourself . I should have done this and I should have seen that . No , no , you did the best you could . You got to let that part go . So that's about acceptance . It happened , you did the best you could and it didn't edit , and there were things you didn't see .

I think about that all the time . What were the things I didn't see ? And they're there . On my decision to get into the marriage , there was a bunch of waving red flags and I chose to ignore them . Because of who I was at the time , I was not capable of seeing those red flags . Now I like to think I would , but again , we're not perfect .

Maybe I would , maybe I wouldn't , but I would certainly try because I've tried to learn lessons . So it helps you when you look for the lessons . That's not saying it's okay , that's not saying it was actually a fortunate outcome . It's just saying like there's something here for me to know because I still regret that this happened . So it helps you really .

The lessons help you move from fear and blame and victimhood into a future that is much more empowered . A you that is much better prepared , a you that has more dimension and character and strengths and tools in your toolkit , so that you'll know what to do differently next time .

So that's number three is what did you learn about yourself , about other people , about things that you want to see now that you weren't paying attention to back then , like whatever it was ? That's number three and number four . I want you to reframe it , and this one is easier with distance as well .

It might take you a while to get here , but sometimes you can't take a situation and make it be a good thing . But if you could just get it to neutral , that is , that's a desirable thing . But I will say I think there's always a way , a way if you're looking at it through one specific filter , which is what did that give you ? How has it added to you ?

What do you know now that you didn't know before ? What could you do differently now that you didn't even know to do before ? So when you ask yourself a question like how could this be good , it doesn't mean , oh , I'm thrilled that happened . It just means what did this deliver to me ? How has it strengthened me ?

Would it I not see at the outset that I'll pay attention to next time . How am I better prepared for the rest of my life and what do I know now more about the things that I'll tolerate or that I want for myself , versus the things that I won't tolerate or that I don't want for myself ?

So this reframing is trying to take the unfortunate thing that you regret , and it's trying to not only neutralize it , it's trying to take it to a place where it actually happened for a reason that was intended to serve you . Serve you , to better prepare you for the rest of your life and the things that you want .

So those are the four things that I want you to think about when it comes to regret . Number one except that it happened . Number two be very intentional and how you manage your thoughts around it . Don't succumb to blame or victimhood . Number three look for the lessons .

What did you learn , what do I need to know now , what things that I learned about myself and what I need to change . All of that are the lessons . And number four how do you reframe it ? That's really about peace over the long term and neutrality over the long term .

It doesn't mean that you'll ever look back on that and feel joyful or you'll be glad you might always have something in you that thinks boy , I wish that would have turned out differently . I wish it could be different . But to reframe it and to truly like , get to a place where you're like well , I wish it had been different .

But actually , on one level I'm glad that it happened , because I've been able to learn these things that now make me more of who I need to be and I choose to be , so that my future doesn't have things like that in it , that I'm making different choices , that I'm noticing things I didn't notice before and that I'm putting a different filter on my life that I

didn't have before , and that filter came directly from this experience . So that's what I wanted to say to you today about regret . I don't think we need to live there . I don't think it's a great place to live , and I know a lot of people do .

And if you feel that there's something in your life that you can't let go of maybe it was truly traumatic , truly difficult I would say this to you If it does involve actual trauma , I would strongly encourage you to get the help of a therapist . It's never too late , even if it was from your childhood .

But if it's more just like regret of a decision that you made or that you know you had , an outcome that you just can't seem to let go of , the fact that you just wish it had been different , that you would give anything for it to be different . I would say that's where a coach could help you and I would love to help you .

So I don't want anyone to be living their life in regret , but a good coach and a cognitive coach can help you go back to that and untether it from your day to day and help you kind of rise above it and look at it through the lens of learning , eventually even through the lens of gratitude for what it gave you , not because you're happy it happened or that

you're happy it had the outcome it did , but that that outcome because you choose to look at it in a deep and purposeful way , has delivered lessons or has shined a spotlight on parts of you that you now choose to work on so that your future looks different . And I would say this episode spans your entire life .

Like I said , it can be your career regrets , it can be relationship regrets . I chose a lot . I chose to talk today about a lot of my things from my divorce . It could be about your family , your friendships , your money , your business . It can be any part of your life .

You always have the ability to garner the lessons from that situation and to learn how to take it to a place of neutrality so that it doesn't have power over you anymore , so that you're not spending all of your 2024 . Mire down in your past . If you're going to look at your past , do it with purpose , for what it has to teach you , to show you .

Don't live in a place where you're just pining for something that will never be , because that is not the empowered , purposeful life that you deserve . So that's why I wanted to talk about regret today .

We're early in the year . This is your chance to let it go , to neutralize the power that any of those unfortunate outcomes have on you and to change it into something that actually powers your future In a purposeful way , in a way that serves you . So with that I will leave you till next time . Make it a great week . My friends , do you have a life coach ?

If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside , we take the material you hear on this podcast . Study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash next level . Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level .

Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .