Is it really possible to live your life and not have any regrets. I’ve heard various people say they regret nothing, but I know for me, I have many regrets.
I regret all the naps I didn't take as a child ?
You CAN live without major regrets- you need to own up to your shot behaviours of the past, and make amends, apologies and changes. You need to reflect deeply enough on your wants and needs and failings, and identify were things line up with your core values, and where they don't. And then grab that butterflies into he stomach feeling by the antennae and make the hard choices needed to turn hard into what you see as missing. You also need to take a coldly realistic look at whether or not what you view your wants and needs will truly give you the things you want or need most, and be willing to shed those things that won't give you achievable results that match your ideals.
I find it hard to believe someone can say honestly that they have no regrets in life. Unless someone has achieved a zen-like state of pure self-acceptance (and surely that takes time and effort) then we all have made choices that in hindsight we would change. Regret shouldn’t rule us but can steer us to make better choices if we listen to it?
My biggist regret is that I have some. I should have been born perfect and stayed that way. Not. Now I'm old, fat, and ugly. I really regret the ugly part. Nothing I could have done about it barring extensive face reconstruction. I never liked looking like Sean Connery. I wanted to look like Ernest Borgnine. Or Charles Bronson. Craggy and tough, not smooth and pleasant.
I think it comes down to whether you have a conscience or not. If your conscience is alive and well you will regret something's, after all you'll be an empathetic and sympathetic person. In my opinion it'll be those Machiavellian kind of people who'll have no conscience.
If one has had no regrets, then they haven't given a f%@ about anything. Now, perhpaps they've come to the place in their lives where they've decided they cannot live with the expectations of others hanging over their heads and have decided, "f%@ it! I'm done, finished, over it...I have no regrets!"
Maybe?
Yes. Not only possible, but many do.
There are things I might have done differently had I known what I do now, but I didnt, so what point reconsidering, second guessing, lamenting.
It seems more being caught by the myth of potential.
I've accepted I did what I did because at that moment I thought I had to.
Replaced in that time and space id do the same thing again.
So, yes, no regrets, no guilt, no myth of potential.
Myth of potential - the idea that 'if only this had/hadn't happened, i/they/we would be better off'. It's a common fallacy most dwell in.
When regret is a frame of mind, to me it's a tool of an examined life. I believe some people look back on their mistakes and think "it is what it is" and move on. I'm not one of those people and I think it affords me an opportunity to change my response. Regret can also be thought of as an aversive emotion, I can't imagine not feeling it, it's part of my emotional toolbox. Like other types of pain, it informs you that something in your environment isn't right.
If you treat your past mistakes as life lesson they cease to be regrets
I have very many regrets for the bad and 'evil' (yes) choices I've made- and now that I know the correct options, I am too old to make changes. I
If Nature provides a second life as a human, and one could remember the faults of the first life, would there be the courage to enact what was good and just? Many 'good people' die some very horrible deaths. That's why Trump will live forever- or it will, at least, seem like that.
I too must live with many regrets. my children love to throw them in my face