Regrets of the Past - What if?

We all have regrets, events, and decisions in our past we would like to change or do over. Recently I have been thinking of some of my past decisions and wondering what my life would be like today if I had done some things differently.

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There are so many things in my past that I would have liked to done differently. If you were able to change one of the many things I had done done in the past, I often wonder if the outcome would have been different and if it would have had an impact on everything else that proceeded it? Would one change affect all the other changes that you would have wanted to make? Is there truly a butterfly effect? Some of those incidents might not have even occurred because of the one instance I made a change to.

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On occasion, I find myself contemplating the what if and what could have been. Thoughts that linger and continuously pull at my conscience. It’s strange how we hang onto specific incidents in our life and torture ourselves through repeated mental rehashing of old memories. I have had many great accomplishments worth remembering yet I choose to think about the regrets.

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What I plan to do going forward

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Because I want to make sure I control my life and not let my regrets control me, here are the things I am focusing on that will allow to me to let go and move forward.

1. Take risks and look at negative outcomes as learning experiences. The key here is to take risks - "it never hurts to try." This way, even if you fail, you can't say that you didn't try which leaves little regret.

2. Focus on what I can do going forward. Learn from my mistakes so I don't make the same one's in the future.

3. Learn to let go - when I see someone make a decision and fail and then immediately moving forward without stressing over what they could have done differently, I feel inspired.

4. Immerse myself in more experiences. More experiences means more memories - the more memories you accumulate the more older memories fade a away. Any regrets in the past get replaced by accomplishments in the present.

5. Look at the bright side of things. Al Bernstein once said "Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction." If your mistake leads you toward a better future, then it’s actually a blessing in disguise. Mistakes or bad decisions can leave you in difficult situations, however, choosing how to deal with those situations determines where you go from there.

Regret is unavoidable — It's how you choose to deal with it that determines how much control it has over you. There is nothing compelling us to dwell on the way things could have been. The only thing that keeps us stuck in lost opportunities is the refusal to focus on new ones.

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You always have a choice whether to live in the present or dwell in the past over what never came to be. Why not use that energy and focus on what could be?

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If you could go back and do one thing differently, would you take that opportunity at the cost of changing where and who you are today? How do you avoid living in the past?

Please let me know what you think in the comments below