Making Peace With Regret
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Yurui’s Summary
This is one of my best articles. I highly recommend the full read!
Regret is one of the worst feelings to have. As long as you live without regret, everything will be alright.
The best days give beautiful memories, and the worst days teach important lessons. We can only accept this when we are grateful for where we are at the present moment.
Live to make yourself proud, to find fulfilment in each day.
If you can’t control it, don’t worry about it. If you can control something, do it to the best of your ability.
Worrying, however, does not take away tomorrow’s suffering, but instead, today’s peace.
Live for yourself. As long as I make my absolute best judgement in the moment, I will never have regret.
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Something that I’ve tried to grapple with a ton recently is regret.
I think that the worst feeling to have in life is the feeling of regret. That longing for the past me to have done something different in the past.
My parents have always said that as long as you live without regret, nothing else matters. To minimise regret, humans have to realise that they their absolute best in the moment with the knowledge that they had, and that couldn’t have reached any better outcome.
When we look back in retrospect, instead of questioning ‘what could I have done better?’ (which is a valuable question in and of itself; given that we do not angle it upon regret, but instead improvement for the future), ask if you would change anything, given the chance to go back. I think we should ask this question instead because of the nature of how humans can always be ‘better’ and how there is always some adjustment that we could have made, when we look back in hindsight.
I have no regrets at the moment. The best days have given me beautiful memories, and the worst days have taught me important lessons.
Chatting with one of my mates from Melbourne, we realised that in order to accept the above ultimatum, we need to appreciate what we have in the present. The reality is that regret only arises in hindsight; we only regret what we’ve done in the past if we aren’t happy with what we have now. If we want to live without regret, we must live in gratitude, acknowledging that the world owes us absolutely nothing, and yet we have so many privileges in our lives to enjoy. We need to realise that in order for us to even be alive, billions of years worth of events and decisions have been made so that we could experience life. This way, you can learn happiness, and live a life without regret.
I was at the gym a few weeks ago and thought something slightly idealistic, but if a time traveller was to meet me one day, I want them to be thinking this: “Oh shit, you’re Yurui Zi! You’re Yurui Zi, in the flesh, and you’re going to do so much amazing shit in the future”. If they don’t come up to me thinking this, then I haven’t worked hard enough.
I guess that’s my greatest fear: living an unfulfilled life, full of regret, without having realising my full potential.
Life is single player. You have zero control over anything that happens in the world, except for what you can control; your mindset, thoughts, and actions. If you can’t control yourself, you have no control in this world.
Rule for life: If you can’t control it, don’t worry about it. If you can control something, do it to the best of your ability.
There are so many uncertainties that pervade my life at the moment. Too many to list out, and many of which could determine the path I embark upon for the rest of my life. Worrying, however, does not take away tomorrow’s suffering, but instead, today’s peace.
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” - Seneca.
I am an obsessive overthinker; my mind often kicks into overdrive when facing a situation. A million ‘what if’ scenarios run through my head about the future, and then when it actually comes to pass, things aren’t all that bad. I wonder why I worried in the first place; it does you no good.
I want to be on my deathbed in 60, 70, or even 80 years thinking that if I were to do it all again, I wouldn’t change a single thing. Regret is the worst feeling to have, but as long as I make my absolute best judgement in the moment, I will never have regret.
I’m living for both my remembering self and my experiencing self.
I’m living for my eight year-old self, my eighty year-old self, and my current self.
Yurui
Addendum from the future (12/10/2023). Chatting with a mate about regret and sent him this message:
Like reality is that you cant regret a thing, as long as you always do what you think is best in the moment. If it goes wrong... well, that means that your best judgement back then wasn't good enough. But you can't change that, you can only do what you think is best for the present and the future.
