How To Let Go Of Regrets

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Regrets.

They are part of life and they are one of the greatest challenges of our lives.

Because the truth of it is,

We're going to make mistakes during our lives.

We're going to do things that we wish we hadn't done.

And regret can creep in and sometimes it can permeate our lives and truly destroy the happiness that we feel inside.

But what is a regret?

I found this definition on the internet.

Regret.

A feeling of sadness about something sad or wrong or about a mistake that you have made.

And a wish that it could have been different or better.

There are so many things we can regret.

We can regret that after we finished school,

We didn't go on to university.

Instead,

We got a job.

And we so wish we could go back and go to that university and wouldn't have missed that time.

We can have regrets about when our parents get older and they're sickly and dying.

And for whatever reason,

Perhaps we're estranged from our parents.

Perhaps we are just busy with our lives.

We weren't there when they died.

And we feel so much remorse and regret over not being there.

We can perhaps have a regret over being with the love of our life,

The person that we were hoping to spend the rest of our life with.

But one night we were drinking too much and in a fit of anger,

We lashed out at them.

And they left us.

And we lost them.

Regrets are powerful.

And they can truly affect our lives in not good ways.

I've worked with thousands of people over the years as a clinical psychologist.

And you would be amazed at how many people have regrets.

But perhaps you're not surprised by that.

Because you too are struggling with regrets.

Regrets have so much emotional power behind them.

They can truly impact us every day of our lives.

One of the most powerful examples of regret I ever saw was when I was younger.

And I was doing my residency at the VA hospital in Sepulveda,

California.

And there was a man there.

He was probably in his 40s,

I would guess.

And he was on the drug treatment ward because he struggled with alcoholism.

And he shared with me a story that was so sad and filled with regrets.

What had happened was when he was in his 20s,

He was married and had a beautiful wife and two lovely daughters that he deeply loved.

And one day he went on a drinking bench because he struggled with alcoholism.

He'd been in the war and struggled with PTSD symptoms.

And well,

He decided in the morning not to come home because he was so ashamed of what he'd done.

And then a few days went by and he said,

Wow,

Now what I've done is really bad.

I haven't seen my family for three days.

And he again was so ashamed of himself that he just couldn't go home.

And then a month went by and then two months went by.

And he just felt so much shame at himself for not going home and not contacting them.

And not even letting them know where he was.

And when I met him,

It was 20 years later.

And you would think after 20 years that regret would be gone.

But it wasn't.

He said not an hour went by where he didn't think about his girls and the damage that he was doing to them and had done to them.

He had so much regret.

And I asked him,

Well,

Why don't you look them up and find out how they're doing?

And he was so afraid that they would just hate him so much that it was better for him to stay away and live with his regret.

You could tell how much he loved his daughters and how much he missed them and his wife too.

But he just couldn't go back.

And again,

Not an hour a day went by where he wasn't sad or remorseful or wish he had gone home that night.

But he just felt that they would hate him for what he had done.

And now 20 years later,

He still lived with that regret.

And it permeated his life.

Now some of you may be thinking,

Good,

That man needs to have regret.

That man needs to suffer because he hurt his young daughters and his wife.

And there may be truth to that.

But in life,

We do make mistakes.

Sometimes they're little,

But sometimes they're big.

And if we take that approach of just pure hatred when people make mistakes,

I think that will lead to a very unhappy life for all of us.

Because we all make mistakes.

We all hurt people.

We all do things that we wish we hadn't done.

Choices that we made that we wish we could undo.

Even if it didn't hurt other people,

It affected our lives.

And the question is,

Is there a way to let go of these regrets and live life well?

Because if we hang on to them,

We are going to suffer.

So how do we do this?

How do we let go of our regrets?

Well,

The first thing we have to do is stop judging others so much.

Because we just don't know their story.

I'm not excusing the behavior that they're doing.

If someone punches another person or slaps another person on the face,

It doesn't make it right.

But we don't know the complete story.

For example,

In this instance of this man,

He had been in Vietnam.

He had seen his friends' heads blown off because he was a medic trying to help them.

And he couldn't.

He saw so many of his friends die.

And he was dealing with that.

It was very hard.

And alcohol gave him a reprieve from that.

But when he drank,

He made poor choices.

Choices that he regretted.

But we hadn't gone through what he'd gone through.

I'm not excusing other people's behavior when they do it.

But we just don't know what they've gone through to get them there.

And when we understand that,

We can soften our judgment towards others.

It doesn't mean we can't say what they did was wrong.

But we can stop being so harsh towards them and saying,

Well,

I don't know what happened here.

And I'm sad what happened.

But I don't need to hate this person for what they did.

I don't need to judge them for what they did.

I just need to be glad and thankful that I'm not struggling with that as they are.

But I am struggling with my regrets.

The choices I've made in my life.

And they too have circumstances that led us to be there.

For example,

If we really wish we had been able to go to university,

But circumstances didn't allow that,

Then we need to look at that and say,

Okay,

Do I need to regret this for the rest of my life?

One of my best friends,

He got accepted to a university and his family didn't have much money.

But he was smart.

So he got a full ride scholarship to go to university.

And right when he was going to go,

His father left his family.

And there were five kids and he was the eldest.

And he just couldn't go.

He went and got a job to support his mom and his other siblings.

So they wouldn't be homeless.

And he gave up his university to support them.

And for many years,

He did regret that.

But,

Thankfully,

He was later able to go back part-time while he worked and get his degree and he became an engineer.

So we have to realize there are circumstances that lead us to making choices that we later regret.

Again,

It doesn't excuse our behavior,

Particularly if we hurt another person.

But we are a product of our environment,

Of our circumstances,

As everyone else is.

If we know someone who lashes out at their partner,

Their spouse,

Probably their parents did the same thing.

And their grandparents did the same thing.

It's called conditioning.

And some people are predisposed to certain types of addictions.

Maybe they have a food addiction.

Maybe they have an alcohol addiction.

But those addictions do impact them.

And the ramifications of those addictions are hard and often have a lot of things that come with them,

Including regrets.

But when we begin to understand that everyone is doing what they're doing,

And in many ways,

Though we make very big mistakes,

In many ways,

We are doing our best.

We may not be doing very well.

But given the circumstances,

We are often usually doing our best.

Our best may be terrible.

But given our circumstances,

It is in many ways our best.

Now we're listening to this talk to get better.

And that's why I'm talking about judging others and judging ourselves.

Because regrets are about that.

We judge.

We don't let go of.

We're angry.

We're upset.

We're sad at the choices that we've made in our life.

But what happens is that causes us to stay stuck.

Because if someone is following us around and saying we're bad,

We're stupid,

Whatever they say,

It's going to sink in.

It's going to impact us.

And you know who's following us around all day long?

Our thoughts.

Our thoughts all day long are commenting on our behavior.

And if they're negative,

If they're not good,

Guess what?

We're going to stay stuck.

And that's why people often do stay stuck for so many years.

Because they're hearing in their head they're an awful,

Terrible human being.

And guess what awful,

Terrible human beings do?

They do awful,

Terrible things.

And that's why it's so critical to learn to forgive ourselves,

To learn from our past.

And also to realize that we can't change the past.

The past has happened.

It is done.

We can't make it different.

There's nothing we can do to go back and change what has happened.

But what we can do are two things.

We can,

Number one,

Learn from it.

We can say,

Okay,

I realize this is a mistake I've made.

Perhaps I've made it a hundred times in my life.

I'm going to stop regretting what I've done and instead I'm going to take on a sense of learning.

This is a mistake I've made.

Perhaps every day for the last ten years I've waken up and drank all day long.

Today I'm going to say,

What can I do differently?

I'm not going to judge myself.

I'm going to say,

What can I do differently instead?

I can go to AA.

I can go to a 12-step meeting.

Or,

Like my friend,

If you didn't get to go to university,

Maybe you can start taking classes online and begin to work on getting your degree.

It may take you a while,

But I always tell people,

If you take one class a semester,

Do you know in 16 years you'd have your college or university degree?

It's true.

Now,

Some things in the past we can't change.

For example,

If we were estranged from our parents and they died without us being there,

Or we just couldn't make it at the end of their life,

We can't change that.

But what we can do is two things.

Like I said,

We can learn from it and grow from it.

We can perhaps get into therapy.

We can listen to talks like this.

We can do things to change their behavior.

We can perhaps get involved with an anger management class so that we learn,

Instead of lashing out at our family or friends,

How to respond appropriately.

We can work on changing who we are.

We may not be able to go back and change what happened.

Often we can't.

But what we can do is making sure when we go forward,

We don't keep repeating that type of behavior.

Because when we hang on to regrets,

Because of the negative self-talk,

We have a tendency to repeat things instead of learning from them.

What we have to do is learn from them.

And if we learn from them,

Then we'll take a different approach.

We're changing the conditioning.

But if we want to stay stuck,

We'll hang on to the regrets.

And we will stay stuck.

And we don't want to do that.

And so there's one last thing we can do with our regrets that is very helpful.

Because often,

With our regrets,

There's nothing we can do to go back and change what had happened.

But what we can do is make a difference in the future.

Maybe not with the person or the thing that happened that we hurt.

But with the future,

We can do better.

I've shared this story before,

But it's an important story and it's helpful.

I've always loved animals.

When I was at university,

I ended up adopting two cats.

And I really loved these cats.

But I was traveling and they weren't able to stay with me.

And my family wasn't able to help me out.

I actually couldn't find anyone that would help me out.

And I knew if I took them to the vet or to the pound,

They would be euthanized and killed.

And so what I did is,

I ended up just dropping them off at a farm because I was in Iowa and just left them there.

I didn't even ask the owners if I could leave them.

I just left them there.

And as I was driving away,

One cat took off and hid in the bushes.

But the other one stood in the middle of the road and just looked at me.

And that probably was one of the darkest moments of my life.

I mean,

I cried harder than I had ever cried in my life.

And I felt horrible about what I did.

Because I deeply,

Deeply loved those cats.

And so what I did is,

Years later,

As I needed to heal that wound,

I said,

I'm going to make up for this.

So if you know me,

I love cats.

And I will go out of my way to help them,

To give them love and attention.

If they're a stray cat,

I'll try to give them food.

If there's a shelter near my home where they rescue cats,

I'll go visit and play with the cats there.

I've done a lot in my life to love other cats that need help and support.

And that does help.

It doesn't take away from what I did.

Because what I did was wrong.

And it was hurtful.

But there were circumstances where I did what I thought at the time was the best thing I could do.

Again,

There's regrets about it.

But I've learned from it.

I've never done that again.

And I have done a lot of things to make up for it.

I even once got in a really bad accident where my head slammed into the windshield and shattered it.

My chest slammed into the wheel and crushed it.

My knees slammed into the dashboard and put holes in them.

Because I was trying to help a cat that had been hit by a car in front of me.

I was okay,

But I was glad that I was willing to risk my life to help a cat.

And I was okay.

But sometimes I think doing things to make up for them and the mistakes we make are good.

Now I don't want to encourage anyone to hurt themselves for a mistake they've made.

But I do think we can do a lot of good penance for mistakes we've made.

And they can be helpful to let go of regrets.

We're human.

I know it's hard to hear this,

But we really are trying our best.

And part of it is making sure that we learn from our mistakes.

And that's a mantra,

That's a thought we get when we make a mistake.

We say,

What can I learn from this?

Not that I'm a terrible,

Horrible person,

But what can I learn from it?

And then one last thing.

If you do ever regret perhaps a secret that you've never shared with anyone,

It is helpful for the soul to share regrets,

Particularly if you've hurt another person.

Just to let people know,

One person know,

That you know won't judge you.

That is going to be very kind and very understanding.

That's super important.

But to talk to someone and say,

You know,

I just want to get this off my chest because I'm really sad about what I did.

It can be so helpful to do that.

So again,

Thank you for listening.

And my hope is that if you do have regrets,

Or if you do make mistakes in the future,

You will learn from them and stop beating yourself up over them.

And together we will make the world a lot better place for all of us to live in.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.