Yesterday, I conducted an online workshop on emotional well-being.
It went well. If you were there, thank you! I appreciate you taking the time. If you couldn’t make it, that’s okay. I will be offering more such events in 2024 and let you know when I do.
Today, I want to talk to you about regret. Or rather, living a regret-free life.
If I Were to Die Tomorrow…
When I was in my early twenties, a few people around me suddenly passed away. One after the other. A close childhood friend. A couple of classmates from business school. My beloved grandfather. All of these deaths were so sudden, so unexpected, that each one of them left me stunned. Perhaps that’s when I started pondering my own death on a relatively regular basis. I realized I could die any day. And one thing I didn’t want was to die with regrets.
So, now and then, when I want to make sure my life is moving in the direction I want, I ask myself: If I were to die tomorrow, what would I most regret?
Over the past 15 or so years, this question has led me to:
- Stick with the heart-wrenching process of finding a life partner through an arranged marriage in India
- Leave a corporate career to do something more enjoyable and meaningful with my professional life
- Navigate the challenges of raising two little kids away from my extended family and support system
- Design my life in a way that honors some of my deepest values: balance, flexibility, and peace
- Get over a decade-long struggle to write more and share my writing with the world
None of this has been quick or easy. Some things have taken years. But my desire for a regret-free life has been deep. It keeps me going until I figure out how to address the challenge at hand in a way that works best for me.
The Elements of Regret-free Living
While preparing for my workshop on emotional well-being, I was reflecting on what it takes to live regret-free. The way I see it, there are three elements to it:
1. Make peace with the past.
All of us carry pain from the past. Maybe you had a rough childhood. Maybe you were betrayed by those closest to you. Maybe you longed for what you couldn’t have. Maybe you couldn’t pursue your dreams. Maybe you got unlucky.
You can’t go back and change the past. But you can make peace with it.
For me, the past few years have been exactly about that. I have done everything in my power to cultivate forgiveness, love, and compassion in my heart for people I was angry with – including younger versions of myself.
The journey has been long and painful. But it has also made my life calmer, richer, and more joyful. As I look back on this journey, what I feel is gratitude and peace.
What aspects of your past do you need to make peace with for your well-being?
2. Enjoy the present.
When we’re ruminating about the past or worrying about the future, it is easy to miss the present. It’s not our fault, exactly, because, in many ways, our biology makes it hard to live in the present. But we don’t have to be slaves to the limitations of our minds. We can learn to enjoy the present.
I am not great at this myself…yet. But I am getting better because I can see how my favorite moments are the ones where I am fully present – with my family, my work, or even just with myself.
The present will soon become the past. In the spirit of regret-free living, I don’t want to regret not enjoying my children while they are young and I am the center of their world (as demanding as it sometimes can be.)
I don’t want to let fear hold me back from showing up more fully in the world.
I want to live well. Now.
This one’s a constant work in progress for me.
What about you? What helps you be fully present? Could you use more of that?
3. Actively participate in creating your desired future.
For the first 29 years of my life, I lived on auto-pilot. I believed what others told me – explicitly or implicitly – about living a happy, fulfilling life. Do well in school, get a good (read: high-paying) job, and get married.
The getting married part was what I wanted to do, but the rest of it I did because I thought it would make me happy. Unfortunately, it didn’t.
It made me miserable and burnt out. There came a point around my 29th birthday when I started questioning the point of it all – even life itself. It was clear to me that something needed to change. Life had become too painful to bear without doing something about it.
That was a wake-up call for me. Thankfully, I woke up. I decided to not just let life happen to me, but to learn what living well looks like. If what I had been told about happiness wasn’t working, what was I missing? Could I do something to change my life?
The answer was yes. I could. From that moment on, I have been committed to being an active participant in the creation of my own life. I can’t fully control what happens in my life. I don’t control how other people behave. But I refuse to give my power away around things I do have control over. Which is quite a bit. And, in my experience, enough to live an empowered, regret-free life.
Where in your life are you actively participating? Where could you take more charge of your own life?
So, there you have it. These, I think, are the three main elements of living a regret-free life: make peace with the past, enjoy the present, and actively participate in creating your future.
Which one do you want to focus on?
P.S. I wrote about my initial journey to happiness in my capstone for the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program. If you’re curious to learn more, you can download it here.