As you take responsibility for your life and authority for your future, you may find that you blame yourself too much. Taking responsibility for your circumstances is important. But continually beating yourself up over past regrets is entirely counterproductive. It is time to forgive yourself and accept yourself as human.
Think back to the experiences that you regret. Feel the regret. You may feel shame or disappointment as well. Let it come. Lean into these feelings. This too is human. This regret is leftover from a hard lesson. Hard lessons change you. Can you see yourself as a separate person from the one you are today? An earlier version of yourself? You are not the same. And you will not make that mistake again.
Can you see your humanity and why, you at that time in that situation chose to take those actions? Can you imagine sitting with yourself, feeling compassion for that version of yourself and telling yourself that you understand and feel their pain? Can you let that version of yourself go? You are not that person anymore and have learned from your experiences. You are human just like everyone – we all make mistakes and have regrets. It is easy to see others as perfect people who have not made any mistakes. But that is not true. Everyone has regrets from hard lessons learned. They just hide it. If you learned from it and made changes, then there is no need to feel badly. Move on in your new incarnation. Be thankful to your river or the divine for these lessons and move on.
To forgive your mistakes is not to condone your mistakes. To forgive is simply to see how the old you in your old reality might make such a mistake. Perhaps you were naive. Perhaps you were hungry for attention, or scared of the world, or vulnerable because of trauma or your life stage. Perhaps you were afraid of something, or seeking validation. You were certainly human. Call it out for the mistake it was. Recognize why you did it. Feel the regret, make changes to ensure better decisions and close that chapter.
Your suffering in repeated regret, visiting the past over and over, wishing it was different… is a waste of your time and energy. You cannot change the past. But you can design your future.
Lastly, accept yourself as human. You were human in the past and you made mistakes. You are human now. And you will be human in the future. You are, and will always be, capable of making mistakes. Understanding and accepting your humanity will actually make you a better decision maker. Knowing you are vulnerable to mistakes, you will make decisions carefully, with as much information as you can get. You will learn to trust your gut. And you will learn to analyze your motivations.
You are not perfect. You are perfectly human. You can learn to make better choices, learn to let go of the past, and design your future. Over time your decisions will get better and your mistakes fewer and farther between. And you will remain perfectly human. Can you leave the past behind and be present for the human you are today?
