How do you feel about regret?

If I ended up not doing something, then there’s a reason for that. Everything happens for a reason, but I don’t know what that is. I just need to do what I know is right and follow my gut. If it feels wrong, don’t do it.

I regret it. I just had to. =)

If I think about what could have been, sure I might regret some things. But when I think about what I have, I don’t regret a thing.

My philosophy in life is that nothing is a waste of time if you can learn from your mistakes. You can only have regret if you view an expierience as a waste of time.

Guess it applies both ways. Doing something you wish you hadn’t as well as not doing something you wits you had.

I.e.
** “I should not have had that last beer.”
**“I should have asked her out.”

I have very few regrets, recently, I just let go of a huge one. It’s very freeing to let go of regret – once you’ve learned the lesson you needed to learn.

I really try to live life, to it’s fullest and take things as lessons. My regrets, usually come from not acting on something or not listening to my inner voice. Mainly from not listening to myself.

If you have regrets and it’s something you can fix, work on or decide to let go – do it. It’s such a burden!

I was gonna say “regretful,” but someone already beat me to it, dangit. >>sighs<< I guess I’m really feeling it now, aren’t I?

I dislike regret and do my best to avoid it. Regrettably sometimes that backfires and I do have regrets. But I still don’t like ‘em.

I used to regret doing things, and doing them wrong. Now, I mostly regret not doing things. That regret drives me to take on every opportunity that I come across, but all those commitments are really starting to wear me down.

There is no changing the past, so I try not to let my past haunt me. I’ve often found the best way to deal with these issues is to allow myself to feel the regret fully, analyze the situation, determine what I should have done, rehearse the solution in my mind, regret things a bit more, then let it go. If I’ve learned my lesson from my regret, then it has served its purpose and doesn’t have a purpose anymore.

Maybe this method would work for you.

I do regret drinking a milkshake, earlier. It’s just sitting there….making me feel sick! Blah!

I regret eating medium-rare steaks that are just too rare…but it doesn’t last forever, so you get over it. But honestly, that’s how I feel about it. It’s a part of human nature, but you can’t let it just sit on your heart and eat away at it. You have to either find some form of penance or put it aside.

I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna regret the question below this one with 250+ responses.

I can’t stand the idea of regret, so I just don’t deal with it. Live life, be happy, keep on truckin’

I tried to always go with the flow and just do things. However, most of the things I ended up doing turned out to be a terrible, horrible and dreadful experience. So, I regret doing them. I regret doing the things I did. If I could take it all back, I would. I guess being too adventurous backfires HARD. Im not doing anything I am not 100% sure of it anymore.

The Butthole Surfers sing “Its better to regret the things you do than the things you didn’t do.” I feel that way.

The amount of regret is often a reflection of taking risks. All decisions have a risk factor of making the wrong choice. Eventually most people (hopefully) get smart enough to visualize the outcomes/consequences before they act, and modify their course of action accordingly.

When you’re young, there’s often a tendency to believe that, even if you know what could happen, you’re the exception to the rule and the outcome will be the 20% and not the 80%. You take risks that you really know you shouldn’t, until something bad happens to you or to someone you know, or it starts to really matter that things turn out correctly.

Lurve for teaching me NIKE – I’m gonna use it today with the kids, ‘Just NIKE!!!!”

There’s a NOFX line that goes “hate regrets more than apologies.” I’ve always liked that line.

Regret makes me feel sorry.

I think seekingwolf said it best. I completely agree, if it feels wrong, don’t do it. This quote helps me: The pleasure of what we enjoy is lost by wanting more

If it hurts another person, I regret and try to make amends. But other than that, I try not to spend my time regretting, but living life now as it is. If I always second guess myself, I cannot simply live.

again we meet :-)

In past lives I had many regrets, I have overcame them with help so that I no longer live in the past but now live for today.

In this life, I have no regrets. There are few rules that I live by, but the most valuable one is my own and I follow it religiously. “End each and every day with no regrets”

Don’t know that I Nike but I still “Do it”

I have a couple of small regrets, where I let my conscience rule, and I did the responsible thing instead of the more fun thing. The big one is that I regret not knowing something health related about me much earlier in life. That one, of course, couldn’t have been helped, but I regret it anyway.

In general, I have tried to live with no expections. Without expectations, I could have no regrets. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that I do have expectations—rather strong ones. Fortunately I have time to try to accomplish those things, or learn not to expect them. I shall surely have regrets if I do not succeed in one or the other of those activities.

I “New Balance” rather than ‘Nike” but I still just do it.

My feet are too wide for Nike. :-)

I agree with Asmonet. Regret is a waste of time since you can’t change the past, and you could go crazy trying to second-guess yourself. If you did do something and it turned out to be the wrong thing – well, you couldn’t have known that at the time. If you didn’t do something that maybe you should have, well – same thing. My philosophy is that you make the best decisions that you can with the information available to you at the time. Regret is unfairly beating yourself up.

it seems that most people only have extreme views on regret; they’re either completely super duper regretful over things, or they never regret anything period.
i find myself somewhere in between. i think i regret things i didn’t do more than anything. there’s so many opportunities every day that you often don’t even recognize until they’re gone. i can’t help but to regret them, even for a few minutes, when i realize what i could have done.

and yeah, regret is a huge waste of time and everything, but there’s plenty of things i do every day that are wastes of time haha. a few minutes extra isn’t a big deal to me. i think you can learn from your regrets, as long as you don’t dwell on them.

It sure as heck can be a great motivator, though, if you let it. As I’m currently finding out the hard way…

That’s why the “edit response” thing should last longer. But then, if people disagree with you or something, you could edit the answer and say “what do you mean?”.

I know! I hate how fast it disappears! lol

Don’t

well, I remembered a recent regret tonight. I regret loaning out the few books and magazines that I actually had my written work published in a decade of so ago. The person I loaned them to promised to get them back to me, and then kept putting it off, saying they had misplaced them. A few years went by, they moved a couple times, and then the last place they lived burned down, taking my one-of-a-kind books with it.

The books were payment for being published (it was a small independent press company) and the company is no longer in business, and I have looked for other copies, yet have not found them. So the small chapbooks and independent weekly newpapers where my work was published are no longer in my possession and I don’t have the originals either.

I learned a valuable lesson. Don’t loan valuable things to people, especially those types with a lousy system of cataloguing their stuff.

@evelyns_pet_zebra So sorry to hear. That sucks!

@jonsblond thanks, it does suck, and if my lesson helps someone else, then it was worth it to post my regret here.

I usually get worried about regret before I actually take the action. Something bad for me, I’ll worry about prior; going out drinking too much, or something self damaging, etc. Very rarely do I worry about something I did after the fact. Except in the cases where my mouth opens, words I didn’t mean to say come out, and then I can’t un-ring that bell. That’s where apologies come into play.