Content

• To step
• Method 1 of 3: Changing your mindset
• Method 2 of 3: Be proactive
• Method 3 of 3: Change your lifestyle

Regret is something we all experience from time to time. While regret has a number of benefits for your personal growth and development, ruminating on the past for too long can have negative consequences for your physical and emotional health. There are a number of steps you can take, from changing your mindset to changing your lifestyle, that can help you deal with regret and eventually put it behind you.

To step

Method 1 of 3: Changing your mindset

1. Understand the psychology of regret. Regret is a powerful emotion. Learning how to deal with regret means understanding the underlying psychology.
   • Regret can be negative feelings of guilt, sadness, or anger about past decisions.Everyone experiences regret at some point in life, especially young people, but regret becomes a problem when you dwell on past mistakes, resulting in withdrawal from life, your career, and personal relationships.
   • Counterfactual thinking is what produces regret. This means that the easier it is to imagine a different, better outcome in a given situation, the more likely you are to regret that decision. Regret is most intense when you feel that you have come close to a great success but missed the opportunity because of poor planning or lack of decisiveness. For example, if you always play the same numbers in the lottery every year, and in the year that you do not play, those numbers will of course fall.
   • Regret can have negative emotional and physical consequences. Disappointment can lead to mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, and the chronic stress associated with regret leads to hormone imbalance and a weakened immune system.
   • Regret is spread differently across the sexes. Women are more likely to break away from past relationships and are more likely to regret past romantic experiences.
2. Don't be too hard on yourself. Taking on an unreasonable amount of personal responsibility increases the likelihood that you will regret later. Learning to expect less from yourself and to accept that there is a lot in life that you cannot change is a good defense against regret.
   • When you find yourself overflowing with regret and keep worrying about what you could have done differently, distance yourself from the situation. Ask yourself, "If a friend or family member told me this, what would I say? Do I think it is reasonable to take on this level of guilt?"
   • Consider the circumstances surrounding the situation or decision you regret. A number of factors beyond your control may have affected your judgment. Were you under pressure to make a quick choice? Did you have too little knowledge when you made a decision? Were there several stress factors hindering your judgment?
   • Suppose you are the manager of a charity. For an upcoming fundraiser, you have booked a popular hotel bar / restaurant well in advance. The hotel manager will call you a week before the event to warn you that he has accidentally overbooked that weekend. Since your group was the second to book online, the first group will take precedence. In a panic, you look for alternative options. You will find another hotel a kilometer away and a local theater where there are no bookings that weekend. In the absence of time to weigh up the pros and cons, you arrange the second hotel. When the event is there, the hotel staff turns out to be rude, the food is poor and the space is not large enough to accommodate the participants. In this scenario, you might regret your decision to choose the hotel and wish you had gone for the theater. But how much control did you really have over that? Circumstances had put you in a difficult situation and had to make a quick decision. While it didn't work out, it probably isn't reasonable to blame yourself for anything.
3. Accept what you cannot know. Regret, as said, stems from counterfactual thinking. To stop regretting a decision, we must accept that this line of thinking is harmful. There is much in life that we do not know.
   • All our actions have a ripple effect. That means that there is something that affects our choices that we cannot take into account. Usually, the consequences of our choices are only really visible years after we have made the decisions. Even if something looks bad now, we don't know what the future holds, and the regretted decision may turn out to be only a minor setback years later.
   • Keep in mind that when you move on to "what-if" questions, you are usually under the impression that the scenario you devised would have been superior to your current situation. The fact is, this is not something you can know. Try imagining a "what-if" scenario based on the possibility that the choice you made is actually the better one. Take the lottery example above. What if you played the songs that week and won a lot? What if you quit your job, you got bored, and the fortune eventually resulted in a gambling addiction, drinking problem, or narcotics abuse, just to pass the time?

Method 2 of 3: Be proactive

1. Learn from your mistakes. Regret is like any other emotion. It has a basic survival function. Be open to the productive aspects of regret to reduce its duration.
   • Regret is how we learn to face our actions. Personal growth and positive change would be impossible without something that forces us to occasionally recognize decisions that lead to negative consequences. Addicts, for example, often rely on regret as the motivation to overcome their addiction.
   • Reframe your thoughts about the situation or decision you regret. Think of mistakes as opportunities to grow and change. Young people are often more able to deal with regret, and much of this is due to the fact that they view the emotion as positive. They embrace the fact that regret is the key to change and growth.
   • Accept blame. Often people attribute their actions to external circumstances. This leads to more bad decisions, and ultimately more regrets. For example, suppose you showed up late for work because you went out the night before. You could blame your behavior on a stressful week or peer pressure, and the next time it's happy hour you'll just repeat the process. But if instead you think, "Staying up late was a wrong decision and I have faced the consequences," then you are more likely to avoid such actions in the future. You have embraced the fact that you are in control of the situation, rather than leaving control to outside forces.
2. Allow yourself to grieve for disappointments. Sometimes when circumstances are particularly unfavorable, we have to experience grief. Allowing yourself time to embrace disappointment for an appropriate period of time can help you recharge.
   • Sadness is a lot like regret. It's a negative emotion but useful to us as a species. Sad feelings push the mind into a hyper-focused state, which allows us to evaluate problems and figure out how to come to terms with life's difficulties.
   • It is normal to respond to negative circumstances with grief. Avoiding those feelings can increase the duration of disappointment and frustration. After a particularly bad failure, give yourself a week to mourn your loss and experience your disappointment.
3. Assess your relationships. Often times, our most regrettable moments stem from bad relationships with friends, family members, and other important people.
   • If you are going through a difficult time that leads to feelings of sadness and regret, are your friends there for you? Who offer you their support and love and who remain in the background?
   • Know which people don't support you emotionally and who have trapped you in difficult situations in the past. Continuing to foster long-term negative interpersonal relationships is something you will eventually regret. Cut ties with those who do not support you and strengthen ties with those who do.
4. Decide what action to take. As mentioned, viewing regret as an opportunity to grow means that you are likely to spend less time dwelling on mistakes. However, you will have to be willing to take action. Figure out what you need to do to put your regrets behind you.
   • Was someone hurt by a decision you made? Did the consequences of your actions affect family members or friends? Are there phone calls you want to make or letters you want to write? If necessary, take a moment to apologize.
   • Write down any emotions you are experiencing. "I'm sad because X, Y, and Z." "I'm mad because X, Y, and Z." Review this list when you are done and evaluate what led to your current thinking. What would you have done differently? What drives these emotions and how can you reasonably eliminate them?

Method 3 of 3: Change your lifestyle

1. Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is a mental state in which you are actively aware of the present moment. Mindfulness in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy has been used with some success to treat depression rooted in chronic regret.
   • To be mindful or attentive means to observe your thoughts from a distance. You are able to objectively evaluate your past and mistakes made, allowing you to be reasonable about the real impact your regrets have on your life.
   • Simple meditation can help with mindfulness. Focus on your breath or a particular word or phrase. Let thoughts flow into your mind without judging them when you experience them.
   • Pay attention to any sensations in your body, such as itching and breathing. Take note of all the senses, such as sight, smell, sound, smell, and taste. Try to experience every moment, fully aware of your surroundings and your feelings.
   • Experience emotion without judgment. Allow yourself to experience sadness, fear, anger, and pain without trying to ignore or suppress your emotions.
   • When successful, mindfulness keeps you focused on the now. This prevents you from succumbing to past thoughts and past decisions. Concentrating on what you can control, the present, can lessen your self-judgment on past decisions or situations. Mindfulness therapy has proven to be particularly helpful for elderly patients with chronic regrets about their lives.
2. Strive for abstract goals. Often times, disappointment and regret are related to failure to achieve certain goals. Shifting how we think about goals and achievements can help us better deal with regret and accept it now.
   • Link your long-term goals to abstract achievements. Say, "In five years, I want to feel happy most of the time" instead of "In five years, I want to be at the top of my career." In this way, your sense of achievement is linked to your mindset, which you can manage, rather than aspects of life that are often beyond your control.
   • Research shows that concrete rewards make people less happy than abstract ones. People who are driven by money, fame, fortune and career success are generally less happy than people who pursue abstract things such as happiness, positive relationships and intellectual pursuits.
3. Talk about it. A support system is invaluable when it comes to dealing with the disappointments that lead to regret. Talking about your feelings can help you reassess them and gain insight from an outside perspective.
   • Discuss your disappointment with a friend or family member. Bottling up disappointment can give it the opportunity to grow and get worse. Look for people who have had similar experiences and can share their insights with you.
   • If you are struggling to overcome disappointment, consider seeking therapy. A therapist can provide you with an objective perspective on your situation and advice on how to deal with negative thoughts.
4. Appreciate it now. Often regrets stems from the desire for a choice you have not made. Appreciating the present moment and embracing the positive things in your life can help minimize feelings of regret.
   • Regret is often the result of an imbalance in thinking. Sticking to a particular decision, or set of decisions, disrupts the ability to realistically evaluate our lives because it puts unnecessary emphasis on negative aspects.
   • Write down all the positive things in your life, such as family, friends, jobs, and any successes you've had so far. In reality, every situation has advantages and disadvantages. The problem is, because of regret, we only see the drawbacks. Embracing the benefits of the present is a great way to minimize feelings of regret.