No Regrets

Hey, Cadre family doctor. Carrie here. I was having this conversation with someone the other day, and they said, you literally have no regrets in life. How is that even possible? Because I said, I don't have regrets. I I'm happy about the decisions I've made, and I've moved on from the ones that I didn't. And they said, but you don't have, like, any regrets. Like, what about, like, marrying your ex husband? Isn't that a regret? What about making that financial decision that ended up so poorly? Like, literally nothing.

No, I don't. And it made me kind of reflect. Okay, so why am I like this? Like, why do I have no regrets? And honestly, it was a conscious decision I made in my early twenties because I had seen so many people in my life, including my family, live with regret. And really, what is regret? Let's unpack that. So, regret is basically you saying, I wish I didn't do that. I wish I didn't make that decision. I wish I didn't engage in that thing. And it actually. The root of it is shame. It's saying, gosh, what's wrong with me?

Why did I do that? And you can keep yourself in bondage with shame really easily over regrets, and it can almost become, like, a form of self loathing and self hatred and resentment towards you, towards the decisions you've made, which is ultimately towards you. And I've decided that I battle with shame a lot. It's probably one of the things I battle with the most. I was sharing with some people today that I am a very intrinsically motivated person. And so when I set out to achieve a goal, I achieve it.

And if I don't, I feel horrible. Like, I think there's something fundamentally flawed about me. I am a bad person. Like, I go straight to shame. I don't need anybody else's feedback if I don't achieve a goal. Like, it could literally be something that doesn't impact anybody. Like, I have a goal to get these three things done today, maybe something as simple as that. And if I don't achieve it, I will go straight to shame. And so this is just something I know about myself that I have always battled with, because I don't care what anybody else says to me.

I'm not somebody who needs a lot of recognition from external sources or even, I don't know, discipline or words of correction from external sources, because I have such a strong internal compass that I, like, only really care about what I think. I need to impress myself, okay? And I know other people that have, that are an enneagram one, if you know what the enneagram is. And this is very similar for them. This is just how I'm wired. And so I know that I battle with shame a lot. And I can really get into a spiral of like, I'm a bad person.

I'm, you know, I'm unworthy and it can just go really bad when I have shame. So if I'm regretting something in my life, it immediately is going to make me shameful about it. And when you carry shame, it has so many negative effects on your mindset, on your attitude, on your health, actually. And so I've just decided, like literally early on in my twenties that I'm not going to go there. I am going to be able to look at the decisions I've made. Usually, you know, after the decision was made that didn't turn out well.

It's not like I can do this right away and say, okay, I am consciously choosing to not have a regret about this and not blame myself and go to shame and say, okay, so I'm not happy I made that decision. For example, I am not happy that I had an affair when I was married. Probably one of the worst decisions I have ever made. And I carried shame for so long about that, so, so long because I was so ashamed of how I acted. It was out of character for me. It didn't go along with my beliefs. It was horrible what I did.

And so instead of living with the regret of that decision, I had to consciously choose to say, I know why I made that decision, to do that. And it was a conscious decision and I recognize the symptoms that led up to it. And I can also say confidently, I'm not going to make that decision again because I learned from it. And that's a lot of times what we need to say when we have a regret in life is how can I learn from that bad decision I made? What can I take away from it? Because otherwise you're just going to sit in shame about it.

And we all make bad decisions. We all do stupid stuff. Okay? I'm up there with a list of things that I've done that's stupid, but I've learned from every stupid thing I've done. And that's really all we can ask of ourselves as human beings. Because we're not perfect. We never will be. Even though I am striving to be that every single day with struggle, with perfectionism over here. Just know that you're not perfect. You're going to make mistakes. And what can you say? All right, I'm going to list off my regrets, and I'm also going to list off what I learned about them.

And then I'm going to forgive myself and move on. So that's my challenge for you today. I want you to try that and let me know how that goes. I hope this helped you guys today.