Regret

We all make mistakes—a moment of oops! I’m talking about the mistakes that mess up our healthy life-style. Mistakes like diving into the bag of chips or eating ten pieces of chocolate too many. We all fail to meet our own expectations at some point.

The most dangerous part of an oops moment is not the mistake itself, but the regret that comes from it. Regret can be powerful—in a negative way. Regret can make us discouraged, make us want to give up, and take away the hope and belief that we can actually succeed.

Battling through regret can be tough, but it’s not impossible. Regret is like any other obstacle—it takes determination and resilience to work through it.

Of course, one way to fight regret is to avoid it altogether. When faced with any temptation, we all get some form of pre-regret. Pre-regret is what I call the warning signals our mind gives us when telling us not to do something. Don’t eat that cookie, it’s loaded with sugar and fat or you don’t really need the extra portion at dinner. If we listen to our pre-regret, we will probably never have to deal with post-regret.

Post-regret is always louder and stronger. It eats at us. It nags. It plays over and over in our minds. Why is it so much harder to ignore our post-regret than our pre-regret?

I believe it’s possible to make the post-regret voice duller. We can choose to ignore it. Is it helping us succeed? The only time we should listen to the post-regret is when it is motivating us to listen to our pre-regret voice.

It’s also possible to train ourselves to sharpen the pre-regret voice. We can listen to it. Give it value and respect. It may be hard to hear it because we have chosen to ignore for years, but it’s still there, speaking quietly and faithfully to our good sense.