Regret
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You are currently reading a thread in /adv/ - Advice
You are currently reading a thread in /adv/ - Advice
How do you guys deal with all your regrets in life? God they keep me up every night, I seem to wrestle with more and more every day and I'm only in my late twenties. Girls and opportunities I passed up for the stupidest, most awkward reasons, never joining the military, never applying myself towards anything past graduating high school, never sticking with or really learning anything. I feel like it's too late to change, like I'm caring less every day about changing it. How do you all do it? I'm running out of strength, I can't cope forever knowing how many great things I've never done, but could have.
it's quite simple... I just let it go.
It requires practice.
>>17010647
I've always been great at letting wrongs against me, or things out of my control go. It's when I know how little direction I ever had, how much better I could have done, how much harder I could have tried, that really eats me.
>>17010658
You can't be sure that if you had done those things something wouldn't have gone terribly wrong. You may have ended up better off by not doing them.
>>17010666
True, but then at least I wouldn't be left wondering what could be. They say that regrets are what nightmares are made out of. Couldn't be more true. Granted, I'm obviously over thinking everything. Just damn hard not too when you know you could have tried.
>>17010666
Thanks for talking, by the way. What's got you on here tonight anyway?
>>17010669
If you had done those things you might be regretting wondering what would have happened if you had avoided them. That all works both directions.
>>17010675
Just very bored and don't want to sleep
>>17010643
First of all, if they're bad and you can't get rid of them and they're keeping you up at night, see a professional and get some therapy.
That's the easy way to fix it. It's like taking your car to a mechanic: it'll cost you money and save you time.
Anyways, here's some things that have helped me personally.
First thing is to recognize that some of those opportunities may not actually be gone. You can join the military until the mandatory retirement age, and college has no age limit at all. As for "sticking with/learning things", read that again. Unless you've been lobotomized or had your hippocampus removed due to a brain tumor or something, you are learning new things right now, and can go learn something interesting if you want.
Second, know that opportunity cost is a thing. If you had joined the military as an infantryman, it would have eaten years of your life with grunt work. Sure you would have gained many benefits and great experiences, but you also would have missed out on whatever you actually did during those years, much of which was probably pretty nice as well. On top of that, if you were on base right now training for the next intervention, you'd be wishing you had gone to college and gotten a degree in astrophysics and worked for NASA launching spaceships instead, and vice versa! These regrets aren't rational, you'd feel them even if you were a superstar, astronaut, or senator.
Third, if all else fails, suppress them. Just bury those feelings as deep as possible when they come up, because if you can't deal with them emotionally, and can't rationalize them away, then you just have to try to minimize the damage they do.
>>17010658
>It's when I know how little direction I ever had, how much better I could have done, how much harder I could have tried, that really eats me.
How old are you? Unless you're gonna say "75" then it's probably not too late to change your entire life trajectory if that's what you really want to do.
>>17010643
Remind yourself that absolutely everything in your life, good and bad, is the product of what came befor and wouldn't be there if the before had been any different.
Suppose you HAD hooked up with that girl back then? You then wouldn't have done what you did later that year, which means you would never have taken that class or gone on that road trip, and never met those people or developed those hobbies, and so on.
When thinking of "What if"s, we always make the mistake of picturing our life pretty much as it is, with that one variable changed. But in fact it would be totally different, in ways you can't imagine.
Think of the good things in your life today. Very probably NONE of them would be there if you had taken a different path in the past. No doubt other good things would have taken their place - but if you like anything about your life now, you can't regret what made it possible.
Killed my dad when i was 16. Just do alot of drugs and enjoy your blanket of illusions. White power
>>17010723
ew. this second place positivity is the disease of our culture. ignore this OP.
>>17010643
you've just got to start. simple is the hardest thing to do but don't complicate your life just start doing something easy, something that you can physically see would be good, maybe tidy your room up / arrange it to look better, draw something, anything simple really.
baby steps are important, it's about consistency and getting your brain to associate the doing and the satisfaction that comes with achieving something.
then you ramp it up progressively towards whatever you want to do.
it also sounds like you have problems with multiple aspects of your life. break them down and take them on one by one. just remember it's about consistency no point in going nuts and burning out.
once you get the engine running, you'll know exactly what to do.
>>17010676
Never happens this way desu
