Regrets and Reflections

“We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.” ― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

As we age, we get more tolerant, or do we give up?  We have more time to reflect on our past, and that.....that has to be guarded well.  We cannot change anything in the past, not even in a past moment ago.  It was what it was and we need to come to positive terms with it.  Are we grudge-holders because we begrudge our past?  Are we unforgiving of others because we are unforgiving of self?  Look, we can hang on to negatives, for dear life, until the end of our life, and it still will not change actualities.  What we CAN change, is our perspectives.

How many years, days, do we have left to keep lugging regrets around?  Is not our immediate well-being more important than that stuff that was?  We allow our spirit to be drenched with negatives and we will die thinking our whole life was negative.  When we focus on one aspect, we lose the other.  If we were authentic, we will know we grew from negatives and there were a lot more positives than negatives.  Life will afford us more negatives and we need, now, to learn how to manage them.  Our very soul quests for us to make positive come from negatives.  Do we try harder to overrule positives than negatives?  Oh, our poor souls.  They have had enough to deal with and here comes aging with a whole new set of 'stuff' to deal with.  How prepared are we?

It is our soul that whispers positives.  It is our Ego that would have us regretful.  There is a huge difference between the two.  Our soul will carry on, our Ego will  not.  Have we wounded our own souls?  Did we blame others for our decisi9ns so that we have never dealt with Letting Go?  We simply cannot go on merely surviving.  We need to seek our resilience.  Contemplate thoughts about that.  We have to contemplate thriving.  

It is hard work to quiet that inner monster of Ego.  It might be the hardest thing.  I am constantly correcting my thoughts, pushing through pain and fear (and residual anger) to disallow shame and guilt to remain in focus.  At some point we need to silence past scrap.  We need to stay focused on day to day living and loving and adventuring, no matter our circumstances.  We are going to get too old to do much more than reflect and do less and less responding.  If we have to do the work of dealing with regrets, we best get at it.

I made a list of things I regret.  Oh, I started out really well at listing 'stuff'.  Then, suddenly, while listing, I realized how useless the activity was... and I realized that a whole lot of those regrets had taught me lessons that turned it all into positives.  I scratched out those that were left and I suddenly had few.  So, I reversed my idea of listing and started listing the positives.  I found it deeper work.  Suddenly, I realized I was forgetting 'good' stuff while I was focusing on regrets.  I made a plan to change things up.  Every night, just as I am readying to fall asleep, I started remembering as far back as I could remember, the good things that had happened; the beautiful things; the miraculous things...  oh, that list did grow, nightly.  I found gratitude.  Wow, I was missing the gratitude.  

There are healthy ways to deal with regrets.  I have found a way for myself.  Have you found a way for yourself?  Seek it!  It is so strengthening.  It so helps to focus on the positives of the present moments.  I decided I am not afraid of death, a long time ago, but now I would be more afraid of dying with regrets.  I am fixing those things.

©Carol Desjarlais 3.15.19