Got any regrets?

I may regret admitting this but I have been reflecting on regrets...an essentially negative conscious emotion that can trap us...or liberate us. 

 

Rather crudely, it seems there are 3 groups of people when it comes to regret.

There are those who because of a particular ‘personality disorder’, haven’t got the capacity to experience it.

There are those who have no regrets or tell you as much.  

Then there are the rest of us who have regrets and we differ as how we relate to them or how they inform our life.   We may judge ourselves for their existence in our minds. We can let them engulf and paralyse us.  We may allow them to keep us small and solid. And we can turn towards their energy to help us be flexible and free, choosing to view them ‘not as regrets, but lessons’.   Thoreau encourages us to take it up a notch and ‘make the most of your regrets, never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh’.

And in a similar vein, Richard Power encouragingly writes “No regrets? Really? I have regrets. They are sacred to me. They inform my character. They bear witness to my evolution. Glimpses of lost love and treasure are held inside of them; like small beautiful creatures suspended in amber. Do not avoid your regrets. Do not discard them. If you deny their existence, you cheapen your experience. Embrace them. Listen to their stories. Wrap them in tattered prayer flags and place them on the altar of your life. Hold them to your heart when you want to remember the price you paid to become who you truly are”.

How do you treat your regrets?

Here in Inc.com a resource for entrepreneurs and business owners, 6 CEOs share theirs.

Sources:

Poem by Richard Power – from http://primalwordsofpower.blogspot.it/2013/05/small-beautiful-creatures-suspended-in.html

A timely posting by Rob Brezny - http://www.freewillastrology.com or http://www.internazionale.it/oroscopo/

Inc.com http://www.inc.com/ss/6-ceos-share-their-biggest-regrets#2
Thoreau quotes: www.brainyquote.com

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