9) How To Get Over Regrets About Your Relationship and Life
Have you ever made a mistake? Of course, you have, since you are reading this shit. Who hasn't right? But your problem isn't that you made that mistake. Your problem is that you can't get over making this mistake hence the regret.
I have had so many regrets that trying to list them would be an arduous task. But the cool thing is, they don't bother me as they used to because I don't see them as regrets, I see them as something much more productive. And here is how you can turn your regrets into something else too.
The answer to that question lies in the story of How psychologist Leon Festinger came up with the theory of Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). In 1953 bunch of lunatics predicted that the world would end that year. So the psychologist Leon Festinger thought, "wouldn't it be interesting to see what happens to these lunatics when the world doesn't end."
Spoiler alert, the world did not end. When faced with this, some lunatics rationalized this happened because they spread the message so well that they stopped the world from ending.
How did these lunatics come to that conclusion? It is because of cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is when you have two conflicting ideas/behaviours/attitudes simultaneously, which causes you a lot of distress. You can't believe Santa is real and Santa is fake at the same time. Your head would explode. You would need to kill or modify one idea to reduce that distress because you can't have two conflicting ones.
These lunatics had two ideas on their minds that were conflicting.
1) The doom will happen
2) The doom did not happen
So these lunatics have two choices. They can either believe they sacrificed their careers and relationships to spread the message and saved the world or they can believe that they sacrificed their career and relationships for nothing and their prediction was wrong. They picked the option where the doom did not happen BECAUSE they spread the message and prevented it.
They picked that version because the alternative is that they sacrificed their careers and relationships for nothing. They picked this version because it is easier to believe and digest than thinking they killed their careers for no reason. I don't blame them because admitting mistakes that turned your life upside down is challenging and emotionally taxing. Not everyone can handle that. It takes a lot of intelligence, emotional fortitude and courage to admit you were wrong. The dumbest people are the people that never admit when they have made a mistake. A Lot of people are like that, they are always 100% in the right cause they can't handle being wrong. They cheated, lied, and abused their partners, but they are angels while the other is the devil incarnate.
You are not like that. You are one of those people who are strong and smart enough to admit you made a mistake but the downside of that is you end up regretting not making the "Right" decision and you keep wondering what life would be like if you did not make those decisions.
I get so many emails that say "I know, I am stupid for doing this.....I know you are gonna judge me etc" You are not stupid for making that mistake. Not at all. The smartest people in the history of the universe were wrong. Aristotle was wrong about Geocentrism, he thought planets revolved around the earth. That does not even compare to the mistakes people make in their romantic life. In love, you are not thinking rationally 90% of the time, so it's almost impossible to avoid mistakes. Let's face it, love makes us blind. The Greek gods of love, such as Cupid and Eros, are often depicted with blindfolds. In the renaissance, romantic love was discouraged because that made you "stupid" and it was what young dumb teenagers did. So it is normal that you made mistakes and have regrets because of them. "Einstein told his wife that for his marriage to continue, that his wife should not expect any affection from her." Surprise, Surprise, their marriage did not work.
You have to realize it was normal to make mistakes, especially in a romantic relationship or in life, cause you are only human, not god or a flawless being.
Transforming The Regret
Mark Manson puts this perfectly in his article. From that realization about the regret, you have to understand why you did this in the past. What led you to make the "wrong" choice? Was this past version of you constantly acted jealous because he was insecure about themselves. Try to understand why they did that. If jealousy was the issue, then focus on working it. If neediness was the problem, then focus on working on that.
I was so needy in the past. And did the worst things you can do. After the first date, I would ask their hand at marriage. I would become very clingy. I would text them every 5 secs, and if they didn't reply I would have mental breakdown. Rationally I knew people don't like when you are clingy, but emotionally I did not know that. After losing many relationships because of my clinginess, I realized that I needed to start being less clingy. The regret I felt from losing those relationships made me change for good. The regret transformed into a lesson. Now, I am not needy at all.
We all know that excessive jealousy, lying, cheating, manipulative behaviour etc. can cause our relationships to fail, but we do it anyway because knowing something is not the same thing as being ready to implement it in our lives, as Matthew Hussey puts it brilliantly in his video about "how to stop torturing yourself."
I knew lying was wrong, but I lied in one of my relationships anyway. I changed my ways only after I lost someone because of that. The regret of losing them because of lying made me change that attribute in me for good. I made every mistake you can think of. You name it. I have done it. That is why I am here because my regrets have given me lessons that I can share with you, so you don't end up making the same mistakes and have these regrets. You did what you did because that was who you were before THE LESSON from Regret changed you.
So ask yourself. How can I use these regrets and change them into lessons? You have to change the narratives of these regrets. This regret was a lesson that taught you "Blank."
I had a lot of regrets during my first year of university. My regrets about failing to socialize in college made me go so hard later on and killed my social anxiety. That regret was a lesson to force me to tackle my social anxiety.
That is the purpose of regret! To change your behaviour, not to make you feel shittier. Transform your regrets into lessons.
Now there is a group of people who keep saying that "Hey Harry, if I did this, then this would not have happened. If I did not beg and plead like a loser she would have stayed with me...... I knew it was wrong...or at the time I didn't know better etc etc etc.....
If you did that "right" thing you may have gotten that outcome or maybe you would not have. Maybe if you did not beg and plead, you could have gotten them back during No-contact BUT ended up losing them in 6 months anyway. If you guys were fundamentally incompatible, you would have broken up at one point, If you wanted kids 100% and the other person did not, then no matter what you did, it would have ended at one point or the other. You think if you did not make that mistake or acted in a particular way, you guys would end up happily ever after. You think if you just did not have that misunderstanding, you guys would have lived together forever. Your thoughts are wrong.
Because no matter what you did, it could have ended in any 100s of ways that were less than ideal. You are just focused on the ideal optimistic outcome. Who knows, you could have gotten married and she could have died in a car crash or he could have turned out to be a serial killer. You don't know. Seriously, she could have turned into a raging alcoholic because she hated her job or he could have started cheating because you grew distant in your marriage. You don't know. It is not realistic to only focus on the ideal outcome. You have to think about the worst-case scenarios too. You can sit and list 100s of worst-case scenarios that could have happened other than the ideal one, and they would have the same probability of occuring. That is the nature of life. It is the optimism bias that forces us to overestimate the possibility of the ideal outcome. Thats common (unless you are depressed or very cynical). If humans didn't have the optimism bias, then we would not start anything. That caveman would never have tried to make a better cave if he didn't have an optimistic bias. If we thought we would fail, we would never do anything ever.
So, I want you to list all the ways the relationship would have ended even if you did not make those mistakes. If he was very career-focused, he could have chosen his career over you, or if she was embarrassed about you, she might have broken up with you.
You were always going to do what you did because that is who you were BEFORE THE LESSON from the regret. All your life experiences built you up to that moment where you did that thing you later regret. Remember how I told you guys how needy I was. My experiences with my mother made me act needy. She would not give me the care I needed, so I had to act needy to get the care I needed and developed an anxious attachment style, but when I grew up, that's what I started doing with the women I dated. You can't undo your attachment style by reading bro magazines that teach you not to be needy. You can't tell people, don't be jealous to stop jealousy. My experiences with losing relationships due to neediness are what made me change my neediness. Any time I thought about being needy, I stopped myself because I knew what the consequences were. Telling a child not to touch the hot stove does not work. The child only learns not to touch a hot stove after he did it and got burned. When he got burned, that experience seeped into his being, which is why he stops now.
You had to experience the consequences of losing them to LEARN from that mistake.
You might say now that. "Oh, I wish I did not have these experiences that made me do the thing I regret." I also used to think that, I used to think that I had a mother that cared for me, so I did not behave so needy. But the experiences that made you do the thing you regret could have been the same thing that helped you get that person. Think about it! My experience with my mom made me act needy, but it also made me very entertaining. I had to constantly entertain adults in my life to get taken care of. So when I became an adult, I was good at entertaining people. This entertaining skill helped me get these girls to date me in the first place.
So the thing that made me needy also made me entertaining hence you can't wish you had a different past. If you removed those "negative experiences" in your life, you would not be You. Without the negative experiences with my mom, I would not be as entertaining as I am now. However, if the past experiences that made you, YOU were traumatic, get professional help, but you can't deny the positive attributes you were forced to acquire to protect yourself.
Whatever happened to you in the past that made you behave like that was not under your control. Focus on what is under your control now. How you act now after all your LESSONS from your regrets is under your control. Choose wisely, but even if you get them wrong and regret it later, you will be learning something new.
References:
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Stanford university press.
Matthew Hussey Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc18E8coV8s
Mark Manson Article: https://markmanson.net/regret
