10 Things Many People Will Regret in Ten Years

Note: This article is by Mark Chernoff, who talks about his experience and perspective on the subject of regret.

One morning I decided to go with him, and as he was laying the flower on her tombstone, he looked at me and said, "I wish I had picked her a fresh flower every morning while she was still alive. She would've loved it."

My grandfather's words touched my soul. Over the years, I kept thinking of what he said that morning and how my emotions relate to everything and everyone that mattered to me.

I don't want to be sitting with regret when I'm on the cusp of my 80s, and I don't want to wish I'd done things differently, especially something as simple and meaningful as picking wild flowers for the love of my life.

I know you partly agree with me. After all, we regret the small chances we didn't take, the precious relationships we didn't pay enough attention to because we were too busy, and the good decisions we waited a lifetime to make. My vast experience taught me these things.

Over the past decade providing coaching to hundreds of students and clients worldwide, I've seen the same regrets recur constantly in the personal stories people share with us. So we'll take a look at ten common things people regret, then cover some principles and strategies for avoiding and overcoming them.

10 Common things people regret

1. Not spending enough quality time with the right people

At one point, you feel you want to be with just the few people who place a smile on your face in every way. So start today by spending more time with those who help you love yourself more and who make you feel good, and spend less time with those you feel pressured to impress. Remember that nothing will be appreciated more than your attention and full presence with the other.

2. Not expressing your love openly and honestly to the people you love

Losing people is inevitable, so know that no matter how much time you spend with someone or how much you appreciate them, sometimes it'll feel like you didn't have enough time together. Don't look at it in a bad light. Rather express your love and just tell people what you want.

Don't shy away from important conversations because you feel awkward or uncomfortable. You will only have the opportunity for a while. You can tell someone how you feel, and the idea that they might not understand is possible because even when they hear you, they can't feel exactly what you feel inside. However, you should still speak and show your feelings to put your mind at ease. Tell the person you appreciate that, and tell them the important thing you want to tell them. Broken hearts often heal through words that have never been said before.

3. Allowing others to influence your view of your self-worth

We forget that most people judge us based on their own life experiences, which we have nothing to do with. For example, someone might assume things about you based purely on a traumatic experience with someone who looks a little like you. Thus, defining which part of your self-worth is based on what others think will get you into trouble. You'll be at the mercy of their biased and unreliable perspective of you. You'll feel good about yourself if they view and respond positively to you, but if you're on the opposite end, you'll feel like you did something wrong.

You'll never find your worth in another human being but yourself. Only then will you attract people who are worthy of your energy, and in the meantime, not overreacting or taking things personally will keep your mind clear and your heart at peace.

4. Being so busy impressing others that you forget what matters to you

Ten years from now, it won't matter what shoes you put on today, how you styled your hair, or what designer clothes you wore. What matters is how you loved and spent your life and what you learned.

So, don't impress people just to get them to like you. Be yourself instead. If you want to impress someone, impress yourself by making progress in an area you're genuinely proud to be interested in and focus on the important things. You'll be amazed at how much you can accomplish without worrying about what others think or do.

Show yourself that you can grow and improve, and it has nothing to do with impressing or competing with others. After all, your competition is no one else but you.

5. Letting uncertainty get the best of you

Trust me, and you'll see later that I was right, and you'll thank me too. You must embrace uncertainty because you won't feel comfortable about the most wonderful phases of your life, until some time has passed.

Your life is in itself a risky business. You take a small, uncertain risk with every decision, interaction, step and morning you get out of bed. Therefore, your decision to go on with your life and live means that you know that you're taking this risk with confidence in yourself. If you don't take it and let uncertainty take hold of you, you'll never be sure of anything. This lack of knowledge will be worse than discovering your intuition was wrong because if you're wrong, you can make adjustments and move on with your life without looking back and wondering about the possibilities. So remember this, and find your courage. You can't get permanent guarantees, and life doesn't work like this; either you live bravely or comfortably, but not both at once.

6. Focusing on failures rather than opportunities

You've certainly fallen through and got hurt in the past, but you've loved people, and they've loved you in return. You've taken risks and won in the end. You've not only grown but also become wiser. All these experiences carry a weight greater than any particular failure or injury. So it's better to live a life full of small wounds and failures you learned from than one full of regrets for not trying at all.

Think about it. Have you ever seen a toddler take walking lessons? Of course not. They stumble and fall many times before they properly walk on their own, so falls are learning opportunities.

It often takes pain and patience to sustain progress. So view time as someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, and now they're gone. Don't end up waving goodbye to that person from the outside. View time as that person, and don't let it pass, don't spend the rest of your life thinking about why you don't do what you can now.

7. Cling too tightly to illusions and miss out on real opportunities

You can't lose something you never had before. You can't keep it either. You shouldn't hold on to something or someone who doesn't want to stay, but you can try to do all of the above if you want to drive yourself nuts. You need to realize that most things in your life only exist because you keep thinking about them, so stop clinging to what hurts and make room for the things that feel right.

Don't let what's beyond your control interfere with everything you can control. In other words, let go of the things and people who don't fit into your life, so you can welcome what does. When some people step away from you and opportunities close their doors at you, there's no need to hold on to them or wish for them to stay in your life. If they end the relationship, take it as a direct indication that these people, circumstances, and opportunities are not part of the next chapter in your life. It hints that your personal growth requires different things or people, so your life makes room for new experiences.

8. Playing the victim

If you always play the victim, you'll always be treated as one. Life is unfair, but you shouldn't let the past decide the shape of your future. You might remember going through hell and thinking that you won't be able to make it through, but you did and will make it again. Don't let the challenges get the best of you, and don't let your fears take over you.

Don't be a victim of yourself, and take the smallest next step. The greatest mistake you can make is not doing anything just because you can only do so little. You can always do this little part; what you're going through now is necessary.

We may sometimes avoid experiencing exactly what we're in because we built up a belief based on our ideals that this is not where we should be. But you're exactly where you need to be, and it's the right place to take the next small step forward.

9. Waiting and over-analyzing

We often waste time waiting for the perfect path, but it never appears. We forget that paths are made by hard work, not by standing idle. Let's remember that it's easy to laze around and wait, and it's easy to waste another day. However, we must do the opposite and decide what we want to achieve and accomplish. Work is anxiety's worst enemy, as it offers progress.

So don't confuse random action with real action. When you find yourself making critical decisions - stuck in a spiral of overanalyzing and hesitation, not making any progress - take a deep breath and break out of this cycle. Then thoughtfully choose the next logical step and take it. Even if you make the wrong decision, you'll learn something to help you correct your path later.

10. Getting so busy that you forget to appreciate your life

Take action and work hard, but don't forget to stop and pay attention to life's small details too. This might honestly be the best advice you can give. You should know that life is a set of small opportunities for happiness, each has their duration.

Take some time each day to observe the beauty in between big events. Nothing can be better than dreamy moments, sunsets, and fresh breezes, but most of all, realizing that life is all about being present.

You must watch, listen, and work without monitoring time or expecting results at every moment. On really good days, let these little moments fill your heart with intense gratitude, and truth be told, the day you'll wish you spent less time of your life worrying and rushing and more time being awake and thankful for each passing day is coming, whether it's tomorrow or on your deathbed.

How to get rid of what you already regret?

The points above are important reminders to avoid regret, but what if you're having difficulty with things you regret?

There's no doubt that feelings of regret sometimes creep up on the best of us, and as tempting as the idea of living a life free of regrets is, it's rarely easy because what often happens before we even realize what we are thinking is:

1. Regret the missed opportunities.
2. Regret that we didn't spend our time and energy more wisely.
3. Regret the situations and conversations that didn't go well.
4. Regret not speaking when we had the chance.
5. Regret getting into toxic relationships or making mistakes in previous ones.

We regret certain things even when we know better. We do so because we worry that we should have made different decisions in the past, that we should have done better, but didn't, that we should have given the relationship another chance but we didn't, and that we should have started that project, but also never did, etc.

We compare the real consequences of our past decisions to the idealistic imagination of how things should be. In other words, there's a myth running around in our heads about how things would have turned out if we had made different decisions.

The problem is that we can't change those decisions because we can't change the past. Yet we endlessly resist this fact, continuing to analyze and compare the unchangeable reality with our idealized imagination. We live like this until we waste days of our lives in extreme misery.

Why do we do that? If we know better, why can't we abandon our ideals and fantasies?  Because we identify with these ideals and fantasies. We all have this vision of who we are, our good intentions, intelligence, social influence and so on, so we make the best decisions because we have good intentions. So, even if you struggle with deeply rooted self-esteem issues, you will likely still define yourself as a decent and respectable person.

So when someone says something about us that goes against the vision we define ourselves with, we feel that our goals, intelligence, and character are insulted. We feel personally attacked, and it's hard for us to get over it.

Something similar can happen when we think we've done something wrong by going against the same vision we set for ourselves. We feel offended too, and sometimes we get angry and beat ourselves up for our mistake, asking: “How can I do this?” or “Why didn't I act smarter and make a better decision?” Once again, we find it hard to accept that we're not always as good as we imagine ourselves to be.

Long story short, our ideals and fantasies about ourselves cause us a great deal of misery. The key to getting rid of this is to gradually practice letting go of these ideals and illusions and instead focus on making the best out of our reality by embracing the truth.

Every bad decision we have made in the past has already been made

There are some good aspects - if we want to see them - in each of those bad decisions. Getting up in the morning, learning, and growing from our vast life experiences is a blessing. Just being able to decide at all is a blessing.

We're not what we imagine ourselves to be

We're human beings. We have many personalities and fall short of perfect. We do good deeds, make mistakes, and return the favor. We're also self-centered, honest and tell white lies sometimes. We're prone to failure even when we leave no stone unturned. Once we accept this fact and feel comfortable with our humanity, bad decision-making will create less conflict with our new, more fluid and nuanced view of ourselves.

Whenever you obsess and regret a past decision, you can

1. Acknowledge that you repeatedly fall into the trap of regret.
2. Realize that you're comparing yourself and your decisions with some ideal or fantasy you've created.
3. Let go of these ideals or fantasies, and accept reality by coming to terms with past experiences, so you can focus more on what's to come.

It may require constant practice, but you won't regret doing so.

In conclusion

One day, you'll find yourself thinking about the beginning after it's about to end, and today is that beginning. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, so why do not you start putting the principles in this article to good use now?

Motivate yourself by answering a simple question: What's the one thing you could do today that you know you won't ever regret doing?