How to Get Over Regret

We are human. By definition, we are fallible and make mistakes. Some people make more than others, but everyone makes them. However, we should not let mistakes make us. That is, we should not allow our past mistakes to create more mistakes.

Regret is a painful experience. Sometimes the feeling is mixed with guilt, and sometimes it’s mixed with sorrow. Sometimes it’s regret over something foolish or ridiculous. The feeling of regret comes from our conscience and our beliefs.

Some people make mistakes that can cause their future lives to be very painful because of them. For example, I heard of a lady who accidentally reversed her car out of the driveway and ran over her child. This incident has occurred elsewhere in the country – in fact statistics have been gathered and it happened at least a hundred times in the past few decades. Parents in a rush get in their cars, put it in reverse, and without thinking much of it push the gas fairly hard. It’s a very unpleasant thought. It’s the type of tragedy that makes our every day petty regrets seem like thin air, nothingness.

Another serious regret that some people have is failing to meet someone they love, such as a relative, for a long time and then learning of that person’s death. I know a relative who did not meet my grandmother for at least five years before her death. Once that person dies, the chance is gone. One can only make prayers at that point.

Some people commit homicides while they are under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. Some commit negligent homicides when driving around. Laura Bush has this in her past, as did many other famous people. A very reckless funny car driver killed a large number of people in a parade when he tried to show off by accelerating hard and ended up swerving out of control – it’s the unvarnished truth. A famous journalist took a haunting photograph of a starving and almost dead baby boy in Africa and then abandoned the child. How does a person get over that? Unfortunately, he dealt with his regret in the wrong way.

Can you imagine the guilt and regret of these people? Students often feel regret over a bad grade. But you can repeat a course and get a better grade, maybe even an “A.” You can never bring back a dead person, however.

You will find that almost all of these people who commit negligent homicides continue to live their lives. They have to. A severe tragedy doesn’t need to be doubled by going through a suicide. Soldiers may have painful memories and regrets, and police officers may also have them. But they have to move on. They make amends and learn from it if they can – and if not others learn from it.

This doesn’t totally answer your questions though. We wonder – how can we get over the regret? Sometimes, it may seem like you’ll never get over it. But time does heal wounds. However, there is something that is a better way to heal the wounds of regret: learning the lessons and then taking action. Instead of letting oneself be haunted and miserable, a person can move. Volunteer with a homeless shelter or a charitable organization, or simply get busy with a hobby or a profession. In the past, long ago, it was found that giving jobs to people in the mental institutions could heal them. Even prison inmates benefit from working. A person who gets busy doing something positive may find that their past regrets are not rehashed as often.

There’s another point about regret. We often feel regretful about things that happened within a month or two ago. But do we still regret things that happened 10 years ago? Perhaps, but probably not to the point that it still wastes your time and makes you lose sleep. However, the unfortunate incident that happened yesterday falls into the same category as the tragedy that happened 20 years ago: it’s history, it’s in the past. We should learn the lesson, apply the lesson, and move on.