NationStates Jolt Archive

Are you plagued by them? Do you have none? Do you think they help you stop making the same mistakes? Or are just a pain?

I have enough regets to make the national debt. look small :(

Yeah I have one regret - not breaking up with my ex-boyfriend sooner.

Of course I have regrets, but I try to make them a positive thing. Sometimes I live in the past and keep wondering what could have been, or how different things could be now but it doesn't help anything. If anything I try to make it a motivation not to let something like that happen again. Now to be fair that hasn't worked yet, but hey I'm trying...

I have regrets that make my life unlivable at times.

You'll know true regret when you wake up at night, like a child - alone, scared, crying... and you cant stop it to figure out why, you only realize this part when its too late. :(

I have regrets that make my life unlivable at times.

You'll know true regret when you wake up at night, like a child - alone, scared, crying... and you cant stop it to figure out why, you only realize this part when its too late. :(
Umm that sounds like therapy time.

Umm that sounds like therapy time.
No, its not like that - but there is nothing worse or harder to live with than regret. The strange thing is, you'll find yourself seldom regretting things you've done, and quite often regretting things you haven't. I meant that to be constructive - I know I can sound down about it, I don't mean to. If something positive can come of my mistakes, it will be that I can teach others not to make them.

No, its not like that - but there is nothing worse or harder to live with than regret. The strange thing is, you'll find yourself seldom regretting things you've done, and quite often regretting things you haven't. I meant that to be constructive - I know I can sound down about it, I don't mean to. If something positive can come of my mistakes, it will be that I can teach others not to make them.
Oops, you just sounded clinically derpressed before, though its hard to tell anything online. I agree totally with the regretting what you haven't done. I might somewhat depressed about things that I couldn't make work, but I think thats healthy. No one can be happy all the time, and pretending otherwise isn't exactly healthy.

Hehehe kiwicrog shouldn't you be working?

Hehehe kiwicrog shouldn't you be working?I... Uh.... am....

Shutup. :D

I voted that I dont get many, but probably deserve to.

Regrets? All the times I was less than kind to either people or animals. Fortunately, there weren't many.

Regrets? All the times I was less than kind to either people or animals. Fortunately, there weren't many.Shouldn't you be jumping in on your prom thread? Or have you abandoned it? :)

No, and I just went through a rough patch over the last month and a half or so, which most certainly did not help any of the relationships in my life. Its easy for people to become alienated when they see someone go down like that, no one wants to be around someone who's sad all the time - and the bridges that get burned along the way aren't that easy to rebuild.

Once you've allowed regret to dominate you like that (and yes, it still does dominate me - I must admit this) people look at you as if you're weak, or like you are a problem they have to deal with. Of course Id rather things just go back to normal, it never happens though. I don't think people realize, when these things come up in my life at least, that I don't want help as much as a true honest friend just to talk to, who doesn't judge me, who doesn't just wait for me to come to them.

Thats the strange thing about regret, it kind of lingers - and I don't think you can ever rid yourself of it, but you can find ways to deal with it. It took me long enough to identify the regrets that I have, and what caused them. I still havent figured out a way to really deal with them, but I do try and use the negative impact theyve had on my life to educate others. How much of it gets through I don't know - people are strange that way, we can be told the most crucial advice over and over, never heeding it until its application has passed. I think most of the regret I've seen in peoples lives as well as my own could have been easily prevented had I only paid more attention to the advice of not only those around me but of myself as well.

There are a number of things that I regret, so I voted "alot over stupid things that don't matter anymore"

Were there things I have done that I would do otherwise if I knew what I know now (heck even what I knew then, if I'd been thinking clearer), certainly. Things I have done and not done which I regret, not really - if I had acted otherwise I would be a different person and overall I'm satisfied with myself. I've learned a lot from the stupid things I've done over the years, far more than I would have ever learned by doing the smart things.

I voted that I dont get many, but probably deserve to.
So do you regret not getting more regrets? :D

Seriously, regret is one of those things that doesn't make sense to me. You make a mistake, you learn from it, you move on. People just need to get over themselves.

Seriously, regret is one of those things that doesn't make sense to me. You make a mistake, you learn from it, you move on. People just need to get over themselves.

:cool:

My thoughts exactly...

I've done a lot of stupid things, but I regret none of them. They are part of what made me who I am today...and I wouldn't change myself for anything...despite my many flaws. :p

I don't have many true regrets... there are some things that if i had known extra information i wouldn't have done but i just consider them as experience and if i need to apologise because what i've done has hurt someone other than myself then i make every effort to do so

Seriously, regret is one of those things that doesn't make sense to me. You make a mistake, you learn from it, you move on. People just need to get over themselves.
Sometimes its just shorthand. Mistakes are marked by decisions that you regret. Just because you regret doing it doesn't mean you have to dwell on it, it just means that next time around that decision has a regretable option and you avoid it. But there has been an added element artificially stapled to regret that insists, it seems, that it accompanies regret.

But really, it's semantic. Dwelling doesn't even have an all bad thing to it, good retrospection can make growth and learning from ones mistakes even better.

Excess is its own thing...

I don't have a lot of regrets, but the ones I have are HUGE.
When I screw up it's a doozie.

I have no regrets. Not even the really regretable stuff I've done.

Are you plagued by them? Do you have none? Do you think they help you stop making the same mistakes? Or are just a pain?

I've had a few

I have one actuall regret that occasionally plauges me. Other things may occasionally crop up and I'll think "I wish I'd done something else instead of this..." but generally I just learn a leson from these mistakes and move on.

I've had a few.
But then again,
too few to mention

I've had a few.
But then again,
too few to mention

Yay, I get your reference!

I love that song. I want to sing it at my funeral ;)

Yay, I get your reference!

I love that song. I want to sing it at my funeral ;)
Hollands biggest junk/artist/painter had recorded it just before he commited suicide. It was played at his funeral :eek:

When I look back upon my life,
Its always with a sense of shame,
I've always been the one to blame,

That was tricky...

I've had my fair share of regrets, of course. But would I go back in the past and change what I did? Never! 1: I don't want to relive the past - even the good parts would become annoying and meaningless if repeated. 2: How would I have learned?

So, there's a sense of regret for me, but I generally try to move on.

How about you? Would you want to go back and correct any of your mistakes?

Bump

How about you? Would you want to go back and correct any of your mistakes?Um, I'm at a pretty good place in my life and when you are happy, you don't really think about how you could have improved the past.

It's when I have a major fuckup in my life that I'll be thinking about that! I've discovered that you learn a lot from bad experiences, I don't know if I'd go back.

Maybe if it were something accidental (i.e. driving into a lamppost killing your friend) rather than something stupid that you did.

No, and I just went through a rough patch over the last month and a half or so, which most certainly did not help any of the relationships in my life. Its easy for people to become alienated when they see someone go down like that, no one wants to be around someone who's sad all the time - and the bridges that get burned along the way aren't that easy to rebuild.

Once you've allowed regret to dominate you like that (and yes, it still does dominate me - I must admit this) people look at you as if you're weak, or like you are a problem they have to deal with. Of course Id rather things just go back to normal, it never happens though. I don't think people realize, when these things come up in my life at least, that I don't want help as much as a true honest friend just to talk to, who doesn't judge me, who doesn't just wait for me to come to them.

Thats the strange thing about regret, it kind of lingers - and I don't think you can ever rid yourself of it, but you can find ways to deal with it. It took me long enough to identify the regrets that I have, and what caused them. I still havent figured out a way to really deal with them, but I do try and use the negative impact theyve had on my life to educate others. How much of it gets through I don't know - people are strange that way, we can be told the most crucial advice over and over, never heeding it until its application has passed. I think most of the regret I've seen in peoples lives as well as my own could have been easily prevented had I only paid more attention to the advice of not only those around me but of myself as well.

i know its none of my business but im consumed with curiosity over just what kind of regret you could have at your age that is consuming your life

can we have an example of one that you can be specific about without mortifying yourself with embarassment?

i dont have any real regrets. i have a few "i wish i had known before i made my decision"s i try to not make mistakes but sometimes you just dont know the implications of things before you DO them. you do your best and it doesnt turn out best. as long as i tried to do right, i dont dwell on my bad decisions.

Maybe if it were something accidental (i.e. driving into a lamppost killing your friend) rather than something stupid that you did.

Hmm... yeah... if it were that extreme, I probably would wanna do it over - but really, only if I had the opportunity to do so immediately. If it were 10 yrs down the road, probably not.

Hmm... yeah... if it were that extreme, I probably would wanna do it over - but really, only if I had the opportunity to do so immediately. If it were 10 yrs down the road, probably not.Yep, agree.

Sometimes its just shorthand. Mistakes are marked by decisions that you regret. Just because you regret doing it doesn't mean you have to dwell on it, it just means that next time around that decision has a regretable option and you avoid it. But there has been an added element artificially stapled to regret that insists, it seems, that it accompanies regret.

But really, it's semantic. Dwelling doesn't even have an all bad thing to it, good retrospection can make growth and learning from ones mistakes even better.

I disagree. I think regret is earmarked by wishing you could change what you did, while mistakes are earmarked by the realization that it was a bad decision. I've made plenty of mistakes, but I wouldn't change many of them. And just because something is regretable, doesn't mean you regret it. ;) But yeah, at this point it is pretty much semantic.

I have regrets that make my life unlivable at times.

You'll know true regret when you wake up at night, like a child - alone, scared, crying... and you cant stop it to figure out why, you only realize this part when its too late. :(

Not to poke my nose into someone else's business, but have you considered treatment for depression?

Urgh... regrets. Yes. I don't have much of a memory, this must be a psychological thing cos i cant eally remember yesterday, but everynow and then i get perfect flashbacks. You thunk. I suppose they count as regrets cos they stop me dead with a horrible intense twisty feeling, cant walk cos i cant really breath. Its quite unpleasent thing guilt.

Bump. More repressed traumatic memories please ;)

Bump. More repressed traumatic memories please ;)

When I was 10 I borrowed authentic 60s bellbottoms from my step-mom (they were hers when she was a teenager) for a play I was in at school. And then I left them in the dressing room after the play, and never got them again. I felt awfully guilty about that for awhile.