I have three main regrets in life - two are girls and one was my performance my senior year of college in wrestling
Basically I blew my chances to be with two beautiful girls and my chances at being an All-American. I think about it practically every day. I even consider calling one of the girls out of the blue, even though I haven’t seen or spoken to her in 2 years.
People always say it just takes time and it’s true to a point. I feel like these will just be huge holes in my life that I’m never going to get over.
The worst part is I just feel like these regrets still hold me back today. And I want to get over it and change as a person but I’m not sure how. They say some people don’t change but I want to. Anybody have experiences turning their lives and outlooks around? I need some advice here because I’m sick of this shit.
Well, you can leave the country and/or go to grad school. Seriously, going for a radical change in where you are, what you do, etc can really give you a new lease on life.
IMHO, calling up one of these two lady’s 2 years later is probably not going to help get you out of your rut. I’m jus’ saying.
Regret is easier to bear than sadness because it creates a fantasy where the thing you regret is still possible, and you are kind of looking for a way to make it happen, even if logically you know it can’t.
However, you can mourn sadness and loss, and eventually move on, but it’s easy get stuck in regret since it is not real anyway.
How long has it been, in those 3 cases? If just a few years, you almost certainly will get over it. If over, say, 10 years, then you’re starting to obsess over the unchangeable past, and might need help in doing so.
Don’t call the lady. Wait another three years, then *she *calls *you *and, for reasons known only to herself, wants to meet you for a friendly cup of coffee. Well, you meet up, and sure, there is the initial shock of seeing her again and having the old emotions flowing over you like yesterday’s stale dishwater. However, you quickly come to realize that by now you have both changed, you have moved on, you have spent five years of your life without her and you are perfectly cool with carrying on like that. In fact, you have had other great experiences that you’re attached to now, that she’s not a part of, and that probably wouldn’t have come about if she had been around. You have more integrity now and define yourself by your own standards, instead of trying to live up to hers. In fact, you no longer give a damn about her opinion.
You don’t see her again after that. You could, but now you don’t really want to. You still think about her, but no longer with any regrets. And not that often.
Well, at least that’s what happened to me a few months ago.
(As for the *other *lady… can’t help you. I still struggle with that one.)
China guy - I know that’s why I haven’t done it
Bell - I spent four years as a backup and when I got my chance to start basically blew it. Like I said didn’t become an All American.
I know everyone has regrets too. I guess I just want to hear others stories because I’m sure others have had it worse. Also, some advice from those of us who have turned it around to make their lives well meaning and joyful. I would appreciate it mucho.
The best way to get over having screwed something up is to go out and achieve something cool. And of course, screwing up does come with an upside - now you know at least one way not to do something, and you’ve probably done some thinking about how you want to do it instead.
So yeah, go to grad school or some other school, do something else you really want to do.
Are you by chance, a little scared to engage with the future? Concerned about job prospects, the health of yourself or a family member, or some other practical future need? A lot of times when a person finds themselves obsessed with the past, it’s because it is more comfortable than thinking about an uncertain future.
I’m sure not reaching your goal was very disappointing. But perhaps you hung too much of your identity on a goal that you could have fallen short of in any number of ways. Perhaps not reaching that goal could be the best thing that ever happened to you.
If you find yourself unable to connect productively with the present and future because of the intensity of your feelings about the past, seek some counselling.
Do a little Cognitive Behavioural Therapy on yourself - look at the stories you’re telling yourself about these regrets, and separate out the truths from the fictions (ruthlessly!). Did you lose a relationship with a good woman, twice? Probably. Is is the only chance (or two chances) you’ll ever have at love? Very unlikely. Will you meet even better women? Most likely. There are 3.35 billion women in the world, you know.
As for the wrestling thing, you’d know the stories you’re telling yourself better than I do.
ETA: Forgot to say, one of the stories you need to stop telling yourself is that you can’t get over your regrets.
I don’t intend to be rude, but you need to get a bit more realistic with your expectations. If you’ve had relationships with two beautiful women, chances are that you’ll have that opportunity again. The thing that sticks out to me is that you think you could have been an All-American after being a backup for four years. That’s delusional. I was a starter in a major University program for three years, but I knew I had no shot at even all-conference, let alone all-american.
So you aren’t an Olympian. Join the rest of the 99.99% of us who aren’t. Get back in the saddle start pedalling.
My husband coaches baseball, and has for about 20 years. He coaches high level ball - players from his league go on to college scholarships and sometimes even the majors. I think in his 20 years of coaching, two kids from his league have made it to the majors. As Lamar says, most of the kids will play a couple of years of baseball and then get on with their lives - most of us are perfectly average, not superstars.
I was wondering because I have regrets as a wrestler as well, but it’s less because I didn’t win and more because I didn’t expend more effort to win. I feel like if you put everything into it and came up short, that’s not really something that you should be regretting, it’s just how life plays out, it’s the limit of your (the general you) self. You might as well regret not being born 3 inches taller, for instance.
My main regrets are about women as well. Why oh why was I in those relationships as long as I was, sacrificing life experiences for crappy relationships?
It seems to me that in order to regret something, you would have to know to a relative certainty what would have happened had that one particular aspect of your life been different. Since it’s virtually impossible to know that, it’s impossible to have regrets.
The fact that people do in fact have regrets speaks to our inability to consider every possible outcome had that one thing been different. In particular, we seem to focus on only a handful of favorable outcomes and ignore everything else. If that happens to be your perspective, then having regrets is understandable. However once you realize the overwhelming and essentially delusional biases that are a necessary prerequisite to regret, being a rational person, you should be able to see regrets as nothing more than a type of mental self-flagellation born of self-deceit.
Okay. I went to college on and off for eight years after high school, before finally dropping out altogether to become the manager of a restaurant. I made pretty decent money for the next several years, but there was no career potential. On top of that, from the time I was 20 until I was almost 34, I was a drunk. I always took care of business and was responsible, I only drank at home at night, and I never got in trouble with the law, but I drank more than a 12-pack of beer every single night for 14 years. That’s not very good for one’s health.
Five and a half years ago I quit my job and moved to a new area, and a couple of months later a trip to the hospital convinced me it was time to give up drinking. I wound up going back to school, and I finally earned my degree a year and a half ago. The timing there was just great - in this shitty economy, I’ve not been able to find a job, even with my degree. I’ve been working on my Master’s, but my heart isn’t in it.
This past February I decided I want to teach high school math, but I made that decision too late to get into any of the credential programs in my area for the current Fall term. So right now I’m in the process of applying to a bunch of alternative certification programs. Chances are good I’ll be accepted into at least one of them, I think, but I won’t start actually working until August.
So here I am… I’ll be 40 in June, and I don’t have much to show for my life. Do I regret wasting all those years drinking and working in a restaurant? HELL YES! Is there anything I can do about it? Nope - aside from moving forward. It’s hard not to let myself fall into the depths of despair, having to wait another nine months before I finally get a career going, and watching my debt continue to pile up in the meantime. I just try to stay positive, focus on my goal, stick with it, and keep telling myself the end is in sight.
