Christian Counseling - Regret

We all have regrets. Different choices we wished we made. Paths we did not travel. Relationships in which we did not fully invest. Having regrets is not the problem necessarily. How we deal or manage those regrets is.

Think about the regrets that you have had in your life. When you think about the road not taken, does it end up with you getting hit by a bus? Of course not! When we think about the paths that we wished we had taken, it always ends up with life being better than it is today. However, that life is merely a fantasy. As with all fantasies, the more time we spend in the fantasy world, the less time we have to spend in the actual world trying to make our lives better.

One way of approaching this would be to examine your regrets and the better life you would have if you had chosen that path. Ask yourself, what would actually be better if I had made a different choice? Chances are, those things that would be better are missing from your present day life. Is there a way to make changes in your life today to move you closer to what you imagined in your fantasy? If so, we are all better served by trying to make actual change in our lives today rather than living in fantasy.

Remember, though, that there are times when the real world will never meet the fantasy world. For instance, if you grew up with a terrible mother or father, the regret or wish that you had a different childhood or better parent will not go away. We need to grieve and learn to accept the sometimes terrible experiences that life brings us. However, even in that case, we can examine the difference that having a better childhood would have made in our lives today. Then we can purpose to begin to fill in those gaps.