Most everyone has their fair share of regrets, some more serious than others. In my case, I had a lot of regrets about the way I acted before my diagnosis with bipolar disorder and autism.
Before I knew myself and my differences better, I did a lot of things that hurt other people because I couldn’t always conceptualize how my behavior would make them feel.
And that, in turn, has fueled a number of regrets that I’ve had to make peace with.
If you’ve also done things you regret (and who hasn’t), I want to share with you some of the habits I use to accept and heal from my past.
6 ways to make peace with your biggest regrets:
1. Accept that you cannot do better until you know better.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought, “If only I had known better – I wouldn’t have made that choice.”
Well, to heal and move forward, I started to look at that sentiment as an obvious truth.
Of course I would have made better decisions if I had known better! But I didn’t know better at the time. I had to make the mistake to learn from it first, and then I could make a better decision later.
Instead of beating myself up when I make a mistake, I acknowledge my screw-up, and I look for the lesson. I ask, “What can I learn from this? How can I avoid making this mistake in the future?” And then I commit to not making that mistake again.
Do I get it perfectly right all the time? No. I don’t. But I get it right more often than I don’t, and that’s meaningful.
That’s particularly important in relationships. Because if you’re in a romantic relationship, you’re going to be around that person a lot. Making the same inconsiderate mistakes over and over creates resentment and distrust, which poisons the relationship.
Making an effort, however imperfect, is often enough to earn forgiveness and grace with a reasonable person.
2. Take responsibility for your mistakes when you make them, but don’t own things that aren’t yours to own.
I know that I’m wired differently, so when someone says, “You hurt my feelings.” I don’t tell them they’re wrong. I don’t try to avoid responsibility for it.
Instead, I stop, I give them my undivided attention, and I listen to what they have to say. If I agree with their assessment, I will apologize and try to make the situation whole again, if possible. Of course, it’s not always possible.
The most important thing when you take responsibility for your actions is to only own what is yours.
For example, I had one situation where someone asked me for constructive feedback. Knowing what I know about myself, I strive to be tactful when I do it. I don’t want my “constructive criticism” to be cruel.
Still, this person was upset by it and wanted me to take responsibility for hurting their feelings.
I went back, looked at my feedback, and I couldn’t see anything cruel or unkind. They explicitly asked me for constructive feedback, and I pointed out structural issues, weakly worded reasoning, and made suggestions.
I did what I would want someone to do for me, and I did what they asked me. In reality, they obviously didn’t want constructive feedback, but that’s their issue, not mine.
So I didn’t apologize. Their feelings and interpretation of my feedback are not my responsibility.
I’ve learned to differentiate between what I should and shouldn’t own, and that is key to making peace with regret.
3. Don’t let your mistakes or challenges define your identity.
It would be easy for me to fall into the habit of thinking of myself as lesser because my brain is wired differently than other people’s.
It’s incredibly frustrating to be full of intellectual knowledge, but not have the “appropriate” social processes to know that I need to access that information. It’s like having a library full of books, but you don’t know where to find the book you need.
That being said, I am more than my mental health challenges and my diagnoses. I am not my mistakes. I am a well-rounded person with a variety of interests and strengths.
To avoid falling into the trap of letting my challenges or mistakes define me, I’ve also learned to counter them with the things I’m good at, like offsetting my difficulty in intuitively understanding social norms with consideration and planning.
For example, it doesn’t bother me if someone doesn’t wish me a happy birthday, and I wouldn’t think twice about not doing it for others.
But I intellectually understand that it upsets other people not to have their birthday acknowledged, so I make sure to note down people’s birthdays and remember to wish them a happy birthday so they will know they are thought of.
4. Allow yourself to process what was lost, but know when you’ve crossed into unhealthy rumination.
I spent far too long ruminating over the serious mistakes that I made. There comes a point where you’re no longer working through your thoughts, and you’re just circling the problem and reopening the wound.
For example, I was once engaged to an absolutely wonderful woman that I wanted to spend my life with. Unfortunately, I was neither sane nor stable enough to be a good partner to her.
My jealousy, insecurity, anger, and depression dragged her mental health down into the abyss with mine as she tried to support me.
And after she made the correct decision to leave me, I spent years beating myself up over losing such a wonderful woman.
Much later on, I finally decided that I had spent enough time being sad about it, and that I needed to let my regrets go.
I forced myself to stop thinking about her, the relationship, and my actions. It was hard but every time those thoughts would creep in again, I would proactively derail them by doing logic puzzles or reading.
It took a while, but eventually, the regret got smaller and smaller until it stopped affecting me.
5. If you regret your behavior, don’t just apologize for it; change it.
It took years of therapy and self-reflection for me to understand who I am and why.
It was a hard thing to do, because I basically had to tear myself down to the bare bones to understand who I am.
At first, as I started making changes, I would tell the people who had been affected by my behavior that I was changing. I would say things like “Oh, I’m different now” or “I learned so much.” But I eventually came to understand that I wasn’t doing that for them; I was doing it for me.
I was “performing remorse” instead of actually being remorseful.
Yes, an apology is necessary, but the fact of the matter is that what wronged people need the most is changed behavior.
Words are easy. Anyone can say that they’ve changed. But using it as a demand for acceptance and forgiveness is just manipulation. It’s also a good way to utterly destroy someone’s trust and faith in you.
Now, as I express remorse for my actions, I ask myself, “Am I giving this apology for them or for me?” If it’s for me, then I don’t do it. If it’s for them, I apologize for the behavior, and then I change it.
6. Invest your energy into what you can still change.
Regret comes in many forms, but it usually comes from a powerful place – opportunities not taken, relationships broken, that sort of thing.
But those things are all in the past.
I know that I can’t control the past. However, I can control what is happening in the present and guide the future. I look for the things that I can still control as they are falling apart.
I ask questions like, “How can I make this easier on the person I wronged?” if I wronged someone, and, “How can I make this easier on myself, so I can accept it and get through it?” if it’s another situation.
The important thing is that I spend a minimal amount of time thinking about things that I can’t change.
I can’t change whatever actions I took that caused this problem. All I can do is sweep up the ashes, try to do better, and move forward.
Final thoughts…
What I’ve shared with you in this article are not just strategies and tactics that I learned from a book. I’ve used them all in the past, and I will use them again in the future.
I know it’s hard to let go of what should be, but understand that you are robbing yourself of your present happiness by holding on.
You can’t move forward if you keep holding on to what’s behind you.
It’s okay to accept your mistakes and let them go if you’ve been holding onto them for a long time.
