Stop Adding To Your Regrets!

How many things from your past do you regret? Bad relationships, bad career moves, times you lied, naughty things you did, and knew you’d feel bad about later? Most humans have a list of things they’d like to have magically vanish, never to be remarked or remembered again! Unfortunately, you’re stuck with all that baggage. But have you ever considered all that you’re doing right now? How much of your current crop of choices, decisions, friends, activities do you surmise you might regret a week, a month, a year or two from now?

If you’re like most people, you’re doomed to find more embarrassment as you get older, and hopfully wiser.  Are you relying on hope or prayer to make them less awful than you think they likely will seem? Does that seem like wise or brilliant life planning to you? Be honest, you know you’re just begging to have more to regret. Problems don’t usually fix themselves, after all, so you’d look a lot smarter to actually do something about the potential regrets before you find the reason why you’ll regret them to begin with!

Certainly, you hate to bother. We’re all lazy, and inclined to put off things we know we should do. It seems easier to pretend nothing will go wrong, than it does to think hard, and get off the old rear and actually do something better. You hesitate to get rid of dubious friends, imagining that finding better ones would be a drag, or at least a hard task. Ditto the crappy job you hate. Even when you’re sleeping with a total loser, you’d rather pretend they aren’t all that bad. What if you can’t find anyone else to put up with you?!

Ah, you see the trap? Your fears keep you enslaved to the present, to all your bad decisions. That and inertia; change, especially change for the better seems to require effort, and be risky. It is and it does. You aren’t here in this place to be safe, to be a dust covered goober, sitting in mediocrity. God expects lots of effort, and He knows all your excuses and foolishness perfectly. You’d be well advised to make a much better effort. You’d be amazed at how much better your life can be if you’d actually take charge of it, and work on reducing the potential regrets, so you’ll be spared them down the road. Your list is big enough. You can’t make the ones on it go away, but you can stop adding to it. Doesn’t that sound better than the alternative?

Jack