How to Overcome the Fear of Regret in Pursuit of a Creative Life
*Fear is the mind-killer.
Spooky season is here, and fear is on my mind.
One of my greatest personal fears—regret.
I’m not a perfect human, a perfect creative, or a perfect man.
I do my best to build a better life every day.
I learn and adapt as I go.
With each passing year though, the fear creeps in.
I fear there will come a day I’ll regret the things I haven’t done.
Recently, I thought more on regret and how to face it in my creative life.
I started at the end.
Top regrets of the dying
I was recently introduced to Bonnie Ware’s seminal work, The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying. For many years, Bonnie served in palliative care (for long-term illnesses and end of life patients). She began to see patterns of regret in those she cared for.
The top five regrets she identified were:
Not living a life for yourself, but for others.
Working too hard
Not expressing your feelings
Not staying in touch with friends
Not letting yourself be happier
Any of these sound familiar?
As a creative professional, I see my life as a design opportunity.
→ Our choices inform our habits.
→ Our habits inform our progress.
→ Our progress informs our success.
But how do we design a life that reduces the fear of regret?
I have some thoughts.
Stop dwelling
Regret is dwelling on what we cannot change.
It forms from a kind of tension we create with our past. I bet there are choices you wish you could change, but can’t.
Some windows naturally close as we get older.
I can’t relive my prom, or my late nights in studio, or my wedding, or any number of other great experiences. Equally, I can’t relive my heartbreaks, my friendships lost, my words unsaid.
Some choices are meant to happen once.
Others can be reworked or done differently.
The time in front of us is all we have and it stops for no one.
Stop dwelling on the past.
It won’t help you.
We can’t take back choices.
But we can make new ones with the time we have left.
How much time do we have though?
Time is not guaranteed
We think we’ll have time.
Time to change.
Time to grow.
And in many cases, we will.
But how much exactly?
The average human life is roughly 79 years, 28,835 days, or 692,040 hours long. That’s the average though. Not your life. And not mine.
Our brains try their best to stop us from dwelling on the fun fact we’ll all die someday. (But we will.)
The truth is we have little control over the quantity of time we have left. Bad things happen to good people every day. Unexpected tragedies. Lives cut short.
But we do control HOW we spend that time.
Decide what to do with your time.
**“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
How we spend our time, for better or worse, is ours to decide.
• Sometimes we’ll make bad choices.
• Sometimes we’ll make good ones.
The trick is to reduce how often we make decisions we’re likely to regret.
Imagine a life you’d want to look back on proudly. Ask yourself, “Will this choice be something my future self would be proud of me for?”
• Is this choice something that I want?
• Or is choice a pressure from someone or something else?
Regardless of the outcome, you control your choice to do or not do something. Let the choice serve you. Let it serve who you are and who you want to become.
The path to fewer regrets
Personally, I think the path to fewer regrets in life comes down to four things:
Understanding what we value most
Learning from the choices we’ve made
Taking positive action towards our dreams
Seeking satisfaction every day on our journey
If we stay true to our values and make better choices, we’ll be less likely to spend our time frivolously.
My biggest fear isn’t that I’ll regret a choice to take action, it’s that I won’t have spent the time making the most of the opportunity given to me to do so.
Final Thoughts
Our lives don’t need to be one efficient, time-sensitive slog.
Rather, awareness of what others regret, knowing your own values, and seeking satisfaction in the path to a better life will let you live without the pain of regret.
I don’t fear a life of mistakes.
I fear squandering the time I have left to live it my way from here to the end.
Do you fear regret?
How do you see it in your life?
No matter where you are in your life right now, you still have time to make better choices.
Go and make them.
Footnotes:
*Quote by Frank Herbert, Author of Dune
**Excerpt from The Lord of the Rings
TL; DR
Regret is a common fear of the human condition.
The most common regret: not living a life for yourself.
Time isn’t guaranteed
Stop dwelling
How to reduce regret: Live a life for yourself
Quote of the Week
Motivation for the days ahead of you.
“I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.”
— Lucille Ball
That's all for now.
Stay creative, my friends—and have a great week!
