Regret is no fun

This is a conclusion I came to a long time ago. I once told my Mom that I didn't believe in regret while on a walk. She stopped for a second, cocked her head, and said "What? You regret nothing?" To this day, I can honestly say no.

Chris Brogan posted a great video today about regret. Chris Blake, a alternative pop musician, recently Googled "Biggest Regret." Some of my favorites from his finds:

"Not traveling enough."

"Not grabbing the most gorgeous girl I've ever seen in my life when I had the perfect opportunity."

"Not leaving sooner."

"Not speaking up"

"My lack of control."

"Not growing up to be a Transformer."

"Not telling him how I feel."

"Sweating the small stuff"

"I don't regret anything."

The overwhelming repetition in the quotations above, the word "Not." What I have learned is that "Not" doing something, is usually worse than doing it. No matter how ridiculous or stupid it may feel at the time, you will never regret that you didn't do something. Of course, use digression, but if something absolutely feels right, than why wait for it to become wrong? Their are definitely things in my life I could regret:

1. Not listening to my father when he told be not to attend the ski race that would result in me pulling my ACL and derailing my ski career.

2. Not calling my Nana or Grandfather more o while in college before they died.

3. Not staying in the Virgin Islands to return to work on Martha's Vinyard and having one of the hardest summers of my life.

Each one of those decisions has lead me to where I am today, and I like where I am today. Deciding that the decisions you make are not the "end all" means that they are launching off points for your life to take a different direction. Is the direction always easy? Certainly not. However, I think instead of focusing on regretting decisions, I learn from them. Yes, I might make the same mistakes a couple times, but I'll get it eventually. The biggest thing is having faith in the decisions you make.

Do you have regrets?