The Psychology of Regret

I've been thinking about regret more and more lately, undoubtedly due to the mound of sand accumulating in the bottom of the hourglass.  I'm slightly disturbed by these "what ifs" floating around my mind, something I absurdly claimed in my youth I would never contemplate.  Thus, I found Kathryn Schultz's TED talk on the psychology of regret illuminating and liberating.  Her assertion that some of your own regrets are not as ugly as you think they are, is a refreshing perspective.  I'm aware life without regret is an impossible, naive notion, a bumper sticker, not a reality.  But understanding the role it plays in life is essential.

If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.