Regret as Guide Not Burden | Generated by AI
Great question — regret is one of the most universal human emotions, and it’s worth understanding rather than fearing.
Why do people regret?
At its core, regret comes from comparing what actually happened with what could have happened. A few key reasons it shows up:
We make decisions with incomplete information. In the moment, we do our best with what we know, but later we learn things that make a different choice look obviously better. Hindsight gives us a clarity we simply didn’t have at the time.
We have competing desires. Life constantly forces us to choose — a career vs. more family time, safety vs. adventure, one relationship over another. Choosing one path means giving up another, and sometimes the road not taken starts to look more appealing over time.
We underestimate how much we’ll change. The person you are at 20 is very different from the person you are at 40. Decisions that made perfect sense for your younger self can feel misaligned with who you’ve become.
We’re wired to notice what we lost more than what we gained. This is partly psychological — our brains tend to weigh losses more heavily than equivalent gains (psychologists call this “loss aversion”).
Is it bad to have regrets?
Not necessarily. It depends on how you relate to them.
Regret becomes harmful when it turns into rumination — endlessly replaying mistakes, blaming yourself, or letting it paralyze you from moving forward. That kind of regret can genuinely damage your mental health and wellbeing.
But regret can also be useful. A little regret can be a signal that something matters to you — it clarifies your values. If you regret not spending more time with a loved one, that tells you relationships are deeply important to you. That awareness can guide better choices going forward.
The healthiest approach is somewhere in the middle: acknowledge the regret, learn what it’s teaching you, and then let it go. Beating yourself up over something you can’t change serves no real purpose, but completely ignoring your regret means missing out on a chance to grow.
So regret isn’t a flaw — it’s a very human experience. The goal isn’t to eliminate it entirely, but to make peace with it.