How is Avoiding Regret an Act of Mindfulness?
If your life ended today, what would you regret?
I’ve had a desire to cross the ocean and visit Europe for decades. Since my teens. In 2025, my wife and some friends and I started planning a trip to Italy.
This was going to be a small group trip. The number varied, but we decided in 2025 to put it off until 2026. We were getting it all together, but unfortunately, we still couldn’t coordinate it. So we are delaying it again.
My wife decided that, since she already took the time off and we keep not quite making a plan, it was time to move past that. That’s why, as you’re reading this, we are in England.
So that we wouldn’t regret not doing this, we’ve crossed an ocean.
Probably the central tenet of my Pathwalking philosophy is making conscious choices and decisions. Applied mindfulness is how you can take any control available of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, positivity/negativity of approach, and actions. One of the biggest stumbling blocks I’ve encountered is the actual doing.
As Yoda said,
“Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”
“There is no try” is subjective. What it’s about is an actual, focused effort to try something versus a half-assed, unfocused attempt. The former is doing; the latter is paying lip service to the effort and kind of doing without full intent.
Many of the things we resist trying in the good way are things we might regret not doing. And regret is something worth avoiding.
You only get one shot here
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. You get one shot to live this current life experience. Right here, right now, you have available choices and decisions to that end.
To be fair, there might be limitations both real and artificial. Money tends to be one, social status another, skin color still another, and on and on. Everyone’s experience is unique to them.
Even so, you get to make choices and decisions to strive to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire. This life you’re living affords you 80 or so years of opportunities to experience all you can.
Some experiences will be amazing. Others will be horrific. That’s how it is. But since I believe that the meaning of life is simply TO LIVE, you do that by making choices and decisions regarding actions to take. Or not.
Lots of people have regret. You didn’t take the chance, wimped out, made an excuse to avoid the opportunity, and of course sometimes shit happens and gets in the way. But avoiding regret by choosing paths in life is utterly worthwhile because this experience overall is singular. One lifetime per person. No refunds.
Hence, taking chances and making decisions to avoid regret is never a bad idea and an act of mindfulness.
Regret is closely tied to fear
A lot of the opportunities that present themselves to us are scary. Full to overflowing of uncertainty. What if “X” happens? can start you down a rabbit hole that stays your hand and keeps you from choosing and/or deciding and consequently experiencing.
Maybe you apply for that job- but then, what if they say no? Perhaps you ask that person out – but what if they reject (or worse) laugh at you? Maybe you consider that wild cross-country trip but second-guess yourself and decide not to take it. Perhaps you write a book but are too scared of how you’ll be judged to seek an agent or self-publish it.
There are lots of things that come up in our lives that can cause distress. There are numerous unknowns because there is abundant potential and possibilities. It’s too easy to be scared to take the leap and talk yourself out of it. You might think it’s best to play it safe.
But no risk, no reward. Comfort zones are a lie. Often, they’re not so much comfortable as they are familiar and falsely stable. Staying in them feels safe, at least in the moment. But often that’s a fear response when you face the unknown.
You generally don’t know if you’ll regret something until you’ve chosen not to take the chance.
Taking the leap
In the summer of 1988, when I was 15, I took a teen hiking/biking/canoeing/camping tour. During the canoe portion, we got up ludicrously early one morning to see the sunrise over the waterway. Then we stopped at the ranger station’s picnic area to make breakfast.
The ranger informed us we’d be coming to a bridge a couple of miles downstream. He told us the water beneath the bridge was deep enough to jump off it into.
When we got to this bridge, it was maybe 20 feet above the water. We went up to it and looked down. We pondered jumping. Then, one of our companions did. After he surfaced, most of us followed.
This was terrifying and thrilling all at once. As I plummeted to the water, my stomach felt like it was rising into my chest as I cried out, “Oooh, shii…” and hit the water before I finished. Then, I did it again. At least 3, maybe 4 times.
After that, most of my companions who didn’t jump off the bridge came to regret that. We never found another deep enough for them to try. They had no idea they’d regret not doing it until they didn’t do it and regretted it.
You never know what you will regret if you don’t do it. Hence, avoiding regret is never a bad idea.
Regret doesn’t help your life experience
Over the years, there’ve been plenty of things I wanted to do, but didn’t. When I was younger, I had more regrets. But then, with mindfulness and work on my overall active conscious awareness, I’ve learned to shunt that regret away and turn it into more of an acknowledgment that I missed something.
Lessening this has made me feel better. And that matters because you cannot undo, redo, or go back in any way to the past. It is done and over, and you can’t go back and change it. So you have a choice. Regret what you missed out on and allow that to haunt you. Recognize and acknowledge what you missed out on, forgive yourself, and let it go. Or you can always ignore it and then deal with it when it comes back to disempower or sabotage you down the line.
You can avoid regret by being present, here and now, and making regular conscious choices and decisions. Mindfulness of the paths around you helps you to walk them. Or not.
Allowing regrets to dominate your past keeps your past as an obstacle to both your present and future. That’s why avoiding regret by choosing and deciding things can be such a big help to living the best life, on your terms, that you can.
When you make choices and decisions, you are empowered. When you’re empowered, you can better dictate the terms of your life experience. To me, that’s utterly worthwhile.
Do you work on avoiding having regrets? If you have regrets, do you see how empowering letting them go can be?
This is the seventh-hundred-sixty-ninth (769) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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