THE DECONSTRUCTION OF REGRET

As age advances, many questions begin to arise in our minds. There have been countless times in the past when I found myself dwelling on a feeling that has greatly bothered me, and I am sure it has also tormented almost everyone, which is the feeling of regret.

This emotional process can take hold of us when we look back on our past actions or inactions, and when they come to the surface, it is precisely because life’s courses have led us to a change in behavior and thoughts. This brings with it the distressing sensation of what we did in other past moments, contrary, or opposite, to how we would handle the same issue today, whether in personal or professional life.

Unlike remorse, which is more about moral pain as well as our own dignity, regret makes us realize the choices made during many moments in life that we wish we could have made differently. Ultimately, regret can also be considered as the pain felt because of the pain caused.

Recently, during a conversation with a longtime colleague who, like me, is entering middle age and concerned about what the future holds, we talked about our professional lives and the choices we’ve made. That’s when she confessed her regret at leaving psychology, a field she loves so much, early in her career, to follow in her family’s footsteps and become an administrator at the company. After 20 years, she opened up, saying she never felt happy doing what she does and feels a lot of pain for leaving behind what she truly wanted. What saddened her the most was not just thinking about how to change her story now, but the overwhelming desire to erase this past and change her professional path, which brought her much unhappiness.

Many of us may be professionally dissatisfied because we feel that our work does not align with our talents, or because our interests have changed with age, or because the prospects of professional growth are very different from what we believed in the past. But dissatisfaction can also be accompanied by regret, believing that we made certain decisions that no longer make sense today.

Using our ability to reflect on our lives, to self-discover, and to have the courage to give ourselves honest feedback is one of the strategies that can help us reconcile with ourselves and realize how many of the limitations we face, whether in our career or in life as a whole, were constructed by ourselves. This is a path to finding more than enough reasons to change course.

I say this because we often fail to observe our entire trajectory systemically. Like with this friend, for example, I delicately asked her what makes her happy today, and she immediately replied without hesitation that it was her spouse and their children.

Thus, we began to reflect on how complex we are as beings, just as the full nature of dissatisfaction resides within us. Contrary to what many think, this is not necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, having within us this desiring and unsatisfactory condition is essential for not falling into mediocrity and trivializing life. However, today I know that from time to time, we must bring a good sense of reality to the details of our own history, otherwise, we are prone to fall into what our brains are adept at doing, justifying comfort.

In this sense, during this conversation, many reflections were made, and I came to the conclusion that there are some very important points to consider that we should address with ourselves even before reaching middle age.

The first of these is that we must be careful with our thoughts, with the temptation to want to justify today based on fanciful ideas of everything that has passed, as if in this way we could free ourselves from the sensation of guilt or regret for missing out on so many other possibilities that life has always offered us, and that seem to always be better than the ones we chose. It is necessary to distinguish between what was done given the choices of that moment and to realize that there was value in them too. What I mean is that there is no more integral way than to make our consciousness understand that each experience has its importance and has brought us to where we are to be better people than we were, and that at this present moment we are capable of doing something more.

It is obvious that looking back and realizing that 2, 5, 10, or 20 years have passed is tempting to find the answers that can justify our lives, but it is not always that easy, especially when we consider this almost insane world that increasingly makes us live on autopilot and that almost always leads us to trade being for having, facing an immediate life of imperceptible choices that always gives us a certain false impression that we are in control, seeking the best path, but that we almost always intuitively end up choosing the ones we think are the simplest and easiest, where immediate gain always seems more promising for a happy life than other possibilities that require much more of ourselves.

In Reality, All This Is a Great Illusion

There are no easier choices, nor better ones, nor worse ones; there are no short paths or long ones, just as it is insane to say that each of us could have had other opportunities to choose at that other moment in the past.

What there is in reality is our state of presence, and in it lies our only chance to do our best for our own lives. This is because in every choice lies its own value. We choose what, at the moment of choice, has more value to us, meaning it represents somehow a greater gain than other choices. Life is like this; we give value to every moment for the paths we are choosing to take based on what we perceive as gain. We do not make choices to lose; there is always an introspective aspect to them that is the best given what we already know about life. In the same way, there can only be a vision of life in the future if we have experienced something in the past to create a subjective perspective on what we can choose ahead. We do not build our paths from nothing; they are always shaped by lived experiences, which does not mean we cannot challenge ourselves to go much further.

Following this logic, a second fundamental point to consider is understanding that instead of justifying what has already been, we should seize our present freedom, as it is obligatory for everyone, and that is precisely where we can experience something beyond our desires for the obvious and for what we limit ourselves to wanting to experience. We are free for self-improvement, but for that, from time to time, we need to venture onto different paths guided by values that are not yet as clear as those we believe to be the best.

Returning to my friend, I did not miss the opportunity to immediately reflect with her whether it would have been possible, as a psychologist, to meet the man she married and have the children she loves so much. Instead of a response, there was a long silence. From there, we quickly realized that we will never know this answer, and ultimately, what matters!

In reality, as a third fundamental point, it is important to realize that life is in the details, in everything that has been built and achieved through the unique experience of each point in the journey, and with it, what is within us, in its entirety, as the person we truly are. In other words, if the unhappiness that now resides in the thoughts that supposedly exist were really present in all the choices in this life journey, surely, we would not be where we are now; after all, in some way, at some point, there would have been a change. The problem is that to perceive this, one must have self-awareness, and there is only consciousness of one’s own life when we feel present; otherwise, we do not perceive life passing by. Therefore, if there is something that makes sense, it is to say that we are made by the awareness of the details and not by what is illusory and abstract.

What this means is that against any argument that may arise at this moment imagining that we could have chosen different paths and had a more successful career, for example, first, give yourself the chance to perceive your entire journey with concrete facts that demonstrate that you are exactly the result of your choices. When we allow ourselves to see value in them, we will then be able to understand how much friendships gained and lost, victories and defeats, joys and sorrows, pain and suffering, happy moments, as well as opportunities that could never have existed if things had been different, all contribute to who we are today. This way of reconciling with your state of presence is what will differentiate your own limits.

It is the details that matter in the face of the vast world of possibilities that will always remain infinite in the eyes of others and in the lives not lived. In real life, there is only one choice, the one you have just made. Ultimately, there is no other to make.

Whatever it may be, there is no guarantee that there may not be mistakes that, in retrospect, can be corrected or regretted, but what cannot be done is to relive it again.

But the regret that torments us for moments of life will always have the chance to be reassessed, just as it can be silenced when we have the courage to self-examine in a constant critical evaluation of our relationship with the world and then realize how much we are truly being ourselves.

In this profound attention dedicated to ourselves lies the chance to do our best to find our best for what we value, and it depends on the value we have decided to give to the next moment.

I know it seems simpler to talk about than to practice, but with middle age, I can say that I understand more clearly what regret represents in the present, and it is much more about not wanting to accept our own past as just part of the problem we face in the present every day. In this sense, I think the great challenge is to mature not by age, but by the awareness of what is enough to be in control of oneself, to have independence between what belongs to us and what others seek to find in us.

This moral relationship, which arises from the identity search to be recognized for who we truly are, may be the greatest of challenges and often leads us to waste time with other moments in life that we should not, as there is much more importance in the life that is to come. Overcoming the fear of vulnerability is challenging, but it is this fear that prevents us from straying from our own paths many times.

How to make something belong to us if we are bombarded by problems or feel obliged to respond to a need, even when that need is not something we would like to confront? After all, besides ourselves, there is a world that never stops changing, and much of what we do is in function of this world that is constantly in front of us. This question quickly arose in this lovely dialogue, as it doesn’t take much to realize that we must mediate conflicts, deal with failures, ensure that everything is in accordance with the norms, present ourselves fully, and coexist in a world full of demands and obligations that is sharp to judge and condemn us. It’s certainly not easy, but it’s not impossible either.

Taking the reality of the world into consideration now, it can be said that we have another very important point to consider, which is to understand that the challenges we encounter will always be in proportion to our size. In other words, we can only see what is somehow within us. It is not the external world that challenges us, nor is it the information coming from the external world that will tell us who we are or what we should do; rather, it is our introspective construction of the reality of the world through lived experiences. Everything is for each of us in the unconscious structuring of reality, so it is part of us to find in ourselves what belongs to us and move forward from what we truly want for ourselves. Transforming this unconscious reality into consciousness will require sacrifice, changes, paradigm shifts, redefining beliefs, challenges, but, more than that, it will eliminate so many unbearable noises in our lives that come from the opinions of others.

Although we are necessarily social beings and can only survive with others, it is also crucial to consider that it is always necessary to listen to others, but there must also be limits to constitute harmony between the “self” and others. In others, lies the recognition of who we are, and it is with others that we realize that we can always do more. However, it is within us the ability to learn to deal with life and find mechanisms for continuous improvement regarding the reality of life that we are creating.

Amidst all this reflection, my friend began to doubt whether what saddens her is actually having pursued psychology or not. Perhaps this question is just another trick of our minds to justify a certain complacency that is commonly brought about by middle age, perhaps to justify the present moment by minimizing the self-responsibility of usefulness to everything that can still be done.

Indeed, another point to consider is perhaps understanding that what burdens anyone is the need to feel useful. The big question is that usefulness is something subjective and changes with age. When reflecting on professional life in middle age, we realize how much our goals have changed. The idea we had of winning and doing something extraordinary also changes, and here lies another reason not to cling to the past but always to the present state. The time spent working is gratifying for what has been accomplished, but the feeling of being useful is only present in the now, and this is precisely one of the greatest human wonders: being able to choose how useful we want to be from now on.

Indeed, one cannot overlook the fact that being useful also leaves its marks that are difficult to erase. And perhaps the best we can do is to silence ourselves to listen to ourselves and perceive our successes and failures, to turn the perceived challenges into the act not of fixing our flaws, but of doing better, without criticism or judgment, setting goals or avoiding things from going wrong in a now truly thoughtful manner, seeking in our own experience the perception of what is positively good and what is not. This type of awareness does not come from trying to put out fires now and avoiding bad outcomes, thus missing the chance to leverage all the experience for projects that present existential value, making life worth living for itself.

In reality, my friend and I increasingly convince ourselves that the big problem is that we know very little about ourselves and much less about what we are capable of. We often let ourselves be dominated by vanity, selfishness, and insensitivity regarding everything we have done and how much we have paid to get here, just as we allow ourselves to live largely a life shaped by the relentless pursuit imposed much more by others than by ourselves, and this always makes us lose sight of the most important details that life has made a point of teaching us.

Perhaps the solution to minimizing the anguish of regret is to always seek balance between the sides. Balance is not doing half of each thing, but rather, knowing both sides of life very well and strategically knowing which one to use every time we are consciously present.

The solution is to strive to find time for ourselves with activities that make us feel good. On one side, there is hard work, the condition of usefulness both in work and to serve others and make things happen as best as we can, in the continuous pursuit of excellence. On the other hand, there is a certain sense of individuality in the sense that one will do something that is important and makes us forget the external world to live an internal world that feels good as a human being. Whether it’s the unique moments with family, the story told to a child before bedtime, the unexpected outing, or pursuing a hobby, dancing, music, art, or even adventures around the world in search of knowledge that can only be gained in human relationships. By engaging in activities for ourselves, we do not exhaust ourselves. Nor do they evoke the emptiness of regret, whose satisfaction is certain and will always occur in the future or the past. These are activities that can only be done when we are entirely in the present.

Not that it’s impossible to find joy in work and do it because it truly brings us fulfillment, but perhaps the secret lies in going beyond and knowing that there are moments that must be defined as our own, even if in this “ours” we need to be alongside those we truly love.

The fact is that being in midlife doesn’t mean it’s too late; in life, there will never be a shortage of moments in which we’ll experience existential crises, professional crises, but perhaps it’s in midlife that we can truly feel that we should be more useful than we’ve ever been, and this may be the incentive for a radical and invigorating change that often eluded us.

Now, even if such a deviation from the path is made, one must not forget everything that lies behind, which helped us overcome our own desire to go further and once again experience the pleasure of being useful. Acknowledge that loss was inevitable and do not try to imagine that everything we’ve been through never existed. Understand that affection is a counterpoint to regret. At this moment, then, make experience the reason to seek more self-conscious moments to be fulfilled by existential activities and value the process, not just the outcome.

Do it with attention focused on an objective that has not yet been achieved and that, once reached, will be part of a new and proud memory. We must not forget that satisfaction is always in the future or the past; but happiness only exists when we feel present. So, whenever you’re now involved in work, know that the chances of failing or not achieving the expected result will exist, but allow yourself to know that success is not only in what has been successful, but in the learning, thus depriving fear of guiding a life of regret.

And if you want to know what my friend and I concluded from this entire conversation, it’s that one form of midlife professional crisis arises from excessive investment in professional life, from valuing the next achievement, and then the next, and when we see it, 20 years have passed and we hardly realize how much of ourselves we’ve left behind and how much of ourselves is yet to come. In this journey, we had very little focus on ourselves “living in the details of each present.” May living in the present have as its interpretation the consciousness of the state of presence of what is done now, and not of what we hope to do someday.

The reward in achieving excellence over one’s desires is the chance to be closer to being happy! (Marcello de Souza)

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Hello, I’m Marcello de Souza! I started my career in 1997 as a leader and manager in a large company in the IT and Telecommunications market. Since then, I have participated in important projects of structuring, implementation, and optimization of telecommunications networks in Brazil. Restless and passionate about behavioral and social psychology. In 2008, I decided to delve into the universe of the human mind.

Since then, I have become a professional passionate about deciphering the secrets of human behavior and catalyzing positive changes in individuals and organizations. Doctor in Social Psychology, with over 25 years of experience in Cognitive Behavioral and Human Organizational Development. With a wide-ranging career, I highlight my role as:

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My solid academic background includes four postgraduates and a doctorate in Social Psychology, along with international certifications in Management, Leadership, and Cognitive Behavioral Development. My contributions in the field are widely recognized in hundreds of classes, training sessions, conferences, and published articles.

Co-author of the book “The Secret of Coaching” and author of “The Map Is Not the Territory, the Territory Is You” and “The Diet Society” (the first of a trilogy on human behavior in contemporaneity – 05/2024).

Allow me to be your companion on this journey of self-discovery and success. Together, we will unravel a universe of behavioral possibilities and achieve extraordinary results.

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