We spend most of our lives thinking.
We think about people, ideas, the possibility of the world ending next week. In theory, there’s nothing the human mind is not capable of dreaming up.
However, most of us probably spend a lot of time thinking about the past: the decisions we’ve made, the places where we tripped up, the things we could’ve done better. Admit it: you spend at least a few hours each day, just wondering, “How much better would that day have been if I had done that instead?”, “Why did I have to choose that one?” or “What the hell was i thinking?”
Sure, thinking about the past can help. After all, you’ll never learn from your mistakes if you don’t think about them. Nevertheless, that’s no reason to beat yourself up about choosing the wrong path. Just torturing yourself badly enough is not going to change anything that’s already happened. There’s nothing you can do. All you can do now is change your present.
In the end, putting yourself through a guilt trip about the things you could have done better is just going to waste precious time you can spend fixing it instead. Not all scars disappear, but wounds do heal, and thinking about them is not what helps. You have to tend to them, treat them, not spend time pondering over how you could have stopped yourself from getting them in the first place. Unless you happen to have the prototype of a time machine handy, all you can do is apply some ointment. The faster you get it to heal, the less time there’ll be for it to scar.
Ultimately, the only person who can get you out of all those what ifs in your brain is you. One of the worst feelings to experience is regret, and we force ourselves into it. We don’t have to. Give it time, wrap it in a bandage, and it will heal. Apply salt to it, and it won’t. And that’s what regret is: salt. I’m not saying you shouldn’t think about how you could’ve done it right: you should. Just don’t harrow yourself over it. Instead of thinking about what’s already happened, focus on not doing anything now that you’ll regret later. You can’t change the past, but you can shape your future, and sometimes, not thinking about the hurt might even make it stop.
