Posts Tagged: regrets
“Seventy-Two and No Fresh Regrets”
DTEB, “Seventy-Two and No Fresh Regrets”
“The old, stale regrets I’m throwing out. By God’s grace, I won’t bake any fresh ones today.” (Down to Earth Believer: An Affirmation)
“Phil. 3:12 ¶ Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Phil. 3:13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
Phil. 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Phil. 3:15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.”
Today is my seventy-second birthday. By the power vested in me by me, I am declaring it a no-regrets day.
Regrets are a terrible waste of time. Therefore, they are a terrible waste of life. In fact, regrets are a slow form of suicide.
Mostly what I regret is wasting time and life, wasting opportunities to love Sharon and our children much better than I did, treating my friends and everyone else more kindly, learning more, developing better character.
However, my regrets are holding me back from doing the very things that I regret not doing in the past. So, the regrets and very regrettable, and they have to go!
Today, by the grace of God, I am focusing on present opportunities to live and love fully, to develop a character that is more capable of love, to learn. This is the birthday gift that I am giving myself, God, and others today. I plan to celebrate my birthday for an entire year, if I get to live that long. If I do get to live another year, no regrets! If not, still no regrets!
“Regrets: The Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Ugly”
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.” (Philippians 3:12-16, English Standard Version)
Paul was a person who had a past. Specifically, he had murdered Christians. He later became on, and often mentioned his persecution of the early church. Yes, Paul had a few regrets. But based on the Scripture that leads off this post, I would say that, even though he had regrets, Paul was determined not to let those regrets have him.
I struggle with regrets all the time. So, in addition to rereading this passage from Philippians, I decided to do a bit of online “research”. My first stop was a popularly written, helpful article in Psychology Today (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201205/the-psychology-regret, accessed 09-05-2021).
Interestingly, the author of this article pointed out that regrets can be good. As a recovering addict, I was especially struck by the following sentence, under the positive functions of regret: “Regret is a major reason why addicts get into recovery.” Yes indeed!
However, the article also points out that regret can be very bad. They can destroy us emotionally. One guy, who almost always played the same number in the lottery, did not do so one day. That was the day his usual number was the winner. He ended up with so much regret that he took his own life.
Most of us are probably not suicidal in our regrets, but our regrets can seriously compromise our ability to live in and to enjoy the present. If you know someone who is filled with regret, you know someone who is not any fun to be around. Regrets make a person uglier than they need to be.
Part of the tag line for Andy Stanley’s “Your Move” podcasts is that he wants to help us “make better decisions and live with fewer regrets.” That is a wonderful goal!
So, here is my goal for this and every day: I am going to make good decisions today, so that I am not birthing new regrets for tomorrow. Can’t do anything about the past, except learn from it. But I can, by God’s grace, do a lot about the present and the future.
No regrets!
“The Rule of 15”
I have decided that from here on out, I am going to live by the Rule of 15.
What on earth is “the Rule of 15,” you ask? The Rule of 15 states that, whenever I am about to say or do anything, I keep in mind the Rule of 15. The rule asks me how I’m going to feel about this word or action in 15 seconds, 15 hours, 15, days, or 15 years. I don’t have to go through every permutation of these time increments. In fact, 15 seconds is usually enough.
Now, I can hear your mental wheels turning. You’re thinking to yourself, “He’s not going to be able to ask that question? There isn’t time. He won’t be able to say or do anything!”
And I would respond with two counterpoints. First, would it really be such a bad thing if I said and did less? When all is said and done, I say and do a lot of downright stupidities.
Second, I spend a lot more time than 15 seconds, 15, hours, and 15 days regretting things I’ve done in the past. And yes, as a matter of fact, some of my decisions have haunted me for a lot longer than even 15 years. So, a simple cost-benefits analysis would suggest that the Rule of 15 is a good way of budgeting my time and my life.
And the reason for the Rule of 15 is simple: Immediate gratification is not really so gratifying. “Trust your feelings!” is the mantra of many of us modern folks. And it is a good mantra—provided. (You knew there would be fine print, didn’t you? There’s always fine print.) Trusting my feelings is fine, provided that I trust my longer-term feelings. The main thing is to ask myself how I’ll feel in 15.
One final thought. My own belief, shared with many others, is that I will live forever. I can’t wrap my mind around that, but I do believe it. If my decisions in the here and now are decisions that I will need to live with forever, suddenly the Rule of 15—even 15 years—becomes a pretty minimalistic requirement.
Now, if you are like me, you’ve made a lot of bad decisions over the years. You’ve said and done lots of things that you would love to unsay or undo. But, of course, we can’t, can we? And we’ve also failed to do the right things. The Rule of 15 sounds like a heavy burden, doesn’t it?
Oh, do I have some good news for you and me and for the entire world! In 15 seconds or less, all of your sins can be forgiven. How do I know this? Because it has happened to me.
One time, when my past was up in my face taunting me, I asked God what his pet name for me is. The problem with asking God a question is that he may actually answer you. I don’t listen well to my friends, my wife, my better angels, or even God, but every once in a while, I am so desperate that I muster all my courage and take the plunge. I don’t feel that I very often hear the voice of God, but this time, I think I did. God’s pet name for me is . . .
. . . Forgiven.
I don’t have an exclusive copyright on that name. It can be your name too.
“No Regrets? Not Yet.”
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.” (Alcoholics Anonymous: The Big Book, pages 83-84)
These are wonderful promises. With some of them, I have already begun to experience their reality. Others, I think I can see from a distance.
But not regretting the past or wishing to shut the door on it? No, I do not experience that promise. I wonder why I don’t? And serenity and peace? Sometimes, yes. Often, not.
Perhaps my problem is that I don’t take seriously enough the following sentence: “No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.” The antidote to regret is using my past to benefit others.
How do I use my past—particularly those parts of the past that I would love to forget but can’t—to benefit others? One way might be to understand some of my fellow-strugglers’ problems. One of the worst aspects of any struggle is the feeling of aloneness. If I can honestly say to someone who feels isolated and uniquely evil, “No, dear brother/sister, you are not alone,” that may help that person in and of itself. One of the services of all support and recovery groups is the awareness that we are not terminally unique.
There is a saying among us 12-steppers that “when you’re struggling in your own recovery, find someone to help who is worse off than you are.” The word “regret” may come from an Old French word that means “to bewail the dead.” If I’m using my past to help the living, that might help me not to keep on continually bewailing that past.
“Thankful for Regrets”
I have decided to be thankful for regrets. This probably demands some explanation.
I have lots of deep regrets. I regret the ways in which I’ve treated people in the past. I regret things I’ve done. I regret things I have not done. I regret missed opportunities. Sometimes, I regret me.
But my sweetheart and I had a very thought-provoking conversation the other day. I was saying—not for the first time—how much I was weighed down with regrets. She said something that was like a beautiful sunrise after many grey days. “Maybe the regrets are part of your recovery.”
She pointed out that perhaps I needed these regrets to keep me from repeating the mistakes of the past. “You know,” she added, “it’s not necessarily a good thing to feel no regret for the wrongs you’ve done. You wouldn’t want to be a person who has no conscience, would you?”
Now, admittedly, a lot depends upon what I do with my regrets. Do I allow them to dominate me and drive me to despair? That would obviously be a bad use of regrets. However, the bad use of anything, even regret, does not mean that the thing itself is bad.
A good question to ask is this: Are my regrets riding me, or am I riding them?
The story is told of a man who had never ridden a horse. A friend was trying to teach him to ride. His friend saddled his normally very docile horse, but the horse’s owner failed to cinch up the girth strap properly. The horse had held its breath, so the saddle was loose when the man got on it. The saddle slipped sideways, and the normally docile horse became a bucking bronco. (Lest you think this terribly far-fetched, I had a very similar experience with a Shetland pony when I was in the seventh grade.)
The novice rider didn’t know what to do, so he tried to hang on for dear life. But trying to hang on and get back on a horse’s back when the saddle has slipped would not be an easy task for even an experienced rider.
The last straw came when the bucking horse got its hoof stuck in the stirrup. Just before he hit the ground, the horseman was heard to yell, “If you’re gettin’ on, I’m getting’ off!”
If regrets are riding you, let go. But if you are riding your regrets, ride on, sister or brother! Ride on, and thank God for your horse. Just make sure that your saddle is cinched up good and tight.
“MEMORIES THAT WARM AND MEMORIES THAT WARN”
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)
Today, in my gratitude list, I listed back to back two similar that were similar, yet very different.
“Memories that warm.
Memories that warn.”
There are truly good memories. And then there are memories that merely make you feel good for a little while, but then leave a bitter after-taste. These latter “good” memories are not good. A memory that leaves you colder is a shortcut that leads to long regrets.
However, the truly good memories are just that: good memories. And they are to be cherished.
But the bad memories are also to be cherished. They help us to be humble, and to not make more bad decisions that will lead to more bad memories and long regrets. These warning memories also make us more empathetic and compassionate toward others.
Memories that warm and memories that warn both play a crucial part in being fully human. However, I should try to live so that I have more warming memories.
Here is an affirmation that you might find helpful today: Today, by God’s grace, I choose to remember the things that warm my heart, and the things that warn my heart. I am consistently choosing today to make good memories, so that I may be more warmed than warned. I’ve had plenty of warnings already.
“Living in the Now”
Saturday, August 3, 2019
A good reading from Hazelden Publishing:
“Saturday, August 3
To live a spiritual life we must first find the
courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and
persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.
—Henri J. M. Nouwen
Knowing our loneliness and admitting it to us is the beginning of a spiritual
path for many men. Today we are on a spiritual journey. We already have the
means to translate the pain of our loneliness into a deeper spiritual
dimension. Most men in this program came in deeply aware of their feelings of
isolation. Now, with the companionship of our Higher Power, we can spend time
alone and use it for spiritual growth. As we develop a relationship with
ourselves and deepen our knowledge of our Higher Power, our loneliness
transforms into solitude.
In this quiet moment today, we can be more accepting of ourselves than we were
in the past. We admit loneliness has caused us pain, but now we can see that it
also can lead us to our deeper self where we find serene solitude. This change
is a movement into the spiritual world.
Thanks to God for the solitude I have found in my life.” (From Touchstones: A Book of Daily
Meditations for Men ©1986, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.)
To say that I am in way over my head in teaching various courses at the university would be an understatement. Perhaps, though, that enables me to be more sympathetic with my fellow-students of the Word. Maybe we are all in over our heads in life and in our pursuit of the God who has pursued us.
No unchecked regrets today! I went down to the breakfast area for my second cup of coffee this morning, and a young couple with a small child and a baby were having breakfast. I was filled with regret that I did not treat my wife and the kids better.
But God reminded me that I can never go back. There are no re-dos for anything that is worthwhile. There is only this day, and its chances to be patient, kind, and compassionate to others—and even to myself. Regret focuses me on the unalterable past, and keeps me from the awareness of the present chances to love. Real love is always a present-tense verb.
“No Regrets!”
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’” (John Greenleaf Whittier)
Today, I wrote the following in my journal, right after listing 50 items on my gratitude list:
“Today, God, no regrets! Just praise, humility, obedience and gratitude!”
Like virtually every other human being who has lived more than four years, I have regrets. In fact, I probably have more than the average member of my species. Regret for the things I’ve done and the things I haven’t, regret for the people I’ve harmed, regret for not living out my own principles.
But these days, while not minimizing my screw-ups, I try to not wallow in regret. While I have regrets, I try not to let the regrets have me. The truth is this: Regrets have no beneficial effects, and many harmful ones.
How are regrets harmful? Let me count the ways!
First, they can’t change what happened or what I did. The past is a pretty stubborn critter. I may reframe it or look at it differently, but the picture itself is not going to change. I can learn from it, but I can’t teach it a single thing. In terms of the Serenity Prayer, the past is one of the things I cannot change. Therefore, I need God to “. . . grant me the serenity to accept the (past) things I cannot change . . . .”
Second, regrets harm my ability to move on, to grow, to become a better person. What gets my focus gets me. If I am focusing on the past, I am very likely to go back to the past. In any case, as long as I am filled with regrets, I am refusing to live in the present. And, the last time I checked, the present was the only time when I could live. To live in the past is to die before my time. I am a walking dead man when I regret my past.
Third (and related to the first two harmful effect of regret), regrets are an insidious form of self-deception. When I regret, I am pretending that I am taking my past seriously. I am not. I am trying to substitute feeling bad for doing what is good in the here and now. Allowing regrets to dominate me compromises the very positive qualities that I listed in my journal: “praise, humility, obedience and gratitude!”
Fourth, when I indulge in regrets, I am harming others. How so? When I am filled with regrets, I am not really available to those around me. And those around me need me. I am focused on myself, when I regret my past. Regretting my past is trying to drive a car, while steadfastly looking in the rearview mirror. It is just a matter of time before I rear-end the car in front of me or run over a pedestrian.
Finally, regret is a form of atheism. I am pretending that I am a competent judge of myself. I am also pretending that my past attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words are too bad to be forgiven. As a Christian, this is a form of heresy, bordering on a denial of the very existence and goodness of God. Living even on the border of atheism is a dangerous place to live.
So, just for today, no regrets. No looking back. No beating myself up. Just living well. Just awareness. Just love.
“ON NOT WANTING TO KEEP STRICT RECORDS”
I hate math! I don’t like numbers. I never have. But sometimes, it is a good idea to make your hatred work for you.
So, true confession time: I have a runaway mind. I tend to think inappropriate thoughts—lust, self-pity, judgmental thoughts, worry, regrets, you name it. And once I start down that rabbit hole, I am like Alice. I keep falling.
So, I’ve tried an experiment today. I am trying to keep a strict record of all my inappropriate thoughts. I haven’t had a lot of them.
Why? I think because I hate quantification so much. You might say that I have a case of “quantiphobia.” (I thought that I was the first to identify this sort of irrational fear. However, my illusion of creativity was punctured almost immediately by googling “the fear of numbers.” Numerophobia and arithmophobia are fairly common. Oh well!)
So, here is how I’ve been handling inappropriate thoughts today. I have been trying to quantify them. Trying to keep a strict account of my unhealthy thoughts is so intimidating that it is easier simply not to have them.
In a sense, this might be a variation on the tenth step of twelve-step groups: “Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.” Sometimes, just being aware of my tendency to go wrong is a helpful thing. Admissions of truth to oneself are never easy. It is much easier to inflict truth on other people.
Furthermore, I have such an easily distracted mind, and such a contrarian mind, that trying to focus on any unhealthy thoughts for more than a second or two leaves me desiring to distract myself with healthy thoughts. And I am so contrary that if I decide to concentrate on unhealthy thoughts, my mind is prone to rebel, and go to healthy thoughts. (The same is true for me concerning healthy thoughts. If I set out to think only healthy thoughts, I know it’s going to be a long and frustrating day.)
Now, I realize that this is exceedingly strange. I don’t think that this approach would work for most people. I don’t know if it will work for me over the long haul. However, I’m going to try to make it a habitual discipline, and see if it will work. One thing is for sure: It has helped me today!
“ON (MAYBE) HAVING A DISEASE I DIDN’T USED TO BELIEVE WAS REAL”
I used to believe that fibromyalgia was not a real thing. It was easy to be a disbeliever, since I didn’t have it. However, over the years, I’ve come to accept that it is a real thing.
It became really easy today, because I am aching all over. I went to the doctor. My vital signs were all great, which is . . . great! However, the doctor was really puzzled by my symptoms. I was actually somewhat pleased when she said, “I have no idea what’s going with you.” I never trust anyone who never says, “I don’t know.”
However, I do trust my wife! She lives with my pretty much all the time, and she is a nurse. Furthermore, I have had things in the past that she diagnosed long before the doctors and medical procedures verified them. So, when she said, “You know, this sounds kind of like fibromyalgia,” I was listening. Pain that nearly doubles you over sometimes helps you to hear better.
So, we each did a bit of research, and sure enough, the vague (but intense) symptoms seemed to fit. In addition, some things that I read about possible contributing factors sounded like some things I have been going through—anxiety, lack of sleep, and so on. Some things that help ease the pain also sounded like some things I had been intuitively doing.
I was especially struck by the anxiety piece. The truth is that I most certainly have some anxiety right now. I am about to teach a class I’ve never taught before, in a program that I’ve never taught in before, using Accordance Bible software, which I downloaded less than a week ago. And, from the time I was asked to teach the class, until the first class was just over two weeks.
Yes, I would say that anxiety could be an issue!
However, it occurred to me that there was something I hadn’t done. I hadn’t prayed.
Now, I believe in God (most of the time). And I also believe that God answers prayer. Whether it is the answer we want is a completely separate matter.
But God has been so good to me, has given me so many wonderful things, that I hesitate to ask for one more. Why, in Heaven’s Name, shouldn’t I hurt?! After all, I’ve had a good life.
As soon as I verbalized this thought to my wife, I heard how stupid it sounded. God is not constrained! God can bless and bless and bless again. Why shouldn’t I pray for healing?
So, I did. And I took a nap. When I got up, I felt much better. I could stand straight, not looking like a human question mark.
And another thing: For the past, I don’t know, two months (?), whenever I am inclined to entertain regrets, I send Jesus to the door. For some reason, regrets seem to be scared of him. They do not come in. Instead, they run away.
So, I thought to myself, anxieties are actually just regrets that I have imported from the future. Why not send Jesus to the door whenever anxieties knock?
If I deal creatively with anxieties (or rather, let Jesus deal with them), the pain may go away. At the very least, sending Jesus to the door may help substantially.
DOWN TO EARTH BELIEVER
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- “Character is the Real Lesson” January 19, 2024I am often confused about what lesson I’m really supposed to be learning. For example, this morning I was trying to knock out several Spanish lessons. My intentions were a lot better than my internet connection. I’ve done three lessons. Or rather, I’ve done two lessons. One of them I did twice because the internet […]
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- “That Don’t Impress God Much” December 14, 2023DTEB, “That Don’t Impress God Much” “That Don’t Impress Me Much” (Song by Robert John Lange and Shania Twain) Micah 6:8 (MSG) “But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be […]
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