Hi there. Won't go too much in to detail, but just feeling regret about my life choices so far. Mid 30s and i wish did so much different. There is still time to make changes in life. But i'll never get all that time i wasted back. All i can really do is try harder and be thankful for the life i have lived and thankful for what i do have. Thanks for readinv.


21 comments
  1. 38m. I’ve never had a girlfriend & i’m on an 11 year dry spell. I’ve realized somethings are out of my control. Yeah sure i could have lied and pretended to be someone i am not.

    I don’t deal with the regret. I just try to move on. It won’t help feeling down about it.

  2. I apologized to as many people as I could that I wronged and just try to do better moving forward. I’m 30 and wish I did more with my time too, I’m doing whatever I can to have things look totally different before this year is over.

  3. It’s a natural part of life. don’t beat yourself up…time marches forward whether you live in regret or not

  4. The stoic way is to cultivate the mindset of focusing on what you can control and letting go of what you cannot. The past is one of those things that is completely out of your control now, so any time spent ruminating on it is taking away from your ability to do better in the present. Of course that does not mean you don’t learn from your experiences, but dwelling on it emotionally does not help you at all. Everyone makes mistakes and has regrets, but you’ve got a long road ahead of you full of opportunity and potential if you open yourself up to it and take direct action to move towards your goals in the present.

  5. Facts!
    I’m in 30s as well, I Feel this every moment of the day.
    But working towards less and less regret everyday.
    Thanks for posting and wishing you well on this shared journey.

  6. I make good money to regret..I just don’t care too much about anything. It’s my FU money.

  7. As most people have said focus on what you can change. Your regrets are still valuable to think about cause you can use them to learn how you’d like to act differently next time, but dont get too hung up on something you can’t change now.

  8. There is a saying in Spanish that kinda translates to: “the -should’ve- and -would’ve- do not exist”. It means that they’re in the past and you can’t change them. Don’t worry about those. Pick the lessons you learned from your mistakes and focus in the future. Regret comes when you think about those -would’ve- and -should’ve-.

  9. We all have it.

    Key is not to hang onto it, weighs you down.

    Accept it, learn from it and move on.

    Life is just one big book.

  10. Eh. We’re all nothing more than collections of our mistakes and regrets. That’s what makes us unique – every perfect person is alike, but every flawed person is flawed in their own way.

    Don’t focus on past mistakes. Instead, look forward to the mistakes you still get to make. Just make sure to make them spectacular.

  11. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” – Steve Jobs

    I completely resonated with this quote every single time I read it. I always read it to myself when I’m feeling a bit down as I recollect myself.

    Just remember, we are where we are due to the sum of all past decisions and past choices. It’s made us the more wiser.

    We have trust that everything will always work in the end…

  12. You’ll have to rewire your mental to think about it this way:

    “Don’t let yesterday take too much of today.” – Will Rogers.

    We only have a short amount of time on this earth. And the fact that we’re in our 30s, we’ve basically lived 40% of our life on this planet already. You might be more motivated to treat every day moving forward with zero regrets and no stones unturned. It’s also better late than never to start again, start over, or make amends.

    Good luck.

  13. Read a book called change your thoughts change your life by Dwyer. Great modern take on Taoism. I’ve squandered a lot. If your hate squandering so much why are you going to squander more whining about what you squandered?

  14. I don’t deal with regret, mate. I find a hilarious analogy in the game that I play sometimes, World of Warcraft. My character is a Warrior who spends his Rage on a damage mitigation ability called Ignore Pain. That’s my way IRL as well. I have fucked up hundreds of things so far, wasted all my 20’s drinking myself half to death, and so on, but ultimately all that matters is the days in front of you, and what you make of them. As sad and melancholic as I sometimes get, I have a lot of internal energy, drive, and resilience. So I focus on doing shit that needs/is fun doing, and let the stink of the past wash over me.

  15. I struggle with this. I try to think of the things of my life that im grateful for and realize that if the past had been different, they may not have happened.

    Second, i try to show myself the same grace i would show a friend. Think about the thing you regret and ask yourself if a friend had done the same thing, would you hold it against him? Probably not.

  16. One man’s waste is another man’s treasure.

    Actually I don’t have many regrets. My main regret is not pushing earlier in life for building something of my own or investing. Since then I would have an easier life now. But I’m fixing that by spending every weekend and evening at a cafe with my laptop now.

  17. A while back I realized that regret is a useless emotion. Can’t change what already happened.

    Don’t beat yourself up because it’s not going to help. Just try learn from the past and make the best decisions going forward.

  18. No regerts. Most useless emotion ever. At mid 30s you are still young. You can’t change the past but you can certainly change the future, and you have plenty of time to do so.

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