THE 9 BIG REGRETS IN LIFE
WHICH TELL US HOW TO LIVE OUR LIVES
"It's better to learn how to live life well than to have to figure out afterwards how you could have made so many mistakes in life."
The BuddhaKahuna
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Stephen Covey suggests that "we begin with the end in mind", and then work our way back to doing whatever is necessary to cause that end.
Unfortunately, few people do that so they get to the ending of their lives and have significant regrets and which they would have lived otherwise.
Here are the 9 chief types of regrets:
I did not live a happy life and didn't learn how to be happy and didn't do what is right. (See sidebar.)
I didn't relate to my family enough (especially overachievers, e.g. Sam Walton, Bill Walsh)
I needed approval so much that I lived other people's agendas and not mine.
I didn't take care of my health.
I was naive and unwise in my life. I did not fix some of the big problems.
I stayed with a bad partner OR I failled to learn how to relate well.
I wasn't successful, bold enough, didn't play life big enough (this is often, though, based on unrealistic expectations or "misexpectations" and misevaluations, with no sound basis)
I didn't learn how to manage my emotions, my psychology, and didn't use the resources and people who could have helped me.
THE BIG CAUSE
Though we can discuss each of these (for discussion see the links above), the big cause of the regrets is never having learned enough about life and how to function in it.
Consequently, we let our skill for living life stop at too low of a level. We missed the opportunity to learn life ahead of time so that we could avoid making many of the mistakes, ahead of time! We missed the opportunities to learn by our mistakes and to actually permanently fix our problems, so we ended up with too many problems that we could have eliminated from our lives. We didn't seek the necessary help and resources needed to elevate our level of understanding, for whatever "reasons": "not enough time", "I'll do it later", "I just can't do it", "that's just the way I am", "I'll learn it through experience, not study" and on and one, ad nauseum - lots of reasons that are not valid and based on false beliefs.
If a person even reads this article, it could have been brief interest in not making the life errors that others have regreted. And then most of the people will simply move on to the next article of interest, having taken this seriously enough to really do something about it.
In contrast, you might want to follow the path of "PL", the proactive student of life, who contacted me for "coaching" - you can follow his case by clicking PL And His Life Learning Process. He is actually following through and will be a great example and inspiration for others to follow "the path" (See the page for The Paths, to pick and choose between. Hopefully, at some point, you will actually write out your LifePlan, so that you can consciously and intentionally create your life so that it all goes well and ends well, with great happiness and fulfillment/satisfaction.)
