According to the 2020 World Regret Survey of more than 15,000 people from 105 countries, 80% said that they experience occasional regret, approximately 20% reported regret most all the time, and only 1% stated they never feel regret. If you are part of the 1%, you may believe that is a good place to be. However, never acknowledging regrets may consign you to making the same mistakes over and over.
While we don’t want to spend our lives staring in the rear-view mirror, never utilizing that mirror can contribute to future problems. Now granted, some regrets are minor – such as, “I wish I had purchased that laundry detergent when it was on sale.” While others are major – “I knew that it was a mistake to drop out of school.” Or even moral, “I knew that to be unfaithful to my husband was never going to benefit me in the long-run.”
But, whatever the regret might be – it provides an opportunity to learn and grow and avoid the same mistake in the future. As one author stated, “”Your regret can teach you to become smarter – if you let it.”
Regrets are not a place to camp and be imprisoned by. Neither should they be skirted over. Owning our mistakes and going a different direction in the future is always helpful. And if you are a Jesus follower, kind of like the old MasterCard commercial, for everything else, there is the forgiving grace of Jesus. That is the best of all!