Do You Live A No-Regrets Life?

Photo by Alex Alvarez on Unsplash

“No regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life.”

~Brene Brown

My topic of this article is regret. I would have told you recently that this is a new perspective on an ancient idea that I myself practiced living without regrets. That I appreciated all of my experiences as valuable, even when I chose a route in my past that was neither pristine nor, dare I say, preferred. That I did not want to dwell on parts of the past that I could not change, that I bravely looked forward, and with awareness, of not repeating past “sidesteps,” I do my very best in the present moment.

What changed?

Simply stated, I was suddenly able to see the part of me left behind, a part of me that, while she knows we can’t change the past, also knows that I am living without a very integral aspect of myself. She is very proud of who my choices have made me into (no regrets), but she also wants to be seen, acknowledged, and genuinely welcomed back into the daily landscape of my life.

She understood my choices, realizing that her resolve, power, and strength may not have been well received nor tolerated in the system I lived within. She knows that our psyche may detract from who we know we are for the absolute need for a sense of safety and belonging.

As we make a choice based on the system we need, want, or desire to be a part of while at the same time ignoring and/or denying our truest essence, we may cause a fracture with a piece of us. Ironically as we walk forward, we no longer have complete or true access to that purest essence of us because it has been deemed unsafe or that it needs protection;
two sides of the same coin.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

~C.G. Jung

What I began to realize and am playing with today is that this unresolved part of me, who was beckoning for acknowledgment, is lending a heavy hand in many decisions of the day. As always, when we are denying a part of ourselves, they have this uncanny way of directing our life