Ask HN: How do you stop regretting?

We get tired of being unhappy and think about what's wrong, what went wrong, how we got how we got here, etc. and try and think of a solution for our unhappiness.

Trying to think your way out of regretting will not work. Unfortunately, there is no trick or hack that will suddenly stop this cycle of regret cause it to unravel, leaving you happy and satisfied and confident with the decisions you've made.

"The problem is that we try to think our way out of our moods by working out what's gone wrong. What's wrong with me? Why do I always feel overwhelmed? Before we have any idea what's hit us, we're compulsively trying over and over to get to the bottom of what is wrong with us as people or the way we live our lives, and fix it. We put all of our mental powers to work on the problem, and the power we rely on is that of our critical thinking skills.

Unfortunately, those critical thinking skills might be exactly the wrong tools for the job."

What you might want to try is relating differently to these feelings of regret, especially when you notice that your mind is entering these cycles. It is important to realize that this is just a passing feeling.

"But we don't like to feel sad because it can quickly turn into a sense that we are somehow flawed of incomplete; so we call in the intellect to focus on the mismatch between what 'is' and what 'should be.' Because we can't accept the discomfort of the message, we try to shoot the messenger and end up shooting ourselves in the foot."

If the above blocks in quotation marks sound familiar to you, I suggest picking up a copy of the book "The Mindful Way Through Depression"[0]

Full disclosure: I'm reading this book right now, as it was recommended to me by a counselor a few years back. I also am not a psychiatrist (or lawyer, or doctor).

[0]http://www.amazon.com/The-Mindful-Way-through-Depression/dp/...

2. You're in your early 30's and you feel like all your decisions have been made and that everything about your life is set in stone? I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, that isn't true. You're still young. Don't focus on what you've done. Let that be chapters 1,2 and 3 in your biography. What do you want chapters 3.3 through 8 to say? Do you want them to say, "He made some mistakes and let them rule the rest of his life"? Or "He got his act together and made opportunities for himself."

You're on Hacker News. HN is absolutely rife with stories of people creating opportunities for themselves.

One last thing: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

Beyond basic health and safety, you get to choose the rules of the game of your life. Making contest to make the most money or be the championship is the stupidest game to play. Collaboration beats competition.

Circumstances beyond your control were beyond your control.

Assess your position as a matter of fact, and proceed forward in good faith and honest intent as circumstances allow.

Early 30s is just getting started. I didn't have a sense of having a good grip on life until 40.

Do what needs to be done.

Take care of your own square foot.

Stop looking backwards.

If you need professional help, get it.

Once you get your mood straightened out, you will find that day two of progress is worth more than years wasted on regret, but the mood disorder is not something you should expect to succeed at thinking your way through.

This is obviously not medical advice, but if I were you and if the mood swings were not too strong (agonizing) then I'd see the sun at least 20 minutes every day. That, and a lot more focus on the work that I want to do from now, a life that I want to lead from here on.

First, get a shrink. Yes, really.

Second, get to work! It takes ten thousand hours to truly master a craft. That's about five working years. You'll probably be working until you're 67 or so. If you start learning a new skill now, you'll master it at 37 - and for the remaining 30 years of your working life, you'll do great.

Sure, the ambitious 20-somethings may have a head start. But over the next decade, that'll even out. Just stop feeling sorry for youself and do the damn work that's needed.

(Note: The following paragraph assumes you're not supporting a family.)

If you hate your job, quit. Yes, I know you probably don't have enough savings to feel good about that. But there's no better motivation than impending doom. If you know your runway is up in two months, you'll hustle like mad thouse two months. And you'll get there. Really, what's the worst thing that can happen?

Is that really worse than where you're at now?

God says...

billion courage Vermont portion begins mocked dissolution sought poems Costa_Rica rapture admonish high successive prize kick_back contentment action ipod treasure confirmed followest begging serpent enabled weak well-pleased hard-heartedness subjection sound sparedst fluidness denies least delight garb game_over descendants power benediction credit teeth

Specifically: "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."

My personal advice: go exercise until you can't take it anymore...you'll feel great.

http://youtu.be/hzBCI13rJmA

0. You could probably benefit a great deal from talking with someone professionally about what you're going through. It's not a panacea, but it can definitely help.

1. There's absolutely no point in comparing your life to someone else's. They simply aren't comparable. Your life is yours; their lives are theirs. You're here in this world to have your experience, not theirs. Judging your experience of life in light of what you perceive to be another's experience will do you no good whatsoever. Worse, you're probably wrong in how you perceive their life. For all you know, the people you think have it so awesome are miserable, themselves, and secretly think your life is the shit — and round and round we go... Just Stop. Now.

(Full disclosure: I still have trouble with this one myself, to an extent, but only with age any more. I turned 40 last year, and work in technology, so I'm always surrounded by 20-something youth and vitality. Maintaining my equanimity can sometimes be challenging in that environment.)

2. Whatever it is that you're regretting, you need to understand that you couldn't have acted differently at the time. Between the circumstances around the event, who you were at the time of the event, who the other people involved were at the time, and so on, there really wasn't much anyone could have done, but exactly what they did. (Aside: as much as people reading along at home might want to, please don't use my phrasing here to spawn a free will vs. determinism debate. While I, personally, find that stuff fascinating, this really isn't the place for it.)

This was a very, very hard one for me to come to grips with. I used to have some pretty debilitating regrets, myself. There were choices I'd made that, when I thought of them, I'd feel physical pain, as if struck. Seriously, I remember many occasions where I'd be in the shower (the most common place for this to happen, for whatever reason), or going about my day in some other fashion, when Situation X would pop into my head, and I'm suddenly doubled over as if someone just punched me in the gut. I'm not exaggerating.

Worse, those regrets were holding me back in situations like the one I was regretting. Let's suppose, for sake of discussion, that my regret was over "blowing it" with "the girl of my dreams." Every time I was in an even remotely romantic situation after that, my regrets would be foreground in my mind, instead of being present to the situation I was in. I doubt I have to belabor how much life I missed out on because of that...

After a lot of soul-searching, and a rather expensive and painfully-wrought epiphany or seven, I realized exactly what I describe above: given who I was at the time, who the other people were, the circumstances we were all in, &c, there simply wasn't another outcome for the situation. The only way it could have played out is exactly as it did. After that, regret for my choices made as much sense as regretting it being cold that day.

Please take care not to misunderstand: that doesn't mean you shrug and walk away. Every experience in life, pleasant or painful, has something to teach us. Often enough, the more painful the experience, the more there is to learn from it — we learn that fire is hot by being burned far more quickly than we do by being told. So whatever the lesson(s) might be in your situation(s), sit down with yourself and strive to find them, honestly, and without judgement. They're there, and the rest of your life will open and flow out of what you take from them.

You cannot change the past, so do not trouble yourself with what is past. Look forward and plan where you want to go from where you are. Use what you have and keep on keeping on.

A professional specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy might be especially helpful to you, in just a few sessions. You need to break the pattern of thought that leads you to fixate on your regrets, shortcomings and other negativity. With all of this taking up space in your mind, you'll have a hard time finding the attention or energy for the many exciting options open to you.

Put another way – with your hand full of the whip you're using to beat the hell out of yourself, it isn't free to work on real things.

Meanwhile, tonight, right now, take a moment and write yourself a letter. Write from the perspective of the kindest, dearest, most understanding friend you can imagine.

As this friend, express understanding and compassion for the hardships and missed opportunities you've endured. Offer encouragement. Catalog all the disappointments of your history if that's what you feel like doing – but do so in a way that says "Hey dude. That hurts. I totally understand why you're feeling bad. It's cool."

In short – give yourself a break. And repeat the exercise any time you're having a rough night like this one.

There's no time machine. There's nothing you can do to go back and change things. All you have is right now. Today. This moment. In any given moment, you get to decide your stance and attitude. You can't reverse your past, but you have full control over how you dispose of every single second between now, as you're reading this, and when you die.

It is guaranteed that your experiences are 100% unique to you. It is impossible to know what emergent qualities will arrange themselves to suit your unique success.

The other guarantee is that for as long as you spend time thinking of the past instead of building the future, the unique value of your experiences will remain locked up, unused.

The mind is an incredibly powerful yet fallible pattern matching engine. It can find anything, from any input, it seems. Just the same way you can make a face or a zoo animal from a pattern of water vapor in the sky, you're making a failure out of a pattern of events in the past. In both cases, it's illusion.

There's no instant fix. Patterns of thought take time and effort to change. All I can tell you as that only you can decide to change course. It'll be hard. It won't always be fun. It won't be overnight. But you can definitely do it. And anything is better than this feeling, right?

Here's Dave McClure's blog on his late bloom, which perhaps will give you some perspective on just how much road there still is ahead:

http://500hats.com/late-bloomer

I cannot change the past. I cannot change the future. I only have choice in the present, so that is my point of power.

Past > POWER < Future

This simple little framework helps me avoid regret, and also becoming lost in fantasy-land about what my future may entail. Note that it doesn't absolve me of responsibility to learn from the past or plan for the future - but both learning and planning are 'present' actions!

Usually the thing you think can never be done or won't ever happen is exactly the thing that you will do.

The way to break the thought cycle is to step out of it. Take action. Just an attempt will cause enough chaotic energy that something will happen.

I tried to go a whole year by saying YES! to everything.. even if it meant to lie, to fake, to break someone's heart. (I know you might think Yes Man, the book or the movie, but honestly it's true and it really helps)

We respect people for their attempts and subsequent failures sometimes more than their successes.

It's about progress every day towards a goal. Whatever has happend has happened. You can't control the past. But you can absolutely control the future and where you end up. Focus on what you can control (your actions going forward) not what you can't (the actions of your friends or what you've done in the past).

People successfully re-invent themselves much later than their early 30s. You've got nothing to worry about. It's not too late.

Most people find competition, but what are you winning? Do you want the prize or the step ahead? What were you aiming for anyway? Do you really want it or is it simply the most obvious thing to do?

I am in my early 30's as well. I opted to work right out of high school and take 10 years getting my 2 year degree. I worked for a very long time with a decent employer, and I built up great skills along the way.

In the past couple of years though things started getting bleak. I was hitting the boundaries of what this employer could offer, and I could even say that it was a bit of an abusive work relationship(probably mutually). My mood started getting foul. People who I was good friends with I was having trouble getting along with. I was drinking a lot to smooth things over. My family life suffered. Things were a mess.

One day I just had enough and got into counseling. I took control. I changed jobs, and stepped away from friends for a while and worked on family. I doubled down on education(I had started on my bachelors a while back, but I recommitted). Things got a bit better.

Then things went down a bit again. I started reading more HN and r/programming to build up my professional chops. I started feeling inadequate. I felt like this new job I had wasn't cool or startuppy enough. Doubt crept back in.

So I had conversations with a lot of people. There was a guy on HN that was taking stories and giving advice. He helped me a bit. I have a pen pal kind of friend who has had cool experiences. He helped me a lot also. I talked to family and friends of all stripes about my concerns. Basically everyone had the same thing to say, that I was living a good life. That the kind of things I felt I should be doing have their tradeoffs as well. That I should focus on what I am doing instead of always looking for major improvements.

And then I came to the realization that I was trying to live up to someone else's yard stick. It took me 10 years to get an associates degree because I was raising a family. I lost my startup because I didn't want to spend my entire life at a keyboard. I was beating myself up about my job because I was trying to measure my career as an engineer against that of the internet's best and brightest entrepreneurs. I was trying too hard.

So take it easy on yourself man. I am sure that you have some pretty awesome stuff going on in your life. Take time to appreciate the things you enjoy. Discard things that don't work for you anymore. Put down HN for a while if you it is making you feel like you aren't doing enough(I had to for a while). Make a change if it is smart for you to do so, and don't beat yourself if it isn't the right time. But above all else, just cut yourself some slack.