Dealing With Regrets Caused By Your Poor People Skills

If you're anything like me, you have a bunch of regrets caused by your messing up socially in the past. Like a lot of things, I'm not as afflicted as I used to be, but I still deal with this problem occasionally. I'll catch myself having those moments where I dwell on some mistake I made and I think, "If only I had..." More than a few times I've had elaborate daydreams where I've thought about how much better things would be if I could start my life over again at age ten, or fourteen, or eighteen, knowing everything I know now.

Here are some of the regrets I've had. They're probably not very unique:

Oh, can you feel the self-pity oozing out of your screen? It's hard not to let this stuff get to you sometimes. Especially if you're still not where you want to be socially, it's pretty easy to get caught up in all the 'what if's'. Here are my thoughts on dealing with your regrets:

You're never going to totally get over your regrets

Everyone has made mistake in their life. Once they've happened you can't undo them, and you can always wonder what may have been if you had done things differently. It's just human nature to sometimes regret past choices you've made. I think you can experience your regrets less often and not let them bum you out as much, but it's probably a little too optimistic to hope you can totally eliminate them. So the best I can do in this article is offer a few points that may help take the edge off, not cure anything outright.

You tend to be more regretful when your life currently isn't going so well

When I'm feeling satisfied with my life I don't really dwell on my regrets. It sounds a little trite, but I'm too busy enjoying the present to worry about things I did wrong five years ago. But I notice as soon as I start to feel a little down, even temporarily because I've had a bad day at work or a squabble with my girlfriend, then my mind quickly goes into 'Regret Mode'. And of course, when my life wasn't as good as it is now, I was down pretty often, and regretful just as much.

It's almost as if when you're feeling unsatisfied, your mind starts scanning for solutions for your problem and lousy mood. But rather than cook up some comprehensive five-step plan about how to fix things, it goes back in time and fixates on, "If only I had done this in freshman year, my life would be great, and I wouldn't be feeling bummed out at the moment."

Where I'm getting at with this is if you can get your current life into a decent state, your regrets will diminish. I know, much easier said than done, but at least there is some promise of relief in the future.

You can reduce your regrets by improving in the areas you're regretful about

This is looking at the same idea of the previous point in a different way. I just said that making my life better in a general, overall sense reduces my regrets. In my experience you can also lessen your regrets by having some present success in the areas you're ruminating about. I think you tend to have regrets in area you care about doing well in, but feel you're not currently experiencing the level of success you want. I mean I got so-so grades in high-school, and I've messed up at meaningless part-time jobs I've worked, but I don't give those mistakes a second thought because I don't care about that stuff.

If you're having regrets about your past shyness, they may go away if you can scale back your shyness in the present (again: one thing to say it, another to do it). The past errors can't be undone, but if you can be happy in that area now, your mind may be able to let your previous mistakes rest in peace. Or maybe you focus on a past failure to stand up for yourself because you still feel like you can't assert yourself. Maybe if you hit the gym and took some boxing classes you'd feel more powerful, and would no longer have a need to dwell on some wimpy episode from grade school.

You may be having regrets because of something you always wanted to do but haven't done yet. Your mind is going to, "You had a chance here and you blew it." If possible, try to do that thing and your thoughts may be put at ease. Of course some opportunities aren't practical to do too long after you've missed out on them the first time.

Don't assume your life would be so much better if you had only done certain things differently

When I have thoughts of the, "I should have done ________" variety, a lot of the regret comes from thinking that if I had done that thing the outcome would have been so perfect and wonderful. Sometimes you have the supposed outcome totally mapped out in your head. At other times you just assume things would turn out well without really going into details as to why it would:

Who's to say the outcome would have been so positive though. It could have been more mundane and anti-climatic:

This point helps me a lot personally. If I catch myself thinking back to some pivotal moment where I wanted to have done things differently, I just tell myself there's no guarantee the outcome would have been a best-case scenario. It's just easier to fill in the blank that way because I'll never know what would have really happened. There are dozens of times in my life where I did talk to the girl or stand up for myself or take the chance or whatever. Sometimes it turned out great. Mostly the results were mixed and unexceptional and quickly forgotten.

Don't have regrets for unrealistic reasons

Us shy people can be too hard on ourselves in the present. We can beat ourselves up for not being socially perfect and knowing the exact right thing to do in a situation. I'm the same way for some of my regrets, "If only I done so-and-so...and been incredibly smooth and charismatic, things would have turned out so well!!!!" It's not realistic for me to feel down about something because I didn't live up to unattainable standards in the past.

Everyone has regrets

This point is a little cheesy in that it's saying, "There there, don't feel bad", but is somewhat short on substance. Like I said earlier, we all have things we regret. Sometimes when I'm feeling regretful I almost believe I'm the only one who's ever screwed up in life. Of course, we all have things we wished we had done differently. No one gets everything right all the time. Everyone knows everything in hindsight, but at the time we all have to be younger and more clueless. It makes me feel a little better to realize this, that I'm not some wretched loser who's all alone in having an imperfect past. Just me and every single other person.