Striving to live without regret
My greatest regret in my life has been inaction, primarily with respect to my interactions with other people. It's a horrible feeling. I'm always left with that "what if?..." feeling. And worse, there is no one to blame but myself.
It stems mostly from my shyness, which I have been doing much better with compared to when I was younger (I am no longer shy around people and have much more confidence in myself). My inaction is also because of my lack of guts, fear of taking chances, "ruining" things, and creating awkward situations. Other times, I just end up somehow justifying the inaction to myself given the circumstances or something like that. This explains why I had such a "late start".
You know, my actions haven't particularly led me where I want to be (and expected to be) in some aspects of my life. So what better time to change than now? I want to live without regret. I just need to take (or ask) what I want. At least then I'll know one way or the other and not be left just wondering.
And now, my own personal rant (yes, I know you hate it, but it has to be done this way):
It stems mostly from my shyness, which I have been doing much better with compared to when I was younger (I am no longer shy around people and have much more confidence in myself). My inaction is also because of my lack of guts, fear of taking chances, "ruining" things, and creating awkward situations. Other times, I just end up somehow justifying the inaction to myself given the circumstances or something like that. This explains why I had such a "late start".
You know, my actions haven't particularly led me where I want to be (and expected to be) in some aspects of my life. So what better time to change than now? I want to live without regret. I just need to take (or ask) what I want. At least then I'll know one way or the other and not be left just wondering.
You need to be-more-assertive
-- Indian guy from Yellow Fever
And now, my own personal rant (yes, I know you hate it, but it has to be done this way):
8 Comments:
Please stop spamming us. Thanks.
Grrr... Guangji, I know that was you...
Fine, I'll change it so that you don't see the crap anymore.
Damn. We really are very similar.
Just be prepared for a different kind of regret: regret of things you have done. Let's face it, sometimes those things you avoided really wouldn't have worked out (but only rarely). But the "oops" kind of regret is far superior, anyway, and it tends to turn into a useful lesson that you can chuckle about later.
Well, I'm not saying that I'm going to just start being reckless, but there have been several instances where I thought about it a lot, decided to act on it, but in the end, just chickened out. Those are the ones I regret the most.
Or it's like, I look back and I think shit, I so should have done this or that, but instead, just let it pass.
Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
And honestly, maybe you should be reckless sometimes. Risk/reward and all that. High risk equals high reward, and if you don't get the reward, you get a good story for later. "So this one time, I set my hand on fire..."
You have what you have in the time that you have it. And sometimes that's all it is and all that it needs to be.
Michele, my post wasn't so much about risk taking as it was about not mulling about in rue. I agree with you in the sense of risk taking and you gotta do in life what you gotta do. But in the sense of "ruining things" I believe that a lot of relationships in life are transitory, so that's what you had in the time that you had it, so no sense in beating yourself over it.
I wish I have the key, then maybe I'll be assertive as well.
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