The Light Within : How to Break Free from Regrets

Welcome to another episode of "The Light Within." In this episode, we delve into the powerful and often paralyzing emotion of regret.  Almost everyone has regrets in life, it is a part of having a  human experience however sometimes we let them take over or ability to take decision and breed resentments. In this episode we  explore how regrets can hold us back and discover effective ways to release this emotional baggage. Learn practical strategies to transform your regrets into opportunities for growth, self-acceptance, and a brighter future. Tune in and start your journey toward living a life free from the weight of past mistakes. Let’s turn those regrets into stepping stones for personal evolution. 

As always I look froward to hearing from you! May your soul be illuminated with 'The Light within".

Transcript

Welcome to yet another episode of "The Light Within." The purpose of this podcast is to help you get in tune with who you are, become the best version of yourself, and evolve in the journey of life. I have realized that the things that stop us from being our best are not limited to situations we can’t control. A huge part of it also comes from having regrets. It is a feeling that lingers and sticks to you until you recognize how much you have accumulated and drop that baggage off your shoulders. You guessed it right; in this episode, we are going to talk about regrets!
There’s a distinction between disappointment and regret. Sometimes we use these words interchangeably, but the only similarity they have is that they are negative emotions. Disappointments are about unmet expectations related to external events and circumstances. Regret is about personal choices and actions we wish had been different in hindsight.
Example: You were expecting a promotion at work, but it was given to someone else. The feeling you experience is disappointment because your expectation of receiving the promotion was not met. You chose to leave a stable job for a new opportunity that didn't work out as expected. Looking back, you feel regret because you now wish you had made a different decision.
These are feelings that keep coming back to us because we fail to stay in the present moment. It is hard to train yourself to stay in the present moment; it takes a lot because our minds are wired to stay in the past. When you sit in silence and memories from the past come to haunt you, especially situations where you had a choice to do something better, it is not an easy place to be. As we spend our days making ends meet, we don’t even realize how much of our energy is tied to things of the past. These energy cords that we have allowed to be tied to the things of the past have over time become so strong that it takes conscious effort to release that energy.
To simplify, let us understand the kinds of regrets we hold onto. Those murky memories dim the light within us.
Regrets from Action:
These are regrets that stem from things you did, choices you made, or actions you took.
• Ending a relationship impulsively.
• Saying hurtful things in anger.
• Quitting a stable job without a plan.
• Making poor investment choices.
• Hurting a friend or family member through words or actions.
• Engaging in conflicts or fights.
• Overeating or adopting an unhealthy diet.
Regrets from Inaction:
These are regrets that come from opportunities you missed or things you didn't do when you had the chance.
• Not pursuing a passion or dream.
• Missing out on opportunities to travel or experience new things.
• Failing to spend enough time with loved ones.
• Avoiding difficult conversations or confrontations.
• Not applying for a desired job or promotion.
• Not starting a business or side project.
• Not reaching out to old friends or family.
• Failing to apologize or make amends.
It’s clear from the examples above that we may not completely put a regret in one bucket, and there’s no need to analyze it so much. Just know what you may have to heal and let go. I know you can relate to more than one of the regrets that I have mentioned above. There are some common ones which all of us have across the board, whether you are a single parent, someone desperate to find a job, or sitting on a board of a company. Having regrets is a part of having a rich life; However, when regrets start to rule you and hamper your progress, you need to shake yourself and find the core of the problem.
Let’s break it down a little so that you have a fair idea where to look and lighten yourself.
Not Building a Healthy Relationship with Self:
Regrets in relationships are among the most common and deeply felt because they involve our connections with others, which are core to our well-being. Often when we talk about relationships, we think of them from the lens of another person, but there’s a more important relationship that we need to take care of first: the relationship with ourselves. We forget about this and think relationships are only about the other person. In fact, in my view, if you invest time in creating a healthy relationship with yourself, you will be able to externalize that energy in your relationships with others. It always starts from within, inside out.
Spirituality teaches us that you work on yourself first because you are the universe, you are the source. But we don’t believe it because external forces are strong enough to divert our minds. We keep thinking about what someone else did or said, creating a lot of chaos in our minds. The relationship with oneself is core to everything. Other relationships are a projection of the energy you hold within, and that energy comes from how you think about yourself overall. How we process the world is based on how we think about ourselves. When you feel good within, everything outside becomes better. On the other hand, there could be celebrations happening outside and yet you feel doomed. Why is that? Because you cannot associate with the happiness and peace outside if internally you are not at peace.
The Question is, How Do You Do It? How do you build a strong relationship with yourself?
Think of the beliefs that you hold about yourself and life in general. There could be negative beliefs that you might be holding onto, which might be dictating your behavior and decisions without even your conscious awareness, leading to disappointments or regrets.
Example: “I am too late to switch careers,” or “I am not good enough, skilled enough, brave enough,” etc. Take a pen and paper and list down everything that comes to your mind. I recommend you do it early morning when your mind is fresh. Break down the mental barriers that you have created for yourself and attack them one by one. This is self-work, and you need not have validation from anyone. Shake yourself off of everything negative in your system and replace it with what you want to see yourself as. These could be affirmations that you remind yourself of or a deep healing journey by approaching a therapist to heal the wounds. There is no shame in taking help from people who know the subject better than you, but first, accept that you could be in your own way.
Working on oneself is a constant, continuous journey. You will keep accumulating stuff that is not healthy and will have to keep dropping it off. Cleaning your subconscious is core to your well-being, and when you do it on a regular basis with conscious effort, you will notice that things on the outside will start to improve. Most of our regrets come because of our own inactions and holding onto beliefs that do not serve us.
The second biggest reason for having regrets in life comes because of 
Not Investing in Self-Growth:
Neglecting your own personal growth and well-being can impact your relationships negatively. This can manifest as regrets about not pursuing your passions, neglecting self-care, or failing to address personal issues that affect your relationships. Raise your hand if you have ever decided to read a book and then crawled to page 10 in a month or more. How much money have you lost in gym memberships? How about looking at a list of New Year's resolutions that you kicked off with enthusiasm in the first 10 days of every year before the energy fizzled out?
Life is short. You blink, and it is gone. Before we are out of our slumber, the most productive years of our lives are already gone. This is true for so many of us. Look at the lists of 30 under 30 or 40 under 40. There’s a reason they have not started a 50 under 50 category. My personal opinion aside, the point is that self is all we have. We have no control over others, and we know life is short. Why waste time? Mindless scrolling on Instagram has become a disease nowadays. How many times have you regretted clicking on that one reel which led you to watch similar ones for hours, and then you regretted all of it?
Investing in building yourself is one of the best things you can do for yourself and others around you. Trust me, the regret of not taking action lingers for a lifetime. Get so busy building yourself that you have no time to think about what others are doing or get involved in frivolous issues. There’s another aspect also, A lot of times, we stop ourselves from taking the plunge because we think we are not ready. You want to write a book, but you think you are not ready. You have a dream of participating in a reality show, but you think you are not ready.
Well, the only way you’ll know if you are ready is by taking action. That’s how you’ll know. Waiting for intuition to tell you may not work because there are high chances that your mind will talk you out of the idea. Tuning into your intuition is a beautiful idea, and if you are able to do it, you have done the inner work. But unfortunately for most of us, it is the mind that becomes the barrier to tuning into intuition. We are not stable with our thoughts and feelings, and there’s a back and forth happening all the time. Today you feel prepared, and tomorrow you don’t. Hence, relying on your intuition to tell you when you are ready is really waiting indefinitely. The moment may never come because essentially your mind is almost always working against you.
The only way you will know if you are ready is by taking action, provided you have done the hard work that’s supposed to be put in. And even then, you will still feel the fear. You cannot take fear out of the equation ever; you simply have to teach yourself to take the step anyway. It is about embracing it and not letting it come in the way of your readiness. You have to take the step while embracing the fear. It’s not about preparation as much as it is about fear, but you won’t know what’s waiting on the other side until you take the step. The regrets of not taking action when the opportunity presented itself are among the most common and deeply felt regrets in our lives. Let us not come in our own way.
Moving on, let us talk about some of the most common relationship regrets and ways to avoid them:
Not Communicating Well:
If there’s one skill that I would place at the top, it is communication! In my professional experience of more than 15 years and life of 4 decades, hands down this is a make-or-break factor for our life experiences. I am not referring to communication skills in a conventional manner, which is limited to our ability to speak and vocabulary. It is about the energy that we keep sending to people even when we are not around them. The mental chatter never ceases. Most of us focus on communication from a verbal, non-verbal/body language aspect, but we rarely think about the energy we carry within us and the mental signals we keep sending to people.
Not expressing our true feelings or needs can be a cultural issue, but largely it is because we don’t want to be vulnerable. We do not want to be rejected. The context can be varied, whether it is something that your partner did or didn’t do, or the behavior of a colleague at work. Not expressing how that situation made you feel—or, let me rephrase, not processing it mentally—can lead to misunderstandings, resentment, and distance between you and the other person, leading to regrets! One part of it is being in touch with your own feelings and understanding when to let it go. However, another and more important part is being able to express it. We have not been taught to express our true feelings because it makes us feel vulnerable. We delay it endlessly to a  point where it turns into resentment.
In fact, in our culture, we are not really encouraged to even feel our feelings, much less talk about them. We simply keep dumping them into our subconscious. In order to save a few moments of comfort, we avoid it to an extent that creates a much longer loop of suffering for people involved.
Communication is one of the most important pillars of relationships, and a huge pile of regrets in our lives has been caused due to miscommunication. See for yourself: what you said, how the other person heard it, what they said, and how you interpreted it. Evaluate this in the physical sense and also think about how many times you said something sweet to someone but literally went all out abusing the person in your head. Next time you met them, there was an eerie silence, and you wondered why that happened. It happened because the communication did happen, and now it is a part of a regret story because the relationship you had with that person has tanked. I don’t think it is hard for you to find relevant examples in your own life, workplace, or family. I am sure you can pick up examples of how miscommunication led to disharmony in relationships and in some unfortunate cases, they also become the biggest regrets of your life. With the advent of technology, chats have made this worse. As the word can only be read, not heard, the interpretation of the tone is left to the receiver, and they may process it based on their moods. We are the most connected, disconnected generation ever on the planet. When it comes to communication, I keep reminding myself of one thing: keep my intentions and heart clean. Half of the regrets arising from communication can be avoided if you remember this. Keeping intentions clean will help you not create situations that may lead to regret, and keeping the heart clean will help you clean the dust that accumulates due to misunderstandings.
Not Resolving Conflicts:
When it comes to dealing with regrets in life, a significant chunk of it comes from how we deal with conflicts. Harmony is all that we seek. However, part of being human is to be our own selves, which means that we cannot agree with everything on every issue. The problem arises when we start taking a difference of opinion as an attack on ourselves. There’s a beautiful book by Miguel Ruiz called The Four Agreements. The book talks about the self-sabotaging beliefs that rob us of our peace and add to the regret list. Out of the four agreements, two that are relevant to this subject are "Do not take anything personally," and "Do not make assumptions." The primary reason for conflict is our habit of making assumptions and taking everything personally. On top of it, when something unpleasant happens, we do not want to confront it. We want to be right, Resolving comes last on our list.
We have become experts in avoiding or sweeping conflicts under the rug, which leads to unresolved issues and lingering resentment. Harmony is something that every human being desires. However, sometimes we take it too far. In order to maintain temporary harmony, we agree to things we don’t want to. We say things that sound great on the outside but are loaded with resentment on the inside. There can be another extreme where you just don’t care and force people to agree with you. A lot of us have not learned to gracefully disagree, and on top of it, we load it with the baggage we are carrying with us, making matters worse. Let us remind ourselves that disagreements are okay to have. People are going to have different opinions and choices, and that’s okay. I will not be the one to attack and convert a disagreement into a conflict. Every individual has their own baggage, and hence their way of processing the world is different. As a society, we have not learned to disagree with grace, so we keep pushing our views and opinions as if they are the ultimate truth. In relationships, this causes discord, especially if one agrees to avoid conflict but internally breeds resentment. In my view, it is better to face the situation even if it is unpleasant and be done with it. Do it with pure intent in your heart; people who are meant to be in your life will remain, and the rest will fall off. At the end of the day, you will not put yourself and others through long suffering because of temporary comfort. Harmony does not mean being nice at all costs. It means believing in the divine dance. It means being true first and acting with goodness for all involved. If it leads to people moving away from you, so be it. But delaying or simply acting like everything is okay, or pushing it under the rug, is only going to add to the list of regrets.
Caught in the rut of life, we stop ourselves from doing things that make us feel more alive. How ironic is that? Anything at a hobby level is okay, but if you are thinking of making an impact in the world—and by world, I don’t mean the 7 billion population, but positively impacting just one life is also enough—then regrets are like chains attached to our minds, pulling us down without our active awareness. Today, spend some time evaluating whether you are spending too much time thinking about what you could have done differently in the past. Whatever it is, personal or professional, put a stop to it and start afresh. Look at the aspects you can work on to bring out your best self, one day at a time.