Unravelling regrets
Frank Sinatra famously sang that he’d “had a few”, but is it possible to live a life of no regrets? It’s certainly worth a try – and it’s all about making better choices and changing patterns, as Suzie Hayman tells Abi Jackson
As a counsellor and agony aunt, Suzie Hayman is familiar with the wide range of woes that trouble the human mind. One of the most frequent and universal of these woes, is regret.
“There’ll always be those things we say, like, ‘I wish I’d gone to Barbados on holiday’, or, ‘I wish I’d bought that new handbag’,” says Hayman. “But the things that really hang over you are different – you don’t lie on your deathbed and say, ‘I wish I’d bought that handbag!’ But you do say, ‘I wish I’d kept that friendship’, ‘I wish I’d spent more time with the people that matter to me’.”
Not spending enough time with loved ones and failing to keep meaningful ties alive certainly seem to top the list of common regrets. Letting opportunities slip through our fingers, and not looking after our health and finances – until things eventually crumble and come back to bite us – are other frequent examples. Such regrets can affect us deeply, on many levels.
Hayman notes how a lot of her letters and face to face sessions involve people focusing on how they believe it’s “too late” to do anything about their regrets. Regrets invariably hint at unhappiness and dissatisfaction with one’s life, too.
It’s for these reasons that she decided to write a book, Live A Life Of No Regrets: The Proven Action Plan for Finding Fulfilment. It outlines what and why we regret, how these regrets manifest and impact us and, most crucially, what we can do about it.
“I don’t think you can live a life with no regrets whatsoever,” she says, “but by heck, you can try!
“It’s about making changes so you do the things that don’t leave you with regrets. Or at least you can address your regrets so they don’t continue that way.”
Her book aims to equip readers with the tools to approach these things.
Hayman recalls another book published early last year – Top Five Regrets of the Dying, by Bronnie Ware – in which the palliative nurse recorded the regrets she most commonly heard expressed by patients on their deathbeds. They talked about having more courage, being happier, keeping in touch with friends and not working so hard.
The list struck a cord with everybody – so why do we keep on repeating the same choices?
“We know what most of the problems are, what sorts of things people end up regretting,” says Hayman.
However, she admits, avoiding them still takes effort, and key to this is making a conscious decision to make the choices we believe are right for us.
“One of the things I talk about [in the book] is who shouts loudest. Often it’s the things that are immediate that you respond to,” she says. “That friend or relative rings you up and you respond. Your friends text or Facebook message you, and you respond.
“It’s quite difficult sometimes to sit back and ask yourself, ‘Hang on, what is it that I should actually be prioritising? What are the choices I have?’
“Sometimes we just go with the flow, rather than standing still and thinking, ‘I can make a choice – and this is the choice I will make’.”
Because there are rewards to responding to immediacy and pleasing the crowd, so to speak, or chasing wealth and status – but these can be short-term. And if we continually make choices that, deep down, aren’t making us happy, it eventually breeds resentment and bitterness.
Hayman often encounters fathers, for instance, who may not see their children following a separation. “I hear so many say, ‘When they grow up they’ll realise that I really did love them, even though I didn’t see them, and they’ll come back to me’. No – they won’t! Because unless you make attachments, unless you make memories together early, you’re never going to be catching up,” she says.
“You need memories. And you can’t pluck them out of thin air, you have to actually make them.”
In many ways, the same applies to people who eventually regret spending too much time at work. Telling yourself that you can make up for it later, perhaps when you retire, is dangerous, Hayman warns, as by then, the child or person in question may no longer be interested, or they may be repeating the same patterns themselves.
Though everybody has to follow their own heart and path, and pursuing the career you want is important (indeed, not following your dreams can be a common regret too), Hayman is convinced that connections, be they with friends, partners or relatives, are what ultimately mean most.
“People might have lots of business success and money, but they’re not happy,” she states.
“What makes people happy is connections. If only we could recognise this and actually have more people saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to prioritise that – I am going to prioritise my happiness and family. If only we could make that the cool way to be.”
Allowing yourself to be truly happy may mean sacrificing some degree of success and money along the way, but nobody ever regrets being happy.
A big part of this happiness is having the courage to take risks. ‘I wish I’d had the courage to…’ is a common theme for people who contact Hayman. There is a distinction between making mistakes and having regrets though, because in order to avoid regrets, we need to allow ourselves to be open to potentially failing, or making mistakes.
“You have to take risks,” she says. “I always say it would be far worse to not make the effort, than to make the effort and have it thrown back at you.
“Yes – go and ask that person out. They might say no, but is that going to kill you?”
There are endless situations where this applies. “We need to learn that failure’s not such a bad thing,” Hayman adds. “It’s just a slip and a skinned knee, and then you get up and try again. But if you never try, you’re never going to get there.”
An important part of the ‘Action Plan’ Hayman outlines in her book, is addressing regrets we already have. This can mean letting go of that nagging negativity that it’s “too late”, and focusing on what we can still do about it.
Sadly, if the regret relates to the relationship we had with somebody who’s since passed away – perhaps not making up after a row, or saying sorry for something – then we need to find a way to let ourselves off the hook and come to terms with that.
The key thing, Hayman states, is recognising how we truly feel, so that we can avoid repeating the same patterns, and make better choices in the future.
“It’s about recognising that we all have regrets,” she says. “You’re not alone, you’re not incompetent and you’re not stupid.
“It’s also about not feeling helpless and hopeless. There are things you can do to make it different.”
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