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21 Ways to Deal with Regret

Photo by Oliver Mercader
Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow. ~L. Ron Hubbard

If only.

If only you could turn the clock back.

You’d probably wind the hands right off the clock face, wouldn’t you?

You’d probably do a lot of things differently, right? You’d correct every mistake you ever made and take all the chances you regret never taking.

Oh boy, they say not to wish your life away, but I spent nearly twenty years wishing mine back to do totally over.

If you’re anything like I was, you’re probably disgusted with yourself because you failed to take action, didn’t speak up and lived a life that just hasn’t panned out the way you wanted it to.

A Guide to Happiness via Self-Compassion

Photo by Amandine Marque
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am. To take pride in my thoughts, my appearance, my talents, my flaws, and to stop this incessant worrying that I can’t be loved as I am. ~Anais Nin

You’re a kind person. A loving person. A compassionate person.

To other people.

But you hold yourself to a higher standard.

When you make a mistake, you’re tough on yourself. You judge yourself. You tell yourself you need to do better.

And although part of you thinks you’re doing this to keep yourself honest, perfect and at the high standards the world around you expects, another part of you — a small, delicate, exhausted part — wishes you could just let it go.

6 Ways to Let Go of Anger

Photo by xvire1969
Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave. ~Indira Gandhi

I hate to admit it, but I am not good at letting things go. A few days ago I stared getting worked up about a disagreement a good friend and I had. It replayed in my head; the hurt in my heart flared up again.

The worst part? It happened more than a year ago, and it’s been resolved. If she knew I still harbored these feelings, she’d probably be upset. After all, weren’t we past that?

It used to be that I would forgive and forget immediately, but I realized that I wasn’t truly forgiving people; I was simply using the technique of denial.

So instead, I swung to the other end of the pendulum, where I couldn’t seem to let go, even if I’d said I’d forgiven.

The benefits of letting go of a grudge aren’t all just in your head. Forgiveness leads to healthier relationships, less anxiety, lower blood pressure, fewer depression symptoms and less risk of substance abuse.

With all of this in mind, I set out to make an effort to forgive in a healthy way and quit walking around with the weight of all those grudges.

6 Tips to Heal a Broken Heart

Photo by Arif Akhtar
When you protect yourself from pain, be sure you do not protect yourself from love. ~Alah Cohen

Many times in life we are faced with an experience where we pour our heart and soul into a situation and/or relationship only to have our heart broken.

We feel like all of our efforts were in vain, and although we gave our all, we are standing in the midst of the rubble that remains.

Often what happens after such an experience is that we decide that we will never allow ourselves to get hurt like that again, and so we do the smart thing and shut down.

We close off our hearts and are extremely cautious when it comes to love or any situation which requires us to open our heart and soul. We want proof that any venture of the heart is secure and safe.

Confessions of a Perfectionist

Photo by Oleg Ti
When there are no enemies within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. ~African proverb

Treating myself kindly is not something that comes naturally to me.

From a young age, I believed I needed to be perfect to be any good. It was probably a combination of my natural type A tendencies and my family environment. My younger brother had a lot of problems when he was a kid, struggled in school, and often acted out. He was always in trouble.

My parents were probably happy to have one child who made things easy for them. I always did well in school, always behaved, and always followed the rules.

Everything seemed great up through high school. I got straight A’s without studying too hard, excelled on my school’s water polo team, and was a respected leader in my class. I was accepted to go to college at Harvard, and thought I was pretty special.

Being a perfectionist caught up with me, though. When I got to Harvard, I was immediately knocked off my high horse by people much smarter and more talented than I was.

3 Lessons on Overcoming Conflicts

Photo by Shannon
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. ~Albert Einstein

Conflict has always been something that my physical body reacts to viscerally, gnawing at my stomach, growing up into my heart and eventually taking up residence in my brain, sitting heavy until the issue can be resolved and room can be made for other thoughts and lighter feelings.

I am a dweller, someone who will spend hours hashing out an issue, taking everything out from underneath the rug in order to inspect it, discuss it and let it dissipate — unless I feel that I am unshakably right and the other party is wrong.

When it comes to conflict, I am hopelessly preoccupied. It can be exhausting — especially when paired with the “right fighter” instinct.

How to Overcome Perfectionism

Photo by Jonathan Jacobsen
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. ~Harriet Braiker

My neighbor came to my door while I was baking my first loaf of gluten-free bread. She said she admired our diets and told me how she was doing more to eat less sugar.

“I’d heard from a lot of people that it makes a lot of sense for them,” I said, “but I just didn’t think I could cut another thing out. I mean, after getting rid of dairy, wheat, caffeine and sugar, what would be left?”

She laughed a little and said, “Well it’s all about just cutting yourself some slack. You don’t have to be perfect or anything.”

Here’s my confession: I have this compulsion to be perfect. Everything I do has to be just so, or I don’t want to do it at all. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.

How to Let Go of the Past

Photo by JUCO
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. ~Henry Ellis

Despite my best intentions, I’ve spent the past week looking for a fight.

It started as a small seed of frustration over a few things work-related, and passively I stood back as it bloomed into something far greater and much uglier than I ever should have allowed.

My reaction to the situations I encountered was completely off balance.

I found myself seething with anger when a well-meaning coworker took over a task clearly delegated to me. I started sobbing when a meeting that ran longer than expected left me with a $50 parking ticket.

Forgiving Yourself (A Story)

Photo by Jon Jacobsen
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. ~Lewis B. Smedes

I sat in the middle of the large wood-cabin conference hall and scuffed the pine floor with my hiking shoe. The flames in the huge rock fireplace danced as I gazed at them, lost in thought.

I hadn’t wanted to come to this retreat.

“What’s it like?” I asked my friend, Bruce, one of the organizers of the retreat. “There’s no dancing around the fire in loincloths with mud on our faces, is there?”

Bruce gave me his wry smile. “No.”

Forgiveness

Photo by Asaf Einy

Forgiveness is a difficult topic. On one hand, we feel that we have learned to forgive. On the other hand, we find ourselves resisting when we actually try to forgive someone.  Implementing forgiveness into our lives is a process.

Sometimes, things work in mysterious ways. Almost a year ago, I took a workshop on forgiveness. Some days, I would feel that I had learned how to forgive, and other days I felt that I had failed. The following is a story of a casual encounter with a stranger that reminded me of all that I have learned about forgiveness.

The other day I was walking my dog and, as I always do, I gave him a little water from the hose in front of someone’s house. I don’t know the owner of the house well. I met him once and I never asked him if I could do this. I always turn the hose off tightly and roll it back up leaving it exactly the way it was when I found it.

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