Someone close to me told me this saying: Don’t regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.

Yesterday I shared these words with a friend who is trying to decide whether to take a new job or remain in their current one.

And it got me thinking. Many of us spend hours agonising over different choices we’re presented. We make long lists and try and think of every scenario so we can confidently make the right decision. And instead of feeling good, we often regret our choice as soon as it’s made.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Why can’t we accept that we don’t control everything? Or that every reaction can’t be predicted? And that choices and decisions don’t have to be either right or wrong? We place so much emphasis on one thing – a job, relationship, holiday, moment – to provide us with happiness, achievement or clarity that when it doesn’t reward us we feel deflated and conclude it must have been the wrong choice, then hello regret.

I wonder whether we would be happier if we saw choices as simply taking a step in a new direction as a pose to a beginning or ending? Or if we simply trusted ourselves and stopped the analytical and over critical monologue on repeat in our heads?

So next time you start wondering if you made the right choice, remember at the time it was exactly what you wanted.

So how can any other choice have been better than that one?

Featured image from Creative Commons.