How To Deal With Regret

All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton, and today we're going to be talking about regret, how to deal with it, and why it might be one of the most important things that you've never considered in your life and your development. Before we dive into that, I just want to say thank you to everybody that's been subscribing to the YouTube channel and to the podcast. We've got over 20,000 subscribers on YouTube, and on the podcast, I think on Spotify, we've got like 18,000 subscribers, so. So make sure that you hit that subscribe button wherever you are listening or viewing to the show. All right? Regret. How do we deal with it? This is something that is, I almost said, near and dear to my heart, but it's very true for me that I've lived a life where I've done a tremendous amount of things. I traveled the world. I've raced motorcycles. I had a career in construction. I sang classical music. I worked for Apple. I've done all of these things. And I've also done some things that I have deeply regretted. You know, I've acted out of integrity. I've lied, I've cheated, I've hurt people. And so I've lived a life kind of trying to not regret anything for a little. For a little while, you know, for a period of time, trying to make sure that I didn't regret anything, but then simultaneously doing things that I deeply regretted. And I remember hearing a quote by Christopher Hitchens that really struck me years and years ago. And I think recently I was reminded by it. I was listening to Chris Williams show the Modern Wisdom show, and he brought it up where he talked about how Christopher Hitchens says, choose your regrets. Choose your regrets. And it was reminded of a conversation with a mentor of mine where I was talking about a challenge that I was having in my life, and I wasn't really too sure if I wanted to leave my career at the time and start to pursue a different career. And, you know, this mentor was teaching me all about Jungian psychology and Taoism and these different therapeutic and spiritual modalities. And I just couldn't tell if I wanted to leave the career. And he said, you know, Connor, this career is for people that can't see themselves doing anything else with their life. And I could see myself doing a tremendous amount with my life. And I knew that there was something missing from this career that was sort of intangible. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was something Missing. And he said, it's better to regret what you've done than to regret what you haven't. It's better to regret what you've done than to regret what you haven't. And that's always stuck with me. You know, it's always stuck with me because I think that we, as men, especially within our masculine core, we want to go out into the world. There's something about the masculine essence, about masculinity that wants to sort of pierce out into the world or penetrate on into the world, build something, create something, adventure, explore, experience and be witness to and present with as much as we can. And now, this doesn't mean, you know, regret what you've. Regret what you've done rather than regretting what you have. And this doesn't mean that you should, you know, choose things actively that you're going to regret that are out of integrity and out of alignment and, you know, going to get you to, you know, maybe get thrown in jail or, you know, killed or something like that. I'm not advocating for you to go out and do stupid stuff, but what I'm saying is that we live in a time, in a place in culture where it's very common for men to feel overly domesticated. You know, it's easy for you to go work your nine to five and come home and be tired and turn on Netflix and just do that and have that be the life that you live versus pursuing something that really is meaningful. That you may come with some regrets. Because there inevitably is a choice point when we start to pursue the things that we want. The better body, right? Going to the gym every single day.

Building a business or starting a company, or starting to approach more women. If you're a single guy out in public or working on your relationship or bettering your finances in some capacity, you have to make choices to let something go. You know, like, for me, I've had to let go of alcohol. I've had to let go of weed. I've had to let go of porn. I've had to let go of all of these coping mechanisms that didn't necessarily serve me, but some of them, you know, I enjoy it. I enjoyed having, you know, a whiskey once in a while or a beer once in a while. You know, having an ipa, going out with the buddies. But it's not necessarily the life that I wanted to explore. I wanted to meet my edge. I wanted to see what I'm capable of physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, as a father, as a husband, as a business owner. I want to see what I'm capable of in this lifetime. I want to go out and explore and adventure and travel and experience things. And, and there's certain things that I know if I choose them, they are more likely to leave me not wanting to explore and experience. They are more likely to leave me with the sensation that I regret things that I hadn't done because they were getting in the way. And so I would rather pursue things and fail. And this is the interesting part, right, because when you pursue things, and I've worked with a bunch of high level musicians and entrepreneurs and athletes over the years, Olympic athletes and pro athletes, athletes, and they all have regrets about their pursuit, right? You know, missing the game, winning shot, or, you know, not hitting number one on the Billboard charts or whatever it is. They might have a regret about something that didn't happen, but they are still in pursuit of something that's meaningful to them versus the guy that's not in pursuit of really anything that lights him up. And that might be you, right? And it, you know, it was certainly me for a while where I remember it when I was in my early 20s, I think it was like 20, 21, I was miserable. You know, I was working in a gravel pit in northern Alberta during the winters. It was like minus 40 outside. I was working the night shift and it was, it was loud, it was freezing cold. And I hated it. I hated every minute of it. And I, I was living this life of regret of not pursuing the things that maybe I would fail at, maybe I wouldn't be exceptional on that, but I was living a life of burdensome regret. And I think that that's the really big difference. When we are living in pursuit, we're going to have regrets about things that went wrong or failed or the wrong decisions that we made, the things that we maybe could have done better in hindsight, but that is exponentially more rewarding, more exciting, more engaging and more activating for our masculine essence than it is not pursuing anything and living a life of regretting what you never did. And I've seen this really destroy men. I've seen it in my family, I've seen it in friends, I've seen it in men that I've worked with that the things that we don't pursue that we know in our core, deep in our gut, that we want to pursue when we don't. That type of regret is not only constrictive, but it's damaging to our soul. You know, it's damaging to our mind and our body because we wake up every single day and we live with the knowing that we're not moving towards the thing that we ultimately want and need. And the beautiful thing about pursuing the regrets, that the regrets that come along with what you've done is that you have to face your fears. You have to meet your edge. And that's sort of the. The odd thing about choosing your regret is that you end up making change. And when you live a life trying to avoid your regrets, right, it's like, I don't want to regret anything. I don't want to get anything wrong. I want to live in this perfectionist mindset. What ends up happening is that you stay in the same place because you're afraid. And there's a great quote by a man named Dr. James Hollis, who I've had on my podcast before, one of the most foremost Jungian analysts of our time. He said, men's lives are governed by fear. Men's lives are governed by fear. And over the years, I have seen so many men who have been governed by fear, governed by the fear of pursuing what they want in their relationship, sexually, governed by the fear of pursuing what they want in their business, financially with their body, physically with their minds, and to really afraid to see what they're capable of. And I think that that is the most crushing form of regret that we can live with. And. And I think what's interesting is there's a freedom that comes along with pursuing the things that we ultimately know in our heart, in our core, that we want to pursue, that we want to build, that we want to create, that we want to become. And I can say unequivocally, you know, if I died today or tomorrow, that the only real regret that I would have is that I didn't get more time with my son, you know, that I didn't get to see him grow up. It wouldn't be that I haven't done something or experienced something. You know, there's minor things like I. You know, I've always wanted to go to Japan, and that's on our list to do in the next couple years. And so there'd be some minor things like that. But for the most part, I have pursued and activated and achieved things that have gone wildly beyond what I ever thought I would do. Racing motorcycles, you know, having a dream car, traveling the world, getting to experience all kinds of food and culture, and building an incredible business, working for one of the most successful companies of the world. I've really gone after the things that. That would, from the outside, look like, they might come with a lot of failure, you know, But I think that I've always tried to unintentionally live this motto of it, that it's better to regret the things that you've done than the things that you haven't, because those types of things can be really crushing. So my invitation for you today as I just sort of wrap up is to look at your life, you know, look at the things that you've done that you've regretted, you know, and probably those regrets are tied to a failure or. Or a bad decision or a wrong choice. Those things can be let go, those things can be forgiven. Those things can be healed. And again, this isn't to advocate for, like, criminal behavior and those types of things. Right. I just want to make that super clear. But then look at the things that you haven't done that, you know, you have regrets around the business that you want to build, the product that you want to launch, whatever it is, right? The. The book that you want to write, the artistic project that you've been putting on the back burner, the part of your relationship that you've been avoiding intensely, you know, the regret of maybe not treating your body the way that you ultimately know you want to, with the food that you eat and the training that you embody. So start to write some of these things down, like, what are the regrets that I have about the things that I haven't done? And then see if you're willing to just confront that edge, starting to pursue that edge. There's a guy, and I'll wrap up with this. There's a guy in the. In the Man Talks alliance group of, you know, four or five hundred guys from around the world. It's online men's group. And he, over the course of the last year, year and a half, I believe, has lost, I think, about £150 in the. In. In his time in the alliance. And he has worked diligently to face this fear. And I remember on one of the calls or on one of the posts, he was talking about not wanting to live a life, regretting not doing this, you know, not losing this weight, not seeing what he was capable of and not getting himself into shape. And now his whole personality has changed as he's gone through this physical transformation. And so that's a, you know, maybe a somewhat extreme example, but I think it's something that we can all align with and understand that there's probably a part of you, as you're watching this or listening to this, thinking, yeah, there actually is something that I'm not pursuing, that I'm not going after. And if I died tomorrow, you know, if my life ended tomorrow, would I regret, you know, if I could have some awareness that I had died and that I hadn't gotten to do this thing? But if I die tomorrow, would I ever regret not pursuing, pursuing that thing, you know, taking my kids camping or traveling to wherever or starting that business or seeing what my body is physically capable of? What are the things? So write them down. Make a commitment to yourself, choose one of them and begin to pursue them. Because it's better to live with the regrets of what you've done than it is to live with the regret of what you haven't. So thanks for tuning in. Make sure that you share this episode, man it forward. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. Sam.