Regret gets framed as weakness, but the speaker argues it's actually a tool. Society doesn't teach us to sit with hard feelings, so we pretend we have no regrets instead. Real courage means facing what you did wrong and using it to change.
What is it about humans where the idea of having a regret is such a negative thing? Regrets aren't fun. They don't feel good. That's one thing. Second thing is that no one ever teaches us how to deal with negative emotions. That's the big problem. When people, especially younger people, feel a negative emotion, they think, oh my gosh, there's something wrong with me. I'm broken. Everybody else is so positive. There must be something wrong with me. When in fact, they're just human beings. The third thing is that we have become a very performative culture. We have a culture where we're performing all the time rather than being authentic. And we like to perform So when we say no regrets, that is play-acting courage. Real courage is staring your regrets in the eye and doing something about it.
