In this Love Life Podcast episode, host Stephen Hussey and guest Matthew Hussey explore how people become trapped by regret, heartbreak, and perceived past mistakes. They argue that the stories we tell ourselves about the past shape our present happiness, and that trying to erase or change the past is futile. Instead, they advocate reframing our relationship with past errors, extracting meaning, and using the pain as a catalyst for growth. The episode features a vivid anecdote about palliative‑care physician BJ Miller, who survived a severe electrical accident that ultimately redirected his career and deepened his presence in the moment. A philosophical point is made using Louis C.K.’s observation that erasing mistakes would erase parts of ourselves, emphasizing that mistakes are architectural to who we become. Matthew outlines three key take‑aways: (1) even highly intelligent people make worse mistakes; (2) deleting mistakes erases valuable aspects of self; (3) cultivate a new, accepting relationship with oneself. He promotes his 10‑year‑refined retreat program as a structured path to drop emotional baggage, gain confidence, and achieve results, encouraging listeners to write down their current pain narrative and a new empowering story. The episode ends with calls to subscribe, join the retreat, and share personal reflections via email.
Questions this episode answers
39: How The Pain of Regret and Heartbreak Stops You Moving Forward...
39
July 2020
MatthewHussey.com
podcast@matthewhussie.com
Chapters
Have you ever made such a big mistake that you wonder, am I ever going to come back from this? Or maybe you think, have I squandered my potential? Am I no longer going to be able to get to a level of happiness that I dreamed of, to get to a vision that I had for my life? Have I made a mistake too big to come back from? Well, if you do feel like you've screwed up, join us and let's talk about why the game is a lot longer and a lot deeper than you might think. Well, hi everyone and welcome back to the Love Life Podcast. I am Stephen Hussey, your host. I am thinking about the past today and thinking about how we treat the past. And I think we are so in a time, everyone knows we live in this time where it's so easy to compare our own story to other people's and to directly, side by side, compare where we are in life to other people. And that can cause us to reflect a lot on our decisions. and decisions that are in the past that are fixed, that we can't change, but we think, well, how different would my life be if I had made a different decision back then? And part of the one of the difficult tragedies of life is that we just don't know. Sometimes we look at a decision and we think, maybe things would be great if I made a different decision. But I'm in the dark about that. I don't know. And then there's other things where we think, wow, I know at that point I was stupid, I screwed up, I didn't have the knowledge, I didn't have the wisdom I have today, I blew that opportunity, I ruined that relationship, I was a bad friend, I did something wrong in that moment. And I think so much of our present happiness is determined by the story we are telling ourselves about the past right now. And so often it's not, people think, well, I need to go back and change the past, but really it's often we need to go and change our relationship with the past. We need to change the story we're telling ourselves. We need to give a meaning to the pain that we've gone through. We need to give a new, empowering meaning to it. And we need to think about what have I actually learned from this? What is it teaching me going it forward? and how is it potentially even a painful screw up? How has it actually led to me being happier today? How has it led to me having a richer experience of life? How has it led to me being able to better serve the people around me today? And that's what we're going to talk about. So I am going to jump to my wonderful, eloquent brother, Matthew Hussey, who is going to be talking about this. Check it out.
This is for anyone who's spending their time right now beating themselves up for mistakes they've made, decisions they wish they could change, and time they've wasted. There are three things I want you to remember today. Number one, there are far more intelligent people than you. who have made far dumber mistakes than any of the ones you've made. There's this guy, BJ Miller, a palliative care physician who, when you listen to him speak, has such an incredible grasp of what's important in life. And whenever he does speak, seems so eloquent and wise. And yet in 1993, as a sophomore at Princeton, he was out with his friends after a party, decided to climb onto a stationary shuttle train where 11, 000 volts shot through his body. The event nearly killed him. He left with severe burns. He'd lost both his legs below the knee and his left forearm. He woke up a week later to realize that what he thought was a nightmare was now his reality. And all for one simple moment in his life. One decision, one mistake. And yet, BJ Miller says he doesn't regret the event, he doesn't even regret the injuries, he wouldn't take them away because of what he has gained. He said too much good stuff has come out of it. I was not headed toward a career in medicine before the accident and I don't think I'd be as good a palliative care physician if I hadn't had that experience. The gift was that it got me out of the habit of thinking about the future and comparing myself to others. It rammed me into the present moment. I'm actually grateful for that. I found a new confidence. 2. You can't delete your mistakes without deleting some of the best parts of yourself. Louis C.K. in an interview said if you go back and fix all of your mistakes you erase yourself. The richness, the complexity, the depth of your character today is founded on your mistakes as much as it is your achievement. You may wish to go back in time and erase your mistakes, but life isn't that simple. If you take away the trauma, you take away the treasure. The things that make you you. And remember, your mistakes aren't just the things that make you who you are today. They are the architects for who you can become. Number three, so instead of trying to erase yourself, focus on beginning a new relationship with yourself. A relationship that begins with acceptance of your mistakes and even further than that, a love of what those mistakes have given you. I spent the last 10 years of my life coaching people all over the world, people who want big change in all different areas of their life. The most intensive process I created for this was my retreat program. And whenever people begin the process of the retreat, they want two things. They want more results in life. and they want more confidence within themselves. But what people don't realize about change is that it's so much harder when we're bogged down by past mistakes because we all have a finite amount of energy in life. When we're using it to bully ourselves, loathe ourselves, beat ourselves up for all of the things we've done in the past, we have none left to progress towards the future. So if you want more results, I'm telling you now dropping your baggage is the fastest way to get there so that you can use that energy for something productive instead of analyzing something you can't change. And if you want more confidence, confidence will come much more naturally when instead of wishing that you'd done something different, you learn to love who you are today, mistakes and all. Look, if you've been following me for a while, you know that what I do is far more than dating advice. You may have come for that and you may enjoy that, and that's wonderful. But there is a bigger journey, a bigger level of change waiting here for those who want to claim it. Videos like this give you the insights. But if you want more than the insights, if you want the actual process for change so that you can create a clean slate starting today and begin actually building the life you want, try the retreat program. I'll leave a link here for you and As always, I will see you in next Sunday's video.
If you are in a place today where you want to drop your baggage, rewrite your story of the past and present and move forward with a new purpose, join our retreat program. Go to MatthewHussey.com and you can get started on the process there. And also, as I said in the previous episode, we would love for you to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get our videos every single week, our brand new releases. And you can do that by going to MatthewHussey@youtube.com, obviously, and hit the subscribe and the notification bell and you'll get the new videos right when they drop. that is it from old Stevie today. It is the weekend. I'm gonna go enjoy some family time, have a little read, get things ready for the next week. And I encourage you, if you do really relate to today's video and you feel you're still holding on to something, take a moment just to write it down. It helps so much to pull it out of your mind and actually crystallize on paper what is the story of the past I'm telling myself right now, just to answer that question and why is it causing you pain or regret right now? And then right down under it, what's a new story I'm going to start telling myself? How am I gonna look at that pain differently in the future? How am I gonna turn it into something transformational? How am I gonna turn it into a way to feel empowered and like I actually have the ability now to make a new decision, to create a new experience, to move forward and make something beautiful out of this. Write that down. If you wanna let me know what you wrote down, you can email at podcast@matthewhussie.com I would love to read how you're taking your pain and transforming it. Anything really inspirational or thoughtful or interesting, I would love to get a collection and read out on the show. so you can email at podcast@matthewhussie.com Alrighty, thank you so much for joining as ever. I'm out to go have a little Sunday relax. I will see you very soon. Bye bye.
I see the blog sites. Ookie woop got a new wife. Shorty got a new boo. Yeah, love beautiful. I'm looking for love.
