Regret isn't weakness. It's a signal that you wish you'd acted differently in something you controlled. Unlike disappointment, which happens to you, regret comes from your own choices. Listen to it instead of pushing it away.
What the heck is regret? Yes. And what's the difference between something you regret versus something that you kind of feel sad about and kind of wish didn't happen? Or are those the same things?
They're not the same thing. So what regret is— regret is a terrible feeling. It's a feeling. This is really important. It's an emotion. It's a feeling we have when we look backward and wish we had done something differently. It is very different from other kinds of emotions. So you can have an emotion like disappointment. If you wish something didn't happen. I was on a trip last week and they were on the East Coast. There was a massive snowstorm and I basically had to leave early. And I can't regret that. I didn't make it snow, you know, but I can be disappointed. And so, so regret has to have agency. It's something that you did. You can't regret something someone else did. It's, it's all about agency. That's why it feels so bad, because we know deep down It's your fault. It's on you. That's why it feels so bad. And so that bad feeling is a signal. It's data. It's information. It is. It's a knock at the door. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. Okay, so what do we do when there's a knock on the door? You can say, I don't hear anything. All right. What? What knock? All right. Or you can say, oh my God, a knock on the door and you can dive under the couch. Or you can say, huh, I wonder who's there? Clinton. Oh, it's a regret. What do you got to tell me? And so that's how we have to start. That's how we have to start thinking about it. The other thing that comes out in these regrets, though, Mel, which is interesting, is people sort of between the lines, you almost hear them saying or feeling that there's something wrong with them because they have that. Yes. And that's, that's, that is, that's a huge mistake because Everybody has regrets. Everybody has regrets. It doesn't make you bad. It doesn't make you weak. It doesn't make you broken. It makes you human.
Oprah Winfrey: How to Find Your Unique Purpose, Authentic Power, and Calling in Life
