My Biggest Personal Regret

My biggest personal regret. Now, I don't really want to share this, but I get asked it a lot. You know, what's your biggest regret, your greatest mistake, your biggest failure? And I know why people ask it, but it's not really something I've ever wanted to publicly share, so I won't be recording this for a podcast and I won't be putting this up on my YouTube channel. But I have thought about this a lot, and I have one biggest regret, and it's actually not anything I've done to anyone, but it's caused everything I've ever done to anyone. So I don't want to hurt people. I don't want to be unkind to people. I want to give people equal opportunity. I don't want to lose my shit with people. I want to treat people respectfully, but I, I've hurt people and I've, you know, done things that other people have perceived to be wrong, and it's all come and stemmed from one place. And it was actually my therapist who managed to unearth this. Now there's this saying called 'hurt people hurt people.' Let me know if you've ever heard of that and if you think that there's truth in that statement. Hurt people hurt people. And I know for a fact I've never hurt anyone or said anything unkind to anyone when I've been in a state of gratitude and when I've felt valuable myself as a human being. Because I think when you feel valuable as a human being And when you feel good about who you are and what you provide, how could you ever want to hurt anyone else, criticize, gain or enact revenge, or try and beat someone down? So my greatest regret is how I've felt about myself for much of my life. So, um, I was the fattest kid in my school in my year. So in my school when I was in the top year, between sort of age 11 and 13, and I fucking hated myself. I hated looking in the mirror. I hated how I looked. I hated how other people perceived me, what other people said about me. I absolutely hated it and therefore hated myself. And I couldn't see anything good in me. Um, and I learned coping mechanisms like getting on with people and being able to get on with all the different types of groups at school and almost being a chameleon. And this got me through school. But didn't really give me an identity of who I am. You know, when you're always trying to posturize and react to avoid conflict at all costs and trying to not say anything that would upset anyone and trying to always be liked by everyone just to seek approval, if you do that long enough, you have no fucking idea who you are. No fucking idea. And that was me. And when I lost the, the weight, age 13, and kids stopped taking the piss out of me, and people stopped teasing me, and girls started even noticing me, and girls started even liking me, all the shame, the humiliation, the how I felt about myself— not worthy, not good enough, always needing approval, having to please others all the time— that never went away. And I'm 42 now, and I've only really in the last few years shaken much of that off. I mean, I had to do a lot of therapy, but this really got me, and this is why I've recorded this video for you. This really got me. But, um, I had a therapy session a couple of weeks ago, and of course my therapist is always trying to take me back to when I was a kid and, you know, love that vulnerable, beautiful boy That chubby boy, love him. And my therapist said to me, you know, if you met you, if you met the 13-year-old you, the 12-year-old you, how do you think and feel about him? And I said, I feel ashamed. And she couldn't believe it. She'd like— my therapist almost started bawling her eyes out. What? You know, she said she has so much love and sympathy for this a vulnerable, young, overweight, scared, lonely kid. Um, and I find it really hard to look back at that person with love and compassion and empathy because I felt like I was useless and always seeking and needing people's attention and to be noticed and didn't feel comfortable who I was or useful or valuable and You know, I think that's probably what's driven me to be an entrepreneur, is trying to be useful and valuable to as many people as possible. And you could say, I'll do something now, or something could happen, I could get rejected, there could be— someone could just say something, it could make me immediately feel like this 11, 12-year-old ostracized, lonely, useless, attention-needing and seeking boy. Um, so a lot of therapy and personal development and introspection has gone on since then to try and figure out why did I feel like that about myself, what is the truth of who I am. And so I would say that this is probably my biggest regret, is actually not seeing the value and the usefulness in me and not seeing my upsides and my strengths, because You know, if the saying is right, hurt people hurt people, then when I've hurt people, it's because I'm hurt. And I know in my latter years I've had plenty of critics and trolls and criticism, and people go for me and people lose their shit on me, and I've handled it pretty well, and I haven't retaliated, and I've let things go. And I'm not perfect by any means, and I've definitely had my scraps, and definitely if I could go back would change certain behaviors and actions, don't get me wrong, but The point is, we are all good at handling people and situations when we feel good about ourselves. Let me say that again: we are all good at handling situations and people when we feel good about ourselves, because we're not empty and we have nothing to fill. So please hit the share button if you think this is useful and you agree with this. I wanted to share this with you because I get asked it all the time, and probably for like 10 years when I've been asked, what's your biggest regret, my answer has always been I don't regret anything. I don't really think I regret an action. I've made mistakes and I've learned from them, and I've seen the upsides. And I've, you know, I've not committed a criminal offense on anyone. I've not really— I've not hurt anyone physically. I've definitely made some bad decisions or done some things which I would do differently, or I could have been more kind, or I could have controlled myself better. Don't get me wrong about that. But looking back at everything that I've done that I might list as I— that I perceived I could have done better, and it's usually around people, isn't it? Because all of our decisions are based on, um, you know, being connected with people. Every single time it's because I have not felt great about myself. I've felt threatened, I've felt not good enough, I've felt not worthy, I've felt useless, I've felt lower than another human being. And all, you know, we can say, oh yeah, but someone else made me feel like that. No, no, no, no one makes you feel anything about yourself you don't already feel. Please hit the share button if you agree with that. No one makes you feel anything about yourself you don't already feel. So you can say a million things to me that are critical, and they won't make me feel any different about who I am if I know who I am. But if I don't know who I am, I might think that you're right, and I might start to question myself. And this was me for— this was me from age 11 to my 30s. And, you know, because that young kid is still there, you know, we have the child and the adult in us all, don't we? Because of that, it can— that scab can still be picked. But what I'd like to share with you as, um, a way of helping you through my greatest regret is that, um, you won't hurt anyone else when you're not hurt yourself. You won't want to retaliate or criticize or belittle someone else when you feel strong and valuable and useful and you have good self-worth. And you will only let people down and hurt people and make mistakes with people and lose your shit with people when you don't feel good about yourself. So my greatest regret is not feeling good about myself. Now, how do we therefore feel good about ourselves? Thank you for the kind comments, by the way. If you're finding this content useful, please hit the share button. I think a great pandemic in the world is low self-worth. And imagine if we all felt good about ourselves. Imagine if I felt so good about myself that I don't need to bring you down to my level. Imagine I want to bring you up. So any criticism I get, I don't want to retaliate. I don't want to hurt you back. I want to support you. I imagine that my weapon is kindness. Imagine how different the world will be. But, you know, social media and mainstream media and this sort of, um, divide between the left and the right and religions and cultures is create— it's like, you know, be honest, have you ever like got some kind of pleasure out pushing someone down, slating or disrespecting someone or being unkind? If you've ever gained any pleasure, it's always short-term, of course, we all know that. But that's because you felt empty. You felt so bad in you that the only way you can fit— be filled up is by emptying someone else. And I know because I've been there, because hurt people hurt people. And this is my biggest regret, because I know that all my bad decisions and all the things I've done around people that I regret— although I don't really regret, because what's the point in regret? What's the point in dwelling on the past? That just actually makes you feel worse. If you don't feel that great about yourself and then you create behaviors which you're not proud of, and then you double down by regretting that, you just compound the problem. But how do we lift up this self-worth? How do we fill ourselves up so we fill other people up? How do we lift ourselves up so we lift other people up? Well, I think it's just, um, loving yourself for who you are and knowing that you're a valuable and useful and worthy of love individual. 'And even if you are the fattest kid in the year, which I was at school, I'm still worthy of love. I'm no better or worse than anyone else. I'm not more or less worthy of love and appreciation than anyone else.' And I shouldn't have to go out and seek approval, because the only approval I really need is from myself, which I never got. And I still found it hard 2 or 3 weeks ago in my previous therapy session, and I listed to my therapist, I said, 'All these things that I perceive that I've done Because, you know, when I was this fat kid at school, the fattest kid, I didn't like the way I seeked to prove— sought approval. I didn't like it. I didn't feel good about doing it, but I needed it. It's a bit like eating, you know, junk food. I didn't feel good. You don't feel good about eating junk food, but in the moment it kind of does feel good and you kind of need it. It's like the sugar addiction. And I was like that around approval. Um, Amanda's just said here, we teach people how to love us with the way we love ourselves. Amen. Hit the share button on that. We teach people how to love us by the way we love ourselves. So if we don't love ourselves and we constantly put ourselves down or put other people down to lift ourselves up, because the universe is a mirror, that's exactly how we are going to teach people how to teach us. If you're patient with yourself, you'll be patient with others, and people will be patient with you. If you're kind to yourself, you'll be kind to others, and other people will be kind to you. So I can just say this absolutely for a fact: When you don't hate on yourself, and when you fill yourself up and feel good and confident and valuable in yourself, you will have no need to put anyone else down, no need to retaliate or seek revenge or criticize others or put, you know, push them down to lift yourselves up and feel better about yourselves, because there's nothing to feel better about because you already feel good. But the problem I think we have, especially which is driven by society and social media, is the curse of comparison. So we're trying to, um, feel good by comparing ourselves to others, and we feel less good when we don't feel that we compare to others. But if we got rid of the comparison and realized that actually there's nothing to compare because we are who we are and we're, we're uniquely valuable as an individual, and actually comparison is futile because we're just all different and we're all equally valuable, then the comparison curse goes, and then you don't need to feel the need to aggrandize yourself. So stop comparing yourself to others. Just know that you are already useful and valuable and worthy of love and praise and recognition and confidence. Um, and have that come from who you are and emanate out into your actions, I think, will change the way that your world is. Now, I say this to you because this is my biggest regret, and I say this to you because this has been my greatest challenge in my life. So, um, just wanted to share it a bit more openly with you. And, you know, people are always asking me that, and I find it hard because, you know, what's the point in dwelling on regret? And they say, don't they, that it's better to regret something you have done than regret something you haven't done. So it's not really actions I regret. I mean, obviously, if I'd have committed a heinous crime, I would definitely regret that, but actions aren't really in my— I could move on from actions pretty quickly, but I just realized in that therapy session a few weeks ago where all the actions against another individual— so, you know, defensiveness, or reacting and lashing out, or, you know, being unkind, or even maybe a bit cruel, or, you know, speaking behind someone's back, or, um, you know Maybe even— I rarely call people out publicly, but one or two times I probably have been a bit loose, um, or I've perceived someone screwed me over, so I've gone back on the offensive on them. And it's not something I ever look back on and think, yeah, I'm really glad I did that. Um, so it's usually coming from a position of weakness. So, um, Yeah, look, a lot of people here talking about childhood, and yes, of course this comes from my childhood, and yes, of course how you feel about yourself comes from your childhood. And my therapist says that the solution is having empathy and sympathy and love for that child version of me, and the adult version of me meeting the child version of me, and having love and compassion and gratitude. And there's nothing wrong with you, and you're worthy of love just like everybody else, and you're equal to everyone else. Um, so hit the share button, let me know what you think about that. Why don't you share with me what your greatest regret is, and let's get a conversation going around forgiving ourselves for that and forgiving other people for that. Actually, I'll go one step further on forgiveness. I'd argue there's nothing to forgive, because I see a lot of people on social media talking about forgiveness, you know, forgive those who've wronged you. Well, maybe they don't see that they've wronged you. And maybe they wronged you because you wronged them. Um, and maybe you forgiving them is assuming a position of power from you, i.e., who are you to forgive them? What did they do wrong? Maybe they don't perceive they did anything wrong. And, um, forgiveness is almost like there should be some kind of power within you. The only, the only reason you'd forgive someone is to let go of your own emotion. So maybe there's nothing to forgive. Maybe everything is be exactly how it should be. And I think when you change your perception of how a situation or a person is, it changes. Like, you don't fall in love when someone changes to be who you want them to be. You fall in love when you love them and immediately they become who you love. But they never become who you love by you wanting them to change. They only become who you love by you changing how you perceive them. And I'm not just talking about your, you know, partners and relationships and children. I'm talking about your business partnerships, your collaborations, your um, you know, the people that you're— you work with, your work colleagues, etc., your friends. So as soon as you change your perception of yourself, then your perception of the world instantly changes, because the universe is a mirror and it reflects back to you what you put out to it. So my biggest regret is not feeling good enough about myself and being empty at certain points in my life about how I looked and, you know, how I needed to get love and attention from people because I was the fattest kid in school, and I didn't lose that when I lost the weight. And so because I was a walking wounded individual and I was hurt and didn't feel good enough about myself, each time someone triggered that out in me, I would either lash out, inflict revenge, or go and retreat and hide. And I always felt regret and remorse and self-loathing when I did that. Whereas when you're full, because you filled yourself and you're clear and calm and confident in who you are— not better, not worse, just equally useful and valuable— nothing that anyone can say can infiltrate you or make you feel worse about yourself. Therefore, you don't feel the need to lash out or to revenge or to criticize or to hate or to troll or whatever. You know, I've got a few people here on this live who, you know, I do love and like, but they lash out at me because they're hurt, not because of because something I say triggers them because they're already hurt. And I've seen it because I've discussed it with them. Whereas when they stop hurting because they love themselves for who they are, they don't then feel the need to react and lash out to other people. And I've been there and I've done it a lot, even with people I love. That's my biggest regret. If you can relate to any of this, please hit the share button because I think, you know, a lot of people say that, you know, kindness and gratitude and love, these are the answer. Well, I get that, and I think they definitely make the world a better place, but it has to start with you. So kind— you can't be kind to others when you're not kind to yourself. How can you be? You can't fill someone else up when you're empty. How can you? So actually, what I would say is the greatest gift we give to the world is kindness of ourselves and feeling valuable and worthy and useful for who we are. Because then, because the universe is a mirror, then that will reflect out on how you treat others. I hope you found this useful. Please hit the share button. Thanks for all the kind comments, I really appreciate you. Make sure you're following me on this channel. Wanted to do something a bit different today because obviously I often talk about what's going on in the media in terms of starting and scaling your business and being a successful entrepreneur and money-related content because that's my brand. But hey, look, you're never going to make any money if you feel empty inside and not useful and valuable because you're never going to accept money for what you do. So everything kind of stems from this. What I'm also going to do this afternoon is I'm going to do my biggest business regret. So I might do a little regret series, and I've just done here my biggest personal regret. Next, this afternoon, on a little live, I'm going to do my biggest business regret. So make sure you keep your eye out on your social media for me today. This isn't going on my YouTube, this isn't going on my podcast. I don't mind you sharing it to help someone else, you know, Give in order to receive. So throw this out to your communities because I know some people will resonate with this. We've all been hurt in our childhood, we've all felt unloved and unworthy at certain points in our life, um, and you know, I think the greatest gift we can give to others is to give the gift to ourselves. Thanks a lot for tuning in. Hit the share button and I'll see you this afternoon where I'll share my biggest business regrets.