I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.

I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.

D.H. Lawrence

The  Meaning  of  the  Quote :

Have you ever spent a portion of an evening not sleeping, but going over recent events? How often was that event viewed with joy, and how often was it viewed with regret? This is what I believe the quote is trying to get you to think about.

If you live your life in a manner that brings no rebuke from yourself at the end of the day, you have done well. The idea is to have a fun and eventful life, not one based in (or leads to) regrets. You can do that, if you can live with imperfection.

As we are all human, we will never have a perfect anything. There will always be regrets. If only I had done more, or less. If only I had been quicker, or waited a little longer. There will always be something we regret. However, they don’t have to dominate our lives.

Why is trying to live our life without regrets important?  
There will always be regrets. There will always be things we wish we could take back. There will always be things we wish we hadn’t said. What we need to do is to live as true to ourselves as we can, as true to that life which gives us few, if no regrets.

It’s a laudable goal. It’s a lifelong journey, one in which we never actually reach our destination. With practice, however, we can approach the destination. We do that, in my estimation, by being honest to ourselves. We must understand ourselves, work to improve ourselves continuously, and work to act in a manner consistent with the prior two.

It will likely be a slow and painstaking series of adjustments as you improve yourself, and your behaviors. But I think it is something we should all do a little more of in our lives. And of course, we need to do the best we can right now, not wait for the perfect time to get started.

Where can We apply this in our life?
Take a moment and look back at your life. What is your single biggest regret? What did you do, or fail to do? How would your live be different today, if you had done things a little differently? What lesson (or lessons) can you learn from this experience?

Please understand that this isn’t designed to bring up your worst memories, or feelings. It is supposed to help you have some perspective on how you have lived your life up to this point. If this regret is too painful, select one that is less so, and try again.

Now consider something smaller that happened in the past few days, or even weeks. What are some of the things you regretted having done or having failed to do? Grab some paper and write a few of them down, and see if you can find some from each different aspect of your life.

The idea is to get a fairly broad cross section of your life, not just a tightly focused subset. Take a look at each one and see if you can find a lesson to learn from them. Is there a broader pattern? Is there a type or category of regret you have most often?

By trying to find patterns, you can try to help yourself by finding a root cause. When you operate on a root cause, one change can have a beneficial impact on many other individual items which share the root cause. Does that make sense to you?

Now that you have a list of regrets and reasons for having them, can you start forming a plan to have fewer regrets in the future? Take the lessons learned from your regrettable actions/inactions, and figure out a better way for you to handle those situations.

What else can you do to help yourself have fewer regrets? Perhaps by diminishing them somewhat. I don’t think it’s a good idea to completely forget or ignore them, as they are useful feedback on your actions. But you don’t have to stay awake all night over something as insignificant as failing to notice the person behind you and not holding the door for them.

You might want to try this on a couple of different regrets or patterns of regrets. It will likely be a little easier to do them one at a time, but if you feel up to it, feel free to tackle a few at the same time.

Just remember, the point of the exercise is to live your life so that at night, you aren’t kept awake by your regrets. Life is far too short for that!