Hey folks, welcome to episode 15 of a Pebble in a Pond podcast.
Have a lot to get into this episode and it's going to be a heavy one so I'm going to go
ahead and just start with the music and I'll see you on the other side.
Enjoy.
Oh boy. Well, I'm not gonna lie to everybody. This is going to be a rough one. I know it's
gonna be a rough one because this is the fourth time, well the fourth go-around of me trying
to record multiple different parts of this episode. Hopefully now that I've gotten all
of the emotion and crying out, I'll be able to finish it. The episode that you're listening
to right now is going to focus on regret. Now, I want to make this clear before I get
too far into the episode. You know, we've had, I've had a lot of, well, I've had, this
will be the 15th episode, so I've had a lot of episodes now and almost every single episode
has focused on something positive and that's obviously by design. That's what I want to
talk about. However, it came up in conversation some time ago and it really made me think
there was a, there's a bunch of creators on TikTok and on Instagram that have kind of
started to get a bad rap because they only focus on the good things and that's just not
reality, right? Like we all understand that there's, there's hardship, there's struggle,
there is pain in reality and being able to deal with that is almost as important as being
able to shore yourself up with all of the good things and understanding, you know, how
important honesty and kindness and empathy and love and all of these things are. So I,
I was very hesitant to start to delve into the negative, I guess, emotions or aspects
of existence, but I just feel like if I don't get to them, if I don't start to knock them
out, they're just going to build up just like emotions do in real life. I'm just going to
keep trying to do some positive stuff and in the meanwhile I'll be looking over my shoulder
thinking I got to get to those sooner or later. So when I started to really think about it
and I started to come up with some topics that I wanted to get to, you know, anger will
be one of them, I didn't really know what to start with and it took me a while to really,
man, it was tough. I'm not going to lie to you, it was really, really tough. It took
me a while and I sat there thinking about it for basically almost like a week and a
half just ruminating over what I thought I could do and how I wanted to approach it and
what it came down to is right now in my life, at this point in my life, which is a Tracy
Chapman song by the way, I am just going through so much and I am dealing with a lot of regret.
So when I was deciding on which topic to start with, I just figured I'd start with the one
that is probably the most present in my life right now, which turns out after trying to
record multiple times to be, that was probably a mistake. That was probably not the smartest
thing to do considering that I haven't been able to make it through. But what I am going
to talk about today, well, I am going to try to get through some of my personal stuff with
you guys. I am going to start to tell a little bit of a story but mostly I just want to talk
about what regret is and how we handle it. There will be a little personal stuff thrown
in here and there but every time I started to get into that on the previous recordings
of this episode, I was just breaking down and I don't want you guys to have to sit and
listen to me cry for an hour. So we are not going to do what I originally planned which
was to kind of unburden myself a little bit in front of everybody that listens. I will
still touch on some of that stuff and I don't know if you can tell but there will be some
kind of weird edits here and there as I try to keep some of the stuff that I have worked
on and some of the stuff I, this has been a multi-day project on this episode because
of the weight of the topic. And I hope that everybody understands that. I hope that everybody
can kind of sympathize with the fact that we all have regrets. We all have things that
we either did or didn't do and they affect us every day of our lives. And not knowing
how different things would have been, not knowing, always having these kind of fantasies
of oh it would have been like this or this would have been different or all of these
things that just kind of come with regret. They weigh heavily on all of us and this is
something that no matter how well-intentioned you are and no matter how much you lean on
all of the positive and the great concepts that I put forward here on the podcast and
that you know just in life, you're going to have regret in your life despite the fact
that you try not to. And it will happen and what you do with it will determine the rest
of your life. So, tough one. This is a tough one. Let me go ahead and get a quote out of
the way because that's what we like to do around here. Let me see. This is a quote from
someone who is, I guess you could say she was controversial. I don't, I mean I really
consider her controversial. The people around her maybe but this is a quote from Barbara
Bush and I found it and I thought that it would be a good way to start the episode.
And what she said was, at the end of your life you will never regret not having passed
one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret
time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent. So, I thought that was
a beautiful sentiment and it's a good place to start because it's kind of a positive way
of understanding that we don't want to live with that regret and that there are certain
kinds of regret, right? Like she's talking about the fact that some people genuinely
believe that if they don't accomplish in life based on a societal standard that they're
going to regret that. Other people understand that the only true regret, the regret that
haunts you, the regret that you take to your grave with you is understanding that you've
missed out on opportunities and time with those that you love. That is true regret.
Now, what does regret mean? We should maybe start with that as we start to get into this.
What is regret exactly? The dictionary says, regret is a feeling of sadness, repentance
or disappointment over something that has happened or been done. Another, that's the
noun definition. The verb definition is feel sad, repentant or disappointed over something
that has happened or been done, especially a lost or missed opportunity. And those are
both fine definitions in terms of just being kind of a blanket idea of what it is. I think
we all kind of knew that already. Otherwise, you wouldn't even be listening to the episode.
Let's go a little bit deeper. What does it mean? So there's a lot more than you would
think reading to be done on the topic of regret. And really honestly, when I started to dive
into it a week and a half ago, well, two weeks now, I was actually pretty shocked about exactly
how much I was studying I could do on the topic. I guess I shouldn't have been. I really
shouldn't have been. But what it really hammered in was just how universal the concept was
and how, like I said already, none of us escape regret. You will live with regret at some
point in your life. So I started to look at some of the more accepted psychological definitions
and things like that. They're going a little bit more in depth. And I found one that I
thought was, yeah, it made sense, I guess I could say. Regret is a self-focused negative
emotion about something that has happened or been done by us. We feel bad because we
did or didn't do something we believe we should or shouldn't have done. And then here's the
part that really made this one stand out. Given regret involves acknowledging our role
in our present circumstances, it also often includes self-blame. When we say that we regret
something, and this is actually almost pulled directly from the same source that I got this
psychological definition from, when we regret something, it means that we disagree with
our past decision-making. Whether you did something or you didn't, regret can be action
or inaction. So remember that as we discuss it. Oftentimes people will say, well, I didn't
do anything, I can't regret it. Well, not doing something often leads to regret as well.
And there's literally a billion different versions of regret. And this can go, you can
get really deep with this if you really want to, but there is a theory that every single
moment of every single day that you're alive, everything that you do is essentially creating
a alternate reality. So there's an infinite number of realities out there. Now this is
going to get a little deep, like I said. So at any given point, right now, as I record
this, I have my hands crossed. Now what would happen if my microphone started to fall and
I had to catch it, but my hands were crossed and I couldn't catch it and microphone fell
and broke? Well, then I would have to live with the regret of having my hands crossed
and not being in a position to catch the microphone. The episode would end and I wouldn't be able
to publish an episode until I got a new mic. Now, obviously that didn't happen because
you're hearing the episode. At least I hope it doesn't happen. That'd be weird. But all
of these different alternate things that we do or we don't do, think about how many times
you've been sitting at your desk with your coffee or your drink or something and you
go to move and you knock over your cup. Well, you wouldn't have done that if you hadn't
put your cup there. Now, not a big deal. You wipe it up, but what if it gets on your keyboard?
What if it gets on something that is, well, then you start to feel this little pang of
regret. Why did I put my cup of coffee there? Why did I put my drink there? Why did I do
that? And you start to, oh, now I got to get a new keyboard. Now I got to, and all of these
things that you start to have to deal with are all coming back to your decision to put
your cup there. Now this goes to that infinite realities thing. The idea of infinite realities
was one that I always found kind of haunting because basically what that is, is that's
infinite levels of regret because in each one of those realities, whichever form it
takes, whichever direction you ended up going in this reality, you end up wondering about
all the other things that could have happened. Now that's not necessarily true with every
single instance, but you know what I mean? If you really stop to think about it, it'll
haunt you. It'll be really creepy because you'll start to, okay, well, what would have
happened if I would have done this? What would have happened if I would have done this? And
you can literally go through. And the reality is, is that there are so many variations on
your own decision that it's almost crippling. And that really is the power of regret. Regret
is one of those emotions that will haunt you before you ever do anything. It will affect
your actions before you even consider an action. We live so much of our lives fearful of regret.
Now that takes, there's a lot of words for that. I mean, right now there's even a popular
term as FOMO, fear of missing out. Well, what do you think that is? That's literally the
fear of regret. Cause if you miss out, you're going to regret it. That's what that is. Regret
is a fear that can take place well before you even know you have an opportunity and
haunts you well past when that opportunity comes. And so when we talk about in the podcast
and on the TikTok channel and things like that, when I talk about living in the present,
that is one of the best ways to live without regret. Now, obviously the things that you've
done in the past will affect your present to a certain degree, but understanding that
at each given moment, you're essentially setting up the catalyst. Let's think of it as dominoes.
You're setting up the dominoes for the rest of whatever path you're on. You're setting
that up with every decision you make, every step you take, every time you decide to hold
your breath or look this way as opposed to that way. And if you live your life thinking
about each one of those little tiny decisions and start stressing out over them, then you're
obviously not doing a good job. That's not something that I'm trying to encourage. But
it is something that if you sit and you think, if you really meditate on it, if you spend
some time thinking about all of the decisions that you've made that have led you into different
paths, it will leave you wondering. Now, it may not leave you regretting. And that's something
that I really wanted to get into was the difference between thinking about what could have been
and regretting what could have been. And for this part of it, I'm trying to understand
the difference between just thinking or wondering and actual regret. We're going to use a romantic
relationship as an example because that seems to be something that many people have regret
around. It's stunning when you think about it, when you really spend a lot of time, when
you think about how humans get together, how we form bonds and things like that. Oftentimes,
we go through the process of whatever you want to call it, courting or getting to know
each other without really truly understanding why we do the things we do and how we do the
things we do. And then we just arrive at the point where people decide that they're going
to be together. That's great. But when you start to break down all of your decisions
along the way, when you're able to get some real clarity and understand it with hindsight,
you start to say, okay, well, we arrived here because of this. We arrived here because of
that. We got to where we are because of this. Now, that works out great if your relationship
is good. And you very rarely will ever think about that. If things go great for the rest
of your life, if you meet the one and you do all the things to get to know them and
you get together and you'll remember the little things, your first kiss, the first time you
held hands, the, oh, we went to eat here. You'll remember all that stuff. But what you
don't remember is the minutia of how you ended up together. Oftentimes some people do, but
I promise you this, and this is a really interesting thing when you think about it, if something
goes wrong and if that relationship ends poorly or ends really at all and there's pain and
there's hurt, what you find is that you start to go back and you start to say, oh, well,
what if I had done this instead? What if I had done this instead? And then you start
to wonder and you start to regret. Now, once again, what's the difference there? Wondering
is say you're walking with your newfound sweetheart and you, I really hate that word sweetheart.
I don't know why I said that. That just made me laugh. So you're walking with your sweetie
and you're holding hands and you're talking and you're having a great time. Now, like
I said, if the relationship, however the relationship goes, that's going to be a fine memory. You're
going to remember that. Say you're, say you're walking outside of, you know, down the walkway
in a strip mall or something, you're just going from shop to shop together, you know,
just doing a little Saturday shopping or something. And that memory may blend in with a million
other memories as long as things are going great. But if things break down, if, you know,
you start to, you start to wonder or you start, things, things start to go bad and then you
start to wonder and you start to regret, right? So if you're holding hands, you're walking
down the strip, strip mall together, you're talking to each other. And in this example,
I'm going to, you know, just say she, because I'm, I'm a man. So say she says to you, I
don't know, she says something and you don't respond favorably. Now, once again, we're
going on the, on the assumption that this relationship is, is doing well in one reality,
right? Like you've, you've gone from this point into the future, been highly successful
in this one reality. Now, all the other realities, when she says whatever she says and you don't
respond favorably, you don't respond kindly, you don't respond with love or you don't respond
with attention. Maybe you're zoned off, maybe you're, whatever it may be, the reason why
you don't respond correctly, she turns and she looks at you and her feelings are hurt.
That's just this one version of reality. So now when you're looking back on this, the
relationship is over. You guys have had fights and fights and fights and you're looking back
on these moments. Now you have to go through this period of wonder or regret. Now, do you
regret not doing this or do you wonder what happened? Well, it's really easy to figure
that out. If you're wondering, you're literally just going through, okay, I wonder what would
have happened if I did this. And then you kind of play out the scene in your head. You
play it out, you play it out and you say, okay, I don't think that would have changed
anything. Now regret is when you say, I wonder what would have happened if I, oh, if I had,
if I had turned and listened, if I had done this, if I had done these things, this would
have had a different outcome. This moment would have changed everything. I could have,
I could have changed this. I could have made it better. And then you start to kind of ruminate
on all of the things you could have done. Now, do you understand the difference between
wondering and regret? Wondering is fine. You look back and you say, okay, well, you know,
this led to this and this led to that. And it was, you know, this is all inevitable.
This was going to happen one way or the other. And, and, and I, you know, I appreciate this.
And you can kind of look at it and you can say, okay, well, I did this. And, and if you're
fair to yourself, you'll say, well, I, you know, this was my, my state of mind at the
time and, and I don't feel like I really made a mistake. And I understand where she was
coming from. And you can really kind of see the, the different perspectives in the moment.
And you understand exactly how that happened. And it gives you a sense of peace and a sense
of understanding of that moment. But if you regret, then you're going to go back and you're
going to start to think, Oh, I could have done this differently or Oh, I shouldn't have
said that. Or Oh, I, why didn't I, why didn't I grab her by the hand and, or, you know,
why didn't I pull her in and give her a hug or a kiss or, you know, why didn't, why didn't
I react better? Why didn't I, why didn't I hold her and tell her it was okay? Why didn't
I, and you'll start to have all these feelings of, uh, you know, not only will you be hyper
self-aware, but you'll start to feel doubt and pain and you'll start to say, why didn't
I do this? Why did I mess this up? That's regret. That's what regret is. Now, what is
the opposite of regret? This is important for this wander versus regret. The opposite
of regret is satisfaction. The opposite of regret is remorselessness. The opposite of
regret is being able to look back on something and say, no, I'm, I'm, I'm okay with this
because I think I made the right choice. I think this is good. I think that, you know,
even if the outcome, the end outcome of this imaginary relationship is one that is not
good, if, if something ends, you can go back through points and you can say, no, I think
I did that right. I'm based on the information that I have and based on the memories that
I, I'm able to, you know, get to, uh, I, I think that, I think that everything I did
there was good. Now, sometimes we fool ourselves and sometimes we don't understand the perspective
of the other person, whatever it may be, but, uh, you can look back and you say, no, I'm,
I'm satisfied. I'm okay with, with that. I'm okay with, and what I've found as I've
gotten older, you know, I'm 48 is that a lot of times when I look back on those situations
throughout my life and I start to really, uh, dig through things that I'm wondering
about or I'm regretting, um, I've found that a lot of times from my perspective, I don't,
I don't have a reason for regret as much as I thought I did maybe, uh, and, and, you know,
a more recent history of those moments. Uh, and that's one of the things that, that we
will get to, uh, is how to kind of live with regret or how to get over regret. And, uh,
I'll talk to, I'll talk to that in, in a little bit, but, um, one of the things about regret
that is really the most interesting, and I know that I'm kind of jumping around here
with all these different things, but like I said, I didn't really understand how much
I was going to have to read and how much I was going to have to get out in this episode
when I forwarded the idea of this episode. Um, I really genuinely, uh, did not expect
to, to kind of have to jump around like this, but there's just so much information about
this that I'm trying to touch on everything I can, uh, without, you know, within an hour
or so. So, uh, I, I do apologize. Uh, I, I'm regretting picking regret as a topic, not
just because of the tears, but because of the amount of information that I want to convey.
And it does make it so I kind of have to jump quickly from stuff, from idea to idea. So
just try to stay with me because I know that I'm, I'm moving on, uh, from things quickly,
but, uh, it's because I've got, I've got my little, my little notes here on my screen
and I'm literally just trying to hit all of them as much as I can because there's a list
and I've got about 15 more things that I want to get to. So, uh, this is a, that's just
a little insight really quick into the, uh, how the sausage is made, if you will, because
what I'll do is I'll go through and as I'm studying and researching, I have a little,
you know, I'll just pull up a notepad or whatever on my computer and I just make notes of this
is what I want to talk about and this is what I want to talk about. And I had to start doing
that because I was finding that I would kind of wander a lot more. But now what I'm finding
is that, uh, when I have the notes and I'm looking at it, uh, I'll be in mid sentence
and try to get to the next thing. So I need to find a way to make my mind work. I don't
know how, how, how I can do that. Um, but, uh, I'm figuring it out. We'll get there together.
Sorry. Sorry if it's a little, if that's a little bit too much information about how
my process works for this whole thing, but, um, you know, I am really relatively new at
this. There's 15 episodes, but, uh, uh, I've only been doing it for a few months. So, uh,
we'll, we'll figure it out. I'll find a more comfortable way to get these ideas onto the,
uh, onto the recording. So just using, going back to that and just using the, uh, the relationship,
the romantic relationship, uh, one of the things that's, that is, was really interesting
was reading about, now, now I want this to be clear. I, I couldn't really find a lot
of information that, that, uh, worked on a worldwide level. Uh, most of the information
that I found was American research. Um, but that's probably because that's, I don't really
know how to search all, all of it on the worldwide level. Um, but one of the, one of the interesting
things that I saw was, uh, there was, uh, I don't remember where it was that I saw it,
but there was a list of, um, the things that Americans in particular, uh, tend to regret
the most. And I thought it was interesting because like, as far as causes of regret in
our society, um, the things that people regret the most are romance, which is right up there.
Like, that's probably the top one. They weren't actually ranked, but that was the first one
listed. I imagine that was for a reason. Um, education, people regret either not being
educated or some people even regret wasting time on education. Uh, career choices, obviously,
I mean, that's a no brainer. Um, and, uh, people have often regretted, uh, their leisure
activities, which I thought was interesting because, you know, you think of leisure is
like the thing you do for fun, the thing you do to relax. But it turns out that, uh, one
of the biggest regrets people have is, uh, wasting time. Uh, people will get so caught
up in their, um, you know, their, their pursuit of relaxing and having fun and things like
that, that they then will regret that because they won't move their life forward in a way
that is acceptable to them any longer. Because, you know, as we grow and as we change, we
start to value different things. And so a lot of times people will think back and be
like, Oh, I wasted so much time partying or I wasted so much time doing this. Or if I
was just would have, if I just would have hunkered down and studied or, you know, that's,
that's, it's, that is a very, very common regret. Um, and what's, what's funny is that
that does kind of go hand in hand with one of these other ones, which I thought this
was actually the shocking one to me, uh, was that self-improvement was something that people,
uh, that was on the list. And when I first read that, I was like, why would people regret
improving themselves? Uh, well, that's not what that means. Uh, they regret not improving
themselves. And I, I, when I first read it, I was, like I said, I was thinking about it
in a stupid way. So I was, I was kind of shocked to see that on the list. And I was like, why
is that there? That doesn't make any sense at all. And then I was like, Oh yeah. People
regret not, not improving themselves. And it, it took me a minute because you know,
I'm I don't know, I don't know what's wrong with me, but it took me a minute to think
about that. And I was like, I, I have a podcast, I have a podcast and a tick tock channel,
but literally 85% of the content that I create is about improving yourself, is about being
a better version of yourself. And that's when it kind of hit home. And I was like, Oh, why
do I do that? Is it, am I doing this stuff because of regret? Am I doing this stuff because
I spent 15 to 16 years in a depression and now I'm looking back on my life, regretting
the obviously I couldn't necessarily stop being depressed, but regretting all of that
time, regretting the decisions that I made, regretting the fact that I was essentially
a negative, a net negative in the lives of so many, everybody, really everybody in my
life. I was, I was, I was a burden and am I doing all of this? Is, is, is this a gross
overcorrection for what I've done in the past? And I had to really sit there and think about
it. And, and what I came to was, yeah, I mean, if I'm just being honest, yeah, it really
is. This is this, this podcast and the tick tock channel and all of the things that, that
I'm doing in my, in my life, in my real life, where I'm trying to get out and I'm trying
to help people and I'm trying to, now I've always done those things, but now I've never
had this drive like I do now. And I realized that part of it is because I've, I've got
to, I feel like I've got to make amends. I've got, I've got to make it right. Uh, and that
comes from regret. That comes from the fact that I do deeply regret the things that I
said and the things that I did, um, while I was depressed. Now I have a lot more regrets
than that because, you know, I'm a horribly damaged person, but, uh, but, uh, those, that
right now is the regret that is haunting me. The regret that I live with every single day.
But before we get too much into my personal stuff anymore, uh, one of the, well, the last
thing that people regret, and this is also going to get into my personal stuff, um, which
is why I wanted to talk about it before I got too far ahead. Um, the, the other thing
that most Americans regret, or not most, but a lot of Americans regret, and this one just
hit right, right close to home is, uh, parenting. Um, and I know that many of you that listen
to this, uh, will understand the, the multitude of ways that, uh, this answer can come about.
Um, you know, if you're, if you are a parent, then you know that basically your whole life
from the start is you trying to balance some sort of regret, um, for how you've parented
your child. And what's funny about that is that, you know, none of us really know what
we're doing. Like we can read all the books, we can, we can listen to all the, the professionals,
we can, we can do all of the things we're supposed to do and we're still going to have
a, an ample amount of regret over how we've raised our child. And that's just because
we are all so imperfect and we all have our own biases and we all have our own, you know,
crazy little things that we do and, uh, our children will pick up on that stuff and it
will affect them. And here's what, what I want to say about this. And this is why, where
it gets kind of personal for me. Uh, many of you know that I don't, uh, I don't really
have a relationship with my father anymore. And, um, this is one of those situations I've
explained on, on, on Tik TOK and I think I've told the story here on one of these episodes,
uh, a little bit at least, but this is where regret can really be, I guess, quantified
to a certain degree. My father and I don't speak anymore because at a certain point I
started to understand the way that he had lived his life and the way that he would,
he had hurt so many people and he refused to ever apologize for it. Uh, my father was
the, the opposite of regretful. He was, he was remorseless. He, he went through his life.
Uh, I mean, he's still alive, but, uh, he, he has gone through his life, uh, in a selfish
way hurting people. And at some point in time, I just started to see it probably when I started
to feel it more. I started to understand that he was just being selfish towards me. And,
uh, that's when I made the decision, a conscious decision to tell him that I wanted him to
apologize for the pain that he had caused, not just me, but my mom and, uh, his girlfriend
and all of these other people that he had kind of hurt in his life. And I wanted him
to apologize. If he couldn't apologize to them personally, then I wanted him to apologize
to me. And, uh, it was at that point that we ceased communication. Uh, he just couldn't
do it. Now, this is where we go back a little bit and we talk about the difference between
wondering and regret. I have spent, I mean, it's been a decade now since I've spoken to
my father and I have spent literally days at a time just completely in the tank, just
ruminating on what I could have done different, how this could have been different. And what
I've come to realize is that that is what wondering is. That's, that's why I like make
that differentiation between those things is I've sat there for literally hours upon
hours at a time thinking, how could I have saved our relationship? And the reality is,
is that I could not have done this any differently based upon who I am as a person. I, there's
a lot of people in this world that would tell me, Oh, just, just, you know, don't worry
about it. And you, you know, you're going to miss time with your father and you know,
what are you, you know, you're going to regret that. And here's, here's what I have to say.
And this is going to sound cold. This is going to sound mean, but I genuinely mean this.
I do love my father. I love my father with my whole heart, but I will never ever stand
by and let someone, man, woman, doesn't matter, hurt somebody else the way that he has hurt
people and not take some accountability for it. And if that accountability comes in the
form of him not having his son in his life anymore, then that's what it has to be because
it is not right. And I have to stand by what I believe in this world. And I believe that
being, being good and being a good person and being kind. And if you make mistakes,
if you fuck up, then you apologize. You have to be able to see that and you have to be
able to take accountability for your actions. And my father has refused to do that. And
so when I sit there and I think about it and I wonder about it, while I, I certainly don't
want to, you know, I don't want him to go to the grave or, you know, our, you know,
this all to end with me never speaking to him again. But if that's what it takes, I'm
okay with it. I'm okay never speaking to him again. If, if it means that he's never going
to have accountability, if he's never going to say, I'm sorry, then that's what it means.
At some point in time, I have to stand by what I believe in. And that's why when I sit
and I wonder about it and I sit and I, I really, you know, like I said, I kind of go under
the tank and I really think about it. I don't regret what I said to him. I don't. And, and
every day since then that I've sat and I've thought about it, I've, you know, I've had
conversations with my kids, I've had conversations with my girlfriend, I've had conversations
with all sorts of people about it. And at the end of the day, once I've kind of explained
the situation, most people are like, I get it. I understand. Like it sucks and it does.
It certainly sucks. It certainly sucks to not have, not have that relationship with
my father anymore. But I'll tell you this. I would absolutely regret going back to my
father and saying, you know what, don't worry about saying, I'm sorry, let's just, let's
just be pals again. I would regret that. That is what I would regret. I would regret bending
my own morals, bending my own understanding of what it means to be good and kind and accountable
for the things that you do. I couldn't do that because if I did that, I would always
wonder, I would always regret. I would always, I would sit there and I would think about
it and I would, it would always lead to regret. And even if that means I have my father in
my life again, that's, that's just not something that it's just not worth it. The amount of
regret that I would live with is just not worth it. And this sounds bad to say it this
way, but after so long, I don't know if he's worth it because it's a decision. It's a choice
that he makes every single day. Obviously he doesn't think about it. It's not something
that's on the, you know, the tip of his mind or anything, but every single day for 10 plus
years now, he's had to wake up knowing that I'm not speaking to him. He's had to make
the choice to not reach out. Now I'm a father, I'm a father that loves my children with all
of my heart. And especially me and my boys have had, you know, we've damn near come to
blows. We haven't, but you know, we have had some really intense fights and I pride myself
on the fact that I will always, even if it means I have to bend the knee, I will always
find a way for us to work it out. I would never be able to do what my father has done.
I would never be able to go every single day. It would have killed me to not have my sons
speaking to me. I would have done anything. I would have done all of the soul searching.
I would have done all of the, you know, whatever it took, I would have found a way. But this
man has literally for 10 years, 10 plus years, every single day has woken up, gone about
his day, done his things and hasn't reached out. So at some point in time, how can I regret?
How can I possibly regret any of the messages that I sent him, any of the, you know, correspondence
that we had before we stopped talking? How can I regret any of it? He obviously doesn't
care because he hasn't made any effort. And here's one of the things, and this is going
to sound, you know, this is a therapy session type thing to say, but he's my father. I'm
the son. Now I'm 48 years old now, but you know, he's still supposed to be my father.
He's supposed to be the guy that does this. Now I understand that I have moved well beyond
him in terms of maturity and understanding, but it still is frustrating as the son, as
the, you know, part of me. And that's, you know, I'm sure that you all understand that.
Like you still want to look up to your parents. You still want to be able to say, Oh, look,
there's a, there's still an example of how to be and how to think and how to behave.
And I can't do that with my father and it sucks. It sucks. So this is one of those weird
edits that I was talking about, but just so that everybody's aware, I recorded that a
little while ago and are not a little like a day ago. And so I started to get really
emotional with that. And I'm going to just stop that part of it here because I don't
think I can record that again. So I know this is kind of herky jerky and it feels kind of
weird, but I just want to be as transparent as possible. It started to get a little heavy,
a little more heavy than I was able to handle talking about my dad. And the reality is,
and this will be the last part of this segment, is that, like I said, the regret is non-existent
as far as that goes. What it turns into very quickly is anger because, and that's what
happened when I was recording is I really started to get angry because there's just
so much disrespect and there's just so much hurt feelings. By not talking to me, my father
has essentially outcast my children as well from his circle. He'll still send them Christmas
cards and things like that, but he has no nothing. They don't have a grandfather as
far as they're concerned. So it's really, really frustrating and it just brings about
so much anger in me. And once again, I don't regret my decision and I have thought about
it so much and it has been something that I've thought about, unlike him apparently,
I've thought about it a lot. Not every day, but many times, a month, if not a week, I
think about the situation with my father. And well, there you go. That's really what
regret is. And that's when I saw the list of the things that people regret, parenting
was the one that stood out the most to me. Now, on that list of education, career, romance,
parenting, self-improvement and leisure, I regret almost all of that. I have a regret
in every category and we don't have time for me to get into all of those. So let's just
say that every single one of those is a regret in my life. I certainly, certainly regret
choices I made in my education. I do not have a career to speak of. You're listening to
the only thing that I do as a career. And I've only got 15 episodes, so even that's
not too accomplished. And I make TikToks. Romance, man, I could tell you some stories.
But for now, let's just say that of all of those, all of those on that list, romance
is the one that probably has the heaviest, hardest hitting and most painful regrets of
all of them. And that includes my father. The lack of self-improvement. Yes, that is
certainly something that I regret, but not as much as the others. And I think that honestly,
I think there's more pride. I think that I'm a lot more satisfied in that regard. But when
I really think about it, I have a few regrets there. It's not as prolific as all of the
other ones would be. It is one of those things where, with self-improvement, where I just
think of, oh, I could have been so much further ahead. I could have understood this better.
I could have. But in general, it's not something that I tend to think of as one of my weak
points. Leisure, man, I had a conversation with a friend of mine just last week, and
I was realizing so much of my life is filled with both wonder and regret. Because I sit
there and I'm like, how did I survive that? How did I live through that? Why did I do
these things when I was younger? And then also the regret that I have of just certain
decisions that I've made in terms of how I've moved through this world in terms of
the things that I do for fun and things like that. I've told everybody this. You all know
it by now. I'm not a drinker. I don't do drugs. I'm not real big on partying and things
like that. But one of the reasons I don't do a lot of those things is because I've always
been the guy that didn't really need to do those things to be relatively insane by most
people's standards. So I have a lot of regrets when it comes to the things that I've done
or the ways that I've behaved because I have people come up to me all the time when I go
somewhere where I know people or people from my past and they'll come up to me and they'll
tell me these stories of things that I did. And I don't remember a damn bit of it, but
they'll tell me, oh, and you did this and then you jumped off of this thing and I don't
know how you survived that. And what I realize now is that one of my biggest regrets is the
way that people throughout my life see me now because a lot of them see that version
of me. And I don't know if you know much about 48 year old knees, but I'm not going to be
jumping from any roofs anytime soon. So we're going to switch gears here and this episode
is actually going to end up running a little long because of how much I'm going into all
this. And I apologize for that, but we're going to switch gears here and we're going
to talk about something that regret does to our lives. And this is probably the most important
segment of this episode and I really want to make sure that everybody understands how
serious this is for me. There was a very famous yoga guru and a Hindu spiritual leader. His
name was Swami Sivananda, I think is how you say it. And he once said, do not brood over
your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and
depression. Do not repeat them in the future. The reason I use that quote and the reason
why I wanted to bring that up is because regret, like I alluded to before, is one of those
emotions or one of those feelings that you have that will affect you before you even
realize it's affecting you, before you've even gotten to the point where you're making
a decision, you're fearful of regret. But what regret does to you after is perhaps,
it really is one of the most powerful things on this planet. I would say it's right up
there with gravity. The way that we feel regret, the way that we process the grief and the
depression that comes with regret, the way that we deal with it, the amount of pain that
we carry in ourselves will oftentimes cripple us for life. And what I mean by that is you
become so fearful, you become so avoidant, you become so detached, you become cold or
aloof or you start to pull yourself away from situations because you're so afraid of being
hurt again or you're so afraid of having to go through that again, whatever it may have
been, that you end up cutting entire segments of your life off. You cut people off. You
intentionally drive people out of your life over and over, causing more regret. Regret
is, and I use the analogy a bit ago, setting up dominoes. That's how regret works for a
lot of people. Once you start to regret the first thing, you start to live your life in
a way where you don't ever have to regret again. You don't want to feel that again.
You don't want to, and so you start to do things that you will regret to cover up for
the one regret. And I'm going to use an example here. And this is actually one that I read
about. There was a lady who cheated on her husband and she writes about how, you know,
this was a, this was a, am I the asshole post on Reddit? And she writes about, and this
was, I mean, this is a giant post, but she basically writes about how she had an affair
and she covered it up and her husband didn't know about it. And she went through a good
couple of years where their relationship was okay, but she had just fallen prey to her
desires over this person. And she thought, you know, as long as, as long as he doesn't
know, then we're good. And he didn't know and things went on. And that, that feeling
that she started with was one of, you know, she was excited. She had a, she had kind of
gotten away with it. She had had a couple of flings with this guy and, you know, it
was fine. She didn't, nothing happened. She didn't live with any regret. She was actually
enjoyed thinking about it. It was, you know, something, it was a, it was a point of almost
pride to her. And then something else happened. Her and her husband got in a fight and she
went and she had another affair. And this was with, she didn't really detail who these
people were, but she went and had another affair. And it was another one where it was
just a couple of times, it was a fling and she, and she went on and again, she felt,
she felt fine about it. She didn't really have any of the moral problems with it. She,
she felt like, you know, well, if he had done this and the kind of the way that, you know,
people think about those situations when they're cheating, you know, oh, well, if he had done
this, then I wouldn't have been forced to do this. And so this actually ended up happening
a couple of times over the course of their relationship. And as she, as after each one
of these situations and she, I think she said the number, but I don't remember how many
times this had happened over the course of the relationship, but each time she would
basically tell herself, I don't regret that. I don't regret that. I'm, you know, it was
good and I'm glad I did it. And you know, whatever, we'll, we'll work it out. The husband
and wife will work it out, but she was getting, she was happy on the side over here and she
was doing things, something that made her happy. And so she didn't, she didn't regret
it. She didn't regret it. She didn't regret it over and over again. Uh, and then they
got a divorce and even then she would say, no, I don't regret it. I don't regret it one
bit. And lo and behold, after the divorce, he's gone. He's found another love. He's moved
on. This is, you know, two, three years later. And all of a sudden, like, like a ton of bricks
and this is when she wrote this post, all of it hit her at once. It all hit her at once.
Now she had lived her life in such a way where she had, uh, you know, she had, she had made
the first mistake, which was going through and entertaining and being with another man
when she was married. And then she kind of hid it, right? She, she just stifled it. She,
any of the negative feelings that came with it, she wanted to hold onto the goodness of
that moment. She wanted it to be pure. She wanted it to be okay. And she couldn't imagine
that what she did was wrong. She just couldn't allow herself to feel that what she did was
wrong. So instead she just built this like fake world around it. And, but that didn't
really work. She didn't understand that at the time she would tell people that knew about
it. She would, she would tell herself, Oh, I don't regret it. Oh, I don't regret it.
And when the time came to talk to her husband about it, she told her husband, I don't regret
it. But she did. And, and every single action that she took after that was a domino that
was falling over from this first moment. All of those things, all of those things were
moments that she is going, that she now regrets every single, every single thing. And she
writes about it in great detail. And she says, you know, I, I, I met a guy that I went to
school with and, you know, I entertained, you know, his, his messages, he, I guess they
were talking on Facebook or something. And he's like, uh, I entertained his messages.
We flirted online. We did. And she goes through and she's like, I regret every single moment
of every single part of this because I lost my husband because of it. So she, and, and,
and literally, you know, if you think about what the, the things that go into cheating
on your partner, there's, there's a list of moments that you have to go through, like
literally dozens of moments that you have to go through at every single turn. You have
a choice that you're making and people, this woman is writing about it saying, uh, you
know, I didn't regret for the longest time, she didn't regret any of it. Every single
choice that she made talking to this, these guys talking to, you know, getting them to
go out to dinner with them, going out and, you know, kind of go into their, their apartment
or whatever, go into their house, go on and, you know, every single one of those is a moment
now. Every single point of that is another Domino that she is now two or three years
later, however long it was regretting with every fiber of her being because she, she
understands just exactly how many, how many choices that she made to not feel regret over
the first thing that she did. Right. She, this, this first guy that she ever had a relationship
with, she had the opportunity right there at the very beginning of it when he started
flirting with her to say, I'm married and she didn't, she liked the way it felt when
he flirted with her. And so she let him keep flirting and so on and so forth. And then
it moved further and further. And every single point from that first relationship, every
single point was her feeling bad about the fact that she let that happen, but she didn't
want to feel bad about it. So now she just has literally decades of regret built up because
of this situation, because she just could not, she couldn't stomach the idea of facing
it at any point. And now she's been forced to, she doesn't have a choice anymore. She
doesn't have her husband. He's gone on to another relationship. She doesn't have anything,
you know, she's just kind of living her life. And even at, she even writes that after the
divorce, she went out and she had her party phase and all this stuff. I think she's 50
years old or something like that. And she had a party phase and she went out and she
had, you know, she got with a bunch of guys and all this stuff and she was feeling good
about it. And then, you know, there's that quiet time, that quiet time where you have
to start to wonder and that's when the regret comes in. When you start to think about the
mistakes that you've made, when you start to think about and you start to weigh, am
I just wondering about it or is it a regret? And that's when she says the regret just hit
her. It hit her so hard. She's been in multiple therapy sessions. She's, I mean, she's just
not, I mean, obviously, as you can imagine, it's just, she's just not doing well. And
that's why she wrote this whole big thing. And what's funny is, is that she wrote it
in the, am I the asshole? Reddit. And there is literally no, I feel so bad actually when
I was reading it because there's not one person that was like, no, you're not the asshole.
Like literally every, like thousands of people responded to this woman. I was like, yeah,
you are a giant asshole. So now I wonder if, I wonder if she feels regret for posting that.
But it was, it was one of those things that I thought was a good example of how regret
is a domino that really does affect the rest of your life if you don't face it, if you
don't deal with it. And so I know that this is running long and I want to get to this
before I let it go. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to, I'm going to cut to another
section section here really fast. And we're going to talk about how we deal with regret.
I know it's kind of a quick change, but I want to, I want to make sure I get this into
this episode. So we're going to, I'm going to, I'm going to switch over here and we're
going to talk about something else. So you regret something, you regret an action or
an inaction. This is an interesting point of this is that inaction is the thing that
people regret the most. I think James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica once said, I
would rather regret action than not doing something, which is a valid thing to say.
A lot of times we can regret what we did and because we can apologize for it, we can, we
can, we can make amends for an action a lot of times, uh, as long as we, you know, as
long as we truly understand it and we know that we did harm and we know that we hurt
somebody or something, we can, we can make amends for it. But if we, if we didn't do
anything, there's nothing that can be done at that point in time. All you have is that
regret. Regret is a powerful, powerful thing. And the reason why I want to get to this topic
is because, um, I don't want this episode to end on a bad note. And so what I want to
do is I want to talk about, first of all, how we live with regret. And then I want to
talk about why regret is so important. So why do we regret and how do we live with it?
Well, we regret because once again, we, we've done something or we haven't done something.
So what do we do about it? Once, once we've, once the one of those things has come to pass,
what do we do? The first thing you can do is accept it. That is probably the first and
most important step in this whole thing is because in this example of this, this woman,
she didn't accept it. And so she just continued to pile regret upon regret, action upon action
that she was going to regret. And if she would have had somebody with her, you know, as it
like, you know, maybe she had like a little guide or something, you know, a little Jiminy
Cricket there telling her, you're going to regret that you're going to regret that. Then
maybe maybe you could say, oh, well, she knew she was going to regret it, but she didn't,
she didn't really have that forethought. She didn't really have that understanding. She
really genuinely believed she was going to be able to avoid it, but she couldn't. And
so now she has action after action that she now regrets. But at no point in time did she
have acceptance of what she had done at no point in time. Did she say, Oh man, yeah,
I really, I really screwed that up. I really messed that up. And I'm willing to take accountability
for that. I'm willing to accept what has to happen now. It's accountability is the first
step after acceptance. And that usually goes hand in hand with, you know, understanding,
okay, I did this. How do I fix it? And, and that is the easiest. Okay. I won't say easiest.
That is not correct. It is the most effective and efficient way of dealing with regret is
trying to balance it. That is not easy. As, as I pointed out already at the beginning
of this episode, it is not easy. And it is something that I am desperately doing, desperately
trying to figure out and desperately trying to figure out in my own life and how I'm going
to continue to make up for the things that I regret. It's not always the most positive
way of being. And it can oftentimes create situations where you, you know, you start
to generate self-loathing and it's counterproductive in a lot of ways to healing. But acceptance
is the first thing you have to be willing to look at and understand exactly what you
regret and why you regret it. Where, where does the regret come from? Why do you have
this negative emotion? What, you know, why do you, why do you hurt? You have to be willing
to do the work to, to figure that out. That's the first thing you need to do and accept
the fact that you feel like that. Give yourself a little grace. Understand that, you know,
okay, this is a negative feeling. I don't enjoy this. Why am I feeling this way? And
then be like, oh, okay, I figured this out. Okay. Now what do I do? What do I do now?
And if you, if you're somebody who doesn't want to go back and you, you don't want to
make amends for it and you don't want to necessarily, or maybe it's not an option. Maybe, you know,
the person isn't talking to you that you regret an action with, or you're just not in the
same position mentally or whatever it may be. If you can't, if you can't go back and
essentially fix the issue, then what you want to do from that point on is start to understand.
And this is where regret really is so powerful and honestly a great teaching tool is you
want, you want to live your life from that point on so that you don't regret that action
again or that inaction again. You can't, you have to learn from it. You have to say, I'm
not going to do that again, or I'm, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna own this and I'm gonna
make changes in the way that I think or the way that I behave so that this never happens
again. That is a huge, huge step. And you see that all the time in among alcoholics,
people that are recovering alcoholics, people that are fighting every day to remain alcohol
free, they live with that regret. And every single day they make the brave and amazing
decision to not drink. And every single day people don't commend them on it. People don't
say anything about it. Some of their friends even mock them for it. But every single day
is a triumph. Every single day is a moment that they should be so proud of themselves.
And I know a lot of them are because every single day is a struggle. And they, they do
that because they don't want to feel that regret. They have learned the lesson. Now
obviously people fall, people, people fail, people will miss. But in those times when
you're really trying to get out of those, those kind of situations where you have, you
know, substance abuse and things like that, you have to go through it and understand that
you're, you're creating a map for how you want to live your future. You're creating
a path for you to walk down so that you're not entangled by the things that you've done
in your past. The only way to do that is to accept that you were an alcoholic, that you
are an alcoholic and understand that you're fighting every single step of the way to not
be that again, to not, you know, be in that mindset, to not be that person. It's such
a brave fight. And I wanted to make sure I brought that up because among the leisure
topic that is, that is the number one thing that people regret is allowing themselves
to become substance dependent. And I thought that was important to bring up. One of the,
one of the things that I do for myself when I'm trying to handle living with my regrets
is and this goes back to the, the alternate reality discussion. One of the reasons I brought
that up in the first place was for this right here is oftentimes we get into a situation
where we have a moment. We can, we have a moment to make a decision. We can really pause
and say, okay, which one of these is best? And maybe the best way to approach the, your
decision making is if I do this, will I regret it? If I don't do this, will I regret it?
And you do that with, with all of the choices that you see in front of you. Now here's the
thing about that. There's always going to be stuff you don't see. There's always going
to be things that you don't know. You cannot regret things that you don't have access to,
information that you don't know, you know, people at play that you maybe don't know or
they're in play. You don't know that they're, you know, a factor that you should be thinking
about. If you don't know, you cannot live with regret. You can wonder, but you cannot
live with regret over something that you can't control. I know this because I actually made
a Tik Tok video when I, when I actually started to decide on this episode, I made a Tik Tok
video about a situation. If you want to go over there and watch it, you can, I'm not
going to go into it here, but, um, there's plenty of situations and this one in particular
that I talk about where there was literally nothing I could have done. There was nothing
I could have done in that situation, but I still regret it. Why? Well, that's just how
I've worked and it's taken me years and years and years to get to the point where I'm, I
don't regret it. Like I know there's nothing I could have done, but it was, it was a regret
that I held onto for a really long, really, really long time, uh, because I just felt
so ineffective, but there was nothing I could have done. And it, as much as it sucks to
say there's nothing I could have done, um, that's the truth of it. So I can't, I can't
have that regret. I can't burden myself with that anymore. So as you're, as you're going
through trying to deal with the ramifications of regret, you may feel understand that while
you may not be able to instantly fix what you did in the past, you certainly can live
your life in a way where you don't regret things in the future. You can not be that
lady. You can not, you can not be the one who hides from things that you've done and
then continues to pour yourself into new regrets. You don't want to be like that lady who, you
know, some years from now, every regret that you have over a situation hits you all at
once and you're left just stunned and bewildered with the weight and the enormity of the amount
of pain that you've caused. Don't be like that. Face these things as they come. Understand
I made a mistake, make amends. Don't hide it. Don't, don't stifle it. Don't, don't
be afraid of that pain because I promise you the regret, the long term regret that you're
going to feel is so, so much worse than any short term pain or any apology or any, you
know, care that you have to give or whatever it may be. The regret that you hold onto,
the regret when you have to look into somebody's eyes for years and years is, it's unfathomable.
How much worse that is. And it's so much easier to just say the thing, you know, say, say
the thing that's painful. Just rip the bandaid off as they say. That is so much better, so
much better. And literally every single scenario to just get that pain out there and then deal
with the repercussions. And here's the thing. Sometimes when you do that, you're going to,
people are going to get pissed off. People are going to leave. People are going to not
talk to you again. And you're going to feel like you regret that. But what I've found
is that over time you start to realize that if somebody can't handle your truth, if somebody
can't handle you being honest, if somebody can't handle you owning up to whatever situation
and just, just, just saying, I'm sorry, I won't do that again, but here's what I did.
If somebody can't handle that, then they probably weren't meant for you anyway. They probably
weren't, shouldn't be in your life. Whether it be romantic, whether it be a friend, whether
it be a work situation, you need to move on from that because we all fall down. We all
make mistakes. We all need to be accountable for our actions. And if people are stifling
your accountability, if they're creating fear in you so that you, you feel like you need
to not say something or you not do something that you're going to end up regretting, that's
going to carry with you for years and years and years, you don't need that in your life
anyway. So I'm going to wrap this up with another quote and then a little bit of an
explanation. Sydney J. Harris said, regret for the things we did can be tempered by time.
It is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. So that is, that is
very important here. And this is why I'm saving this for the last piece. There was a research
study done some years ago where they took a bunch of, they took, I think it was like
600 or 700, 70 year old people. And they basically talked to them and they said, okay, you know,
you're elderly, you're getting up there. And they said, what do you regret more? Do you
regret the things that you've done? What do you regret the things that you haven't done?
And 54% said, we regret the things that we haven't done, things that we haven't experienced,
things that we haven't seen. Why? Why is, why is it so much more that regret inaction
or the inability to do something? Because regretting inaction means you're accepting
your understanding of you living your life in fear. That's, that's what regretting inaction
means. It means you were too afraid to do something. You were too afraid to speak up.
You were too afraid to whatever it may be. Will you let fear control you? The reason
I wanted to end on this is because I think that that's an important, perhaps the most
important thing that I have said in this podcast. Fear of what is unknown, the undiscovered
country as Shakespeare put it, fearing things that you cannot possibly quantify, fearing
things that you can't know is something that is a human condition, something that we all
do. Unfortunately, it's also something that stifles our entire life and creates regret
that will haunt us forever until we die. All I can tell you now, and this is from having
lived a life where now I look back and I say, man, I kind of regret doing that because that
was really stupid. I could have died. And then my friend says, but you didn't. That's
a good point. I didn't. You're right. I don't really regret it. That was really fun. That's
a conversation that I have had numerous times where I look back and the person that I am
now will say, that was really stupid. Why did I do that? And then somebody says, yeah,
but you had fun doing it. And I was like, oh yeah, that's why I did it. Because I'm
kind of looking at my history through the lens of who I am today, as opposed to thinking
about it from the time that I did those things. But the reality is, is that I have lived a
life where what I think about or what I used to think about as things I would regret, I
now think of as things that I'm proud of. And I realized that I haven't allowed fear
to control me as much as maybe other people have. And so as I sit here and I record this,
I want to make this extremely clear. And I know that most people that listen to my podcasts
are around my age. There's not a lot of really young people listening to this. So this may
fall on ears that maybe already know it or that don't really want to employ it in their
life anymore. You need to let go of that fear. You need to start telling yourself that it's
okay to try. It's okay to fail. It's okay to be ridiculed. It's okay to be, to feel
that pain. All of that is fine, because here's what is not okay. Living with knowing that
you have not living and dying, I should say, knowing that you have not accomplished something
that makes you happy. You only have this one life. You only have this one chance to do
it right. So take it, take advantage of it. Stop living with fear as your guiding force,
because all that leads to is regret. It is so much easier to try and fail and try and,
you know, have somebody say something mean about you or to try and whatever happens happens
as long as you're trying. You're not truly failing. Blues Traveler has a line in one
of their songs where they where they he says, there's no such thing as a failure who keeps
trying. And that is absolutely correct. You cannot regret for a long period of time, you
trying. It's just not something that happens. Yeah, you will regret it. You will. It'll
be a short term thing. It'll be something that you know, oh, and you'll deal with embarrassment
or you'll deal with, you know, whatever. So some other emotion that comes with it, anger,
things like that, you'll deal with those. But it's so much better than living with the
regret of inaction of letting your life pass you by of being a passive observer in your
own life. Why would you want to live like that anymore? Get out there, say what you
need to say. I've said this in the in TikToks. I've said this on this podcast. I don't care
what your medium is. I don't care what you are good at. We all have something. We all
can do something. I can talk, obviously, because I'm running close to an hour and 20 minutes
of me just yapping into a microphone. But I can talk and I can move people and I can
inspire people if I want to. I can I can do those things because it's something that I've
always been able to do. It's something it's my talent. That's how I express myself. Not
everybody can do that. Some people need to draw. Some people write. Some people, you
know, do I don't know. There's an unlimited number of ways that you can express yourself.
You need to find the thing that allows you to express yourself in the best possible way.
The thing that truly that you know, it sounds trite, but just find the thing that makes
you happy. When they say when people say that, oftentimes they they don't really explain
what that means. I'm explaining it to you right now. Find the thing that makes it so
that you can speak your voice in whatever way that is. I sit here and I talk. If you're
somebody who needs to sing, if you feel better when you sing, then start start singing. You
don't have to write your own music. If you're not a songwriter, that's fine. Just get in
the get in the shower and sing and then maybe get in front of a microphone and sing and
like I am in front of a computer and then maybe just just do whatever whatever it takes
to get your voice into the world to affect this world to bring your light and your love
and your energy into this world. Because the option, the other option is regret. The other
option is going to your grave, knowing that you silenced yourself because of fear. I don't
know about you, but I don't want that. That's not what I see that when I was a little kid,
I didn't say when I grow up, I want to regret everything. That's not at all what we are
here for. We're not here to to do nothing. You only have one opportunity in this world
to make a difference. However long you live, that's your opportunity. You can put a million
different options into that opportunity. And you can try multiple, multiple times to make
something happen in that one opportunity, but you only have one life. And the crazy
thing about it is you're the only you that's ever existed. So why not take a shot? Why
not talk to this person? Why not go to your boss and say, Hey, I need a raise or I'm leaving.
Why not? Why not find your own value and your own worth and understand that your voice is
exceedingly important to this world. I know so many of you have stifled yourself. So many
of you have allowed life to pass you by. Why? Why do you do that? Because right now, many
of you are around my age, and many of you are already living with the regret. You understand
this episode about regret because you're living with it right now. Oh, I didn't do this or
I didn't say this or I wish I could have done this or I wish I could have done that. Don't
think like that anymore. This is the opportunity. This is the opportunity to change that, to
make a difference in this world and to make a difference in your own life. I can't possibly
tell you how happy it would make me to know that a few words here or there could help
change the course of somebody's life. I know I've done it before and I really, really hope
that I can do it again. And I know there's folks on Tik Tok that appreciate what I have
to say. And I know there's folks in this world that I run into, random people on the street
or in the supermarket or at the gas station, whatever it may be, that appreciate what I
do. And I know that people in my life appreciate what I do. I'm beginning to understand more
than anything that my place here is to help those, help others, help people understand
their power and their place. Because a lot of us have forgotten and the idea that so
many of us are going to go to the grave burdened with regret, having never experienced the
beauty and the joy that comes with just being yourself, of singing your song, of bringing
your beauty into this world, of showing people how wonderful you really are. I just don't
even know what to say. I just don't even know what to do at that point in time. Do what
you need to do. Find the strength within yourself. Talk to people. Talk to me. Let people shower
you with an understanding and an appreciation of who you are. Let them tell you what you
have inside of you. Make a list. Go through and say, okay, these are my strengths. These
are my weaknesses. Be honest with yourself. Build yourself up. Look at your weaknesses
and say, okay, I can work on this. And then start to understand just how you're the only
person that has those things. You're the only one in this world that has that combination
and you need to make it known. You need to sing from the rooftops if you need to. Write
down everything. Draw the picture. However you get your voice into this world, do it.
Do it. You only get this one opportunity. You have a lot of tries inside that opportunity,
but you only get this one time. I want to hear your voice. I want to hear what you have
to say. I want to see your artwork. I want to watch you perform. Bring your light into
this world and do not let regret control your future, your past, your life, and your death.
Thank you so much for listening. I know that this episode has jumped around a lot and a
lot of that is because I've had to edit it. I don't really like doing it like this, but
once again, it was a really rough topic for me. And I hope that you guys understand that
a lot of what I do here with the podcast is essentially an extended form of some of the
TikToks that I do. I genuinely want this to be more of a unpolished. I want it to be as
organic and real as it can be. And I hope that you understand that when I'm recording
these, a lot of times I do get emotional. It does affect me. So I apologize if I kind
of ramble. I apologize if I'm not able to finish all of my points from time to time,
but I hope that you get something out of this. And I will continue to hit on some of these
more I guess negative concepts as I can. I'm not going to focus on them as much, but I'm
absolutely doing an episode of Anger within the next two episodes. I don't know if it'll
be the next one, but it is exceedingly important in my life. So the ability to anger manage
is very, very important. So it may be the next episode, but I'll probably do something
a little bit more lighthearted for the next episode because this one was a four day gruel
and I need a break from these kind of feelings. So I appreciate you all. Thank you very much.
Again, I know that I'm a bit long-winded and I apologize for that. I just got a lot to
get out. So take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and I will talk to you
all very soon.