This time of year marks the Jewish New Year.  Unlike most cultures that eat great food and party all night, we Jews fast and feel guilty for everything we’ve done wrong the previous year.  But seriously, I do appreciate the idea of reflecting on the life we’re living and how we may have “missed the mark,” as it’s referred to.  New Year’s rituals provide an opportunity, in community, to own our mistakes, make amends, and commit to a better path.  To be honest, though, I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by negativity.  It’s painful and makes me feel helpless at how to move beyond actions I feel badly about but can’t undo  So when I came across Daniel Pink, author of The Power of Regret:  How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, I found some helpful advice on how we might move out of painful guilt and into healthy change all year long.

Pink’s book is based on surveys of over 4,000 Americans about their relationship with the feeling of regret.  As we would imagine, most people experienced regret as painful, the intensity of which depended on the level of consequence of what is regretted.  For example, some regrets can be inconsequential overall, such as wishing we’d learned an instrument or not accepting an invitation that turned out to be a good experience for the people who did.  We may feel a sense of loss, but it’s relatively easy to move past.  The regrets that really hurt us are the ones when we wished we’d done something differently in circumstances that were morally or emotionally significant, like not making peace with someone before they died or saying hurtful things out of anger to someone we love.

The first tip offered by Pink is to view our pain as a source of growth and insight.  We can use our regret as information to learn from and it can clarify what is most important to us.  Regrets can serve as guides to future action if we can listen to what our feelings are telling us about our past action and the outcome of our choices.

But in doing so, Pink emphasizes we need to talk to ourselves with compassion and create understanding.  Speak to yourself as if you’re talking to a friend you love, offering support and guidance over judgment.  Sometimes sharing our regret with other people can help us gain perspective and decrease the isolation we have around our regret.  Once we share, we’re likely to hear that others have similar experiences.  Writing about them can also be a way to process our feelings and let them out, allowing ourselves to think it through and release it.  Writing to answer the questions “What did I learn from this situation,” or “How will I make a different choice in the future,” can solidify our growth mindset.

Another tip is to figure out if there’s still something you can do about it.  Often we’re so overwhelmed with guilt or negative feelings, we become paralyzed.  We avoid thinking about it and even avoid the people involved because of our shame.  It’s helpful to ask yourself if there’s a way to make amends or change your current course of action to be more in line with what you’ve identified as a mistake or error in living your values.  Taking action is a great tool in overcoming the helpless feelings that can accompany regret.

And finally, Pink offers the suggestion of using the term “at least” with your situation to reframe it and gain perspective about how it could’ve been worse.  By shifting from “if only I’d done more to help my brother with his illness,” we can reframe it to remind ourselves of the things we did do, such as “at least I called him regularly, even if I couldn’t visit him as often as I would’ve liked.”  When we’re pulled into regret, we often overlook balancing forces or intentions that we would readily recognize for others.  

Allowing ourselves to explore our regret is a way of coping with it and gaining insight.  The process is not about letting ourselves off the hook or making excuses, but to find a truthful understanding of what our feelings mean to us and how we can use them as a beacon rather than a weapon.  As I sit in the High Holy Days services, I do notice it’s nice to be among others who are also taking stock of their lives.  Somehow it reminds us that we’re all human and no one can live a life without errors or missteps.  And actually, the very nature of the holiday is the assumption of this common human frailty.  It’s nice to allow ourselves the opportunity to release these burdens and commit ourselves to a better path.  Otherwise, we’d regret it.