We get up in the morning and hope our day goes well. We most likely hope that all the things we think we need to do today will somehow fit into our day. We even hope that we might end up with time left over to do whatever it is that, in our mind, is something we actually want to do.
We are all busy, and because we are busy then life happens. We also know that our view of being busy can be different from what another person thinks is busy. There’s always something to distract us because we are living in crazy times in a crazy world. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in a day to accomplish the things we must do. We can sure get distracted each day. You begin something and wham…. up comes a distraction. Then there are a lot of excuses we make as to why we do or don’t do something, or don’t have enough time to do it.
What about thinking we must live our life to someone else’s expectations for us. This is heavy on a lot of people. Many are expected to do or become what another wants them to be. It might be totally opposite of what we want to be in life. If we don’t live our own road in life, then resentment can come and make us miserable. This can become a great regret to us. I would venture to even declare that if you did this for a long period of time that at some point in your life…you would have regrets over this decision. To understand even more know that your kids are not you. They will make errors in judgment just like you did/or do. You are to fulfill your life…not theirs. Each person has their own destiny and we all want what is best for our children, yet do we tell them to be what it is in life they want to be or do we try to fit them into what we think should be what they want to be? We have all messed up as a parent no matter how great we think we were as one. It is not easy to take the reins away. They are on God’s path…not ours. If they make the wrong choices along the way they learn. Our expectations can be said, but it is them that need to live the life that God has prepared for their journey. It is them that accept God’s way or reject God’s way. Our children are amazing. We do what we can to keep them safe as a child and we hope they stay safe all their life, but we can’t be there every moment of every day and see all the dangers in this world. We can, however, ask God to watch over them. He might let them go down certain paths and in doing so…they might need lessons learned. We can, however, teach them of God, right over wrong, good over evil, and what God expects. We can’t make them go down that path!!! Let us each begin to let our children go down their own path. Didn’t we want our own parents to let us be ourself?
How hard do you work? If you are young you can change things, but if you are old and in the end stages of your life you can have regrets as to what you wish you would have done or not done. What do wish you would have done? Make more money in your life or spent what time you had with those you love? People need us not stuff. That is not to say we don’t work and give to our kids etc., but those expensive games, fancy homes, money in the bank, expensive automobiles, things that we go into debt to get for them because they declare they want them because their friends have them is the wrong reason to give them things. You can’t get the time back that you wasted on staying up with the Jones. Your kids don’t need the latest everything…they need you. This is one regret that millions of people have. They need to know you love them and care enough to spend time with them. We have a lot of years (for many) to work and earn money for whatever, but our kids are only young for such a short time. You do not need this regret. If you are younger change! If you are older you know you can’t go back, but even now…let your family know they are loved and you are sorry. Last here don’t try to make your kids grow up before their time. Allow them to be kids for they never get that back again. Kids are not all the same. Some are good at one thing and not so good at others, while another is good at that. Don’t compare your children. See what they are good at, what they want to do or learn, and then, if you can, help them do it. Let kids have chores and not just sit and do nothing. Let them learn to earn for the things they think they need (that are good for them), but that you don’t have the money for.
Feelings: We all have feelings, don’t we? Well, what do you do to express them in a good way? We don’t want or even mean to suppress our feelings because in doing so we never let others know exactly what we feel or why, and even if we did we worry that the other person will not understand, not care, and maybe think it would make the situation worse…so we hold our feelings inside. Those feeling add up and over time can actually make some people sick. Sometimes we don’t tell others of our feelings because it could very well change our circumstances in life. It can cause peace to tell others, or it can cause anger, guild, and hurt feelings. It could also destroy relationships, so most people just keep their feeling to themselves. When we share our feelings and emotions it can be a great thing in raising kids for, they see that to have feelings is okay. Emotions are not wrong, but what we do or don’t do with them can be. We all need healthy ways to express our feeling.
Regrets of letting family, friends, and those we cared about go. By that, I mean here, that we don’t stay in touch with those we care/d about. No matter how young or old you are in life…people need friendships. We all need good friends and not ones that will bring us down. We also need things we like to do, places we like to go, hobbies we enjoy etc. What makes us happy in our down time? Treasure your relationships in life. People come and go out of our life. People move and their lifestyles change. No one wants to end up regretting not letting others know they meant something to us even if/when life kept or complicated things in our life.
Happiness: I have never met anyone who wanted to go throughout life being miserable. No, people want to be happy. Sometimes they will be, but not all the time. Our happiness is pretty much our choice. Life can give us lemons as they say, but we can still choose to be happy. Don’t postpone your happiness until!!! We spend a lifetime with the “what if’s”! We will always have that what if going on in our mind and it might or might not happen, but “what if” it never happens? Take the time in your life to choose to be happy along your life journey so that when you get to the end of your life…you are not in regret over this. Even small joys along our way…lean on those experiences. Slow down, live in the moment, be free and experience all the emotions and love that come with that.
How many regrets pop up along the way in our life? People we care about will one day die and we will feel the pain of their leaving this earth and not being able to see or talk to them. Shouldn’t we take some time to let them know that they meant, mean, and will always mean something to us? This is one thing that millions regret for not taking the time to let people know they care.
It is time to begin to balance our life now. How do we do that? Some people think that they can juggle their time and somehow make it up. Doesn’t work like that no matter how meaningful we think it will. Time goes on, and the loss of time with those we love is a big deal. Days, months, and years go by and one day we wake up and wonder where the time went. Take what time you have left in life and make it count for good. No one wants this regret.
We, have all met bullies in our life. They are everywhere, aren’t they? We go to school even as little kids and there will be a bully, we grow up and go to high school and there are bullies that make our life miserable. We don’t forget the bullies that made our life miserable. We can fear these bullies for many of them threaten or do hurt us. Most times people never stood up to them because they feared these bullies. How we wished we were bigger, smarter, and stronger and could just go and stand up for our rights. Then take the bullies in ones own family, or at work. Bullies are everywhere and they do’’t care who they hurt or how miserable they make you feel. What comes out of their mouth can hurt you for the rest of your life while many of these bullies never even knew that it affected your life. Some wish that the bully would fall but it doesn’t help how or what we are going through. Because of bullies in our life we miss a lot of good things happen, avoid certain things, and go a different way so we don’t have to deal with that bully any longer. Bullies bully and we need to go on. People regret how they allowed bullies to bully them. You can’t change the past, but you can go on and not accept what they told you that hurt you. You are better than that.
Time spent on dumb things that we think are important…like phones, computers, games, emails, texts, etc. How much time do we give these things and are distracted by them? What could we be doing instead? How many people even sleep with their phones so that they might not miss a call or a text? How important is your time to you anyway? Don’t allow this to be something you regret in life. Do you give your family as much time as you do these things? I have even see people sitting on a couch together and text each other instead of just talking.
Personal relationships in life. Oh, how we love to be loved. We trust that person and actually we let our guard down, don’t we? Shouldn’t we? But as most people go through life how many people have been hurt/devastated by the very ones they love? People get dumped every day. We gave them our all and they betrayed us. Some lash out and some go on, but for millions they regret this and then when they meet a good person in their life they have the “what if” syndrome that the new person might hurt them too. In doing this they lose out on true love and friendships. We all get hurt. We all face crud in our life we wish didn’t happen but we can’t protect ourselves from everything. People take into a new relationship the crud from the last and somehow blame the new person for the actions of the one that didn’t work out. Regrets! Each relationship should be in and of itself and not blaming the new person for what someone else did to you. You show, by your actions, that you don’t trust them and that can destroy that relationship too.
What others think: How much do you worry about what other people think about you? So many people go through life worrying about this daily. People will love you and people will hate you and somewhere in between. You be, and you do the best you know how. Treat others good, pray for them, care about them, but no matter what you do in life people will not always like you, and many will wish you bad. However, you don’t need to be them. You don’t have to have regrets here, and why do we seem to have such little confidence in ourselves. Why did we allow the interests of others to ponder so heavy on us instead of trusting our own beliefs?
Marriage: Don’t let others, no matter who they are, come between you and your spouse. The stats on marriage are dismal to say the least. People say, at their wedding, I will love you forever…but most times they are not willing to work on it. Marriage is not “I love you until”. It is a commitment between two people…and God who created it and made it a covenant. What about the I love you until what? Someone comes along and the grass looks greener. Someone is better looking! Someone tells you that you look nice, deserve better, and flirts with you? Don’t fall for it. The grass is not greener and you need to work on your marriage. Marriages have up and downs. People see things differently. Problems arise and some are tough…but you can work through them 90% of the time. I am not talking here about abuse! No one must stay with someone who abuses them. But we can do all we can, get help, whatever we can to try to fix things. But……………….don’t allow parent, siblings, friends, etc tell you to give up. You listen to God and do as He says. Parents can’t be first in your marriage. No matter who you are if you are married then your spouse is the one you need to fix things with and talk to. It is okay to get input from parents because they have been around, but your decisions in and on your marriage need to be between you and your spouse. And………………a marriage in God’s eyes is always between a man and a woman. That is how God designed marriage. Don’t take the bait and allow others to come between you.
Regrets on bad relationships with family and friends. I know family members that haven’t talked to a parent, or a brother or sister for years. Someone got in their mind that they didn’t like something, so they just cut all ties with them. Many even know they should make up but they don’t know how so they do or say nothing. They write each other off and for what? Family is family! Shouldn’t we do something to mend relationships? We don’t have to agree on everything and won’t, but we can let them know we care and some will come back, while others never will. It is their loss in not trying. We will not make everyone happy…and that definitely includes family. Both sides can be right or wrong…so what? Is it worth losing family over? Don’t wash your hands of the relationship. They’ll regret that when one of them is no longer around.
We regret a lot of times the fact that we didn’t take a chance on someone so we didn’t try. We wanted to go out with someone we felt was nice or that we liked but didn’t take the chance. We regret that because we never found out if it would have worked out.
What about getting involved with the wrong crowd? We do a lot of stuff we regret and having bad so-called friends that bring us down is one of them. Some people get into trouble real easy and if we hang out with them we can falter and be at the wrong place at the wrong time. People have done something really bad that you didn’t know they would and you get in trouble that changes your life as well. Be careful who you give your friendship too so that you don’t regret things.
How about going to school? Did you want to go to college, tech school, or not go? Many go that in no way want to go. They take up classes they hate instead of going to take what makes them happy. Many take classes because that is what their parents want them to take instead of taking classes that will be more them. Some who truly wanted to college and didn’t or couldn’t regret not doing it, while others who did it and took wrong courses regretted that as well.
Jobs: What about the regret of taking a job you don’t want because it was available, paid well, but you hated it. Sometimes we have to do this because we have to live, of course, but sometimes that is not what made us do it. Some think that they maybe won’t find something better fitted. But, at the end of the day, you’ve got to live your life the best way you can. There are many who think they need to take a lesser joy so that they can build up their experience before settling in to a job they love. Maybe it would be better taking a lesser joy in the area you want and putting in time to learn the job and then go forward. So many regrets here for so many.
Regrets about your health: How many of us do not take care of our health beginning in our youth. We do a lot of dumb things in life thinking nothing will happen to us. People smoke, drink, do drugs and think nothing will happen to them…but these things go after your body. At some point they attack you and you begin to get ill. Didn’t you think it wouldn’t happen to you? Some will do nothing to better their life until they are at a point that they are facing severe things and then they try to fix themselves. Why not do it now? Do things that help your health instead of doing things to harm it. This is one regret that no one wants to face.
How many just don’t do things they know they should do because they might look dumb in their own eyes, think they wouldn’t say the right things. So what! At least you would have tried. At least someone would know you care.
Regrets of not being a good mom or dad. Oh, how we all wish we were better at this, but many, feel at some time they did a lousy job. We get to feel guilty about things we didn’t do, or we didn’t do things we should have done. Regrets and guilt set in and it is not a good feeling. As a parent, we will make mistakes. We are human and no matter how much we try to be a good parent we don’t do everything right. We can, however, do the best we can at the moment and pray all the time for strength and wisdom in raising our children. I, myself, have many regrets in this area. The thing is no one knows what I went through in this life or how things affected my life. Some choices I made in life were made by things that happened or didn’t happen to me. I messed up a lot…but what I did, I did with good intentions and with love in my heart. I do have regrets for many things I wish I would have done differently. But we all know we can’t have a do-over in life. Mistakes were made for which I am sorry, but for which can’t be fixed and as others have regrets in this area…so do I. All I can do is give this to God because I can’t fix what happened.
We can all relate to some of these regrets. We can’t change the past, so this list isn’t meant for you to start a pity party. Pity parties don’t work and never have. The question is what we are going to do with the rest of our lives to ensure we don’t experience any more of these regrets later on when we’re in the hospital preparing to say goodbye, or when someone we can no longer tell of our regrets. The older one gets could mean you are thinking about the regrets in your own life that shaped the way you are, and things you wish you would have done or not done in life. It is okay to think about the regrets just don’t harbor them. Bring them to mind and deal with them as best you can and let them go. Pray about them, and do the best you can do with whatever time you have on this earth. Time is getting short and the return of Jesus is closer than ever. No one knows the day or hour but we know of the signs. Give all the garbage to Jesus and He will take the trash out. Best wishes to each and every one of you. May God give you peace and bless the rest of your life. Let the fork in your road take the right path the rest of your way through life.