Live life with no regrets

When we look back at our lives we cannot have regrets as to how we lived or what we did. So many people say ”if only” or ”I regret”.

Regrets can come in many forms. We could say I wish I had or had not done that but we cannot go backwards, only forward with what we have created ourselves to be today.

I was married at 18, which was normal in the 50s. Many people said it will not work, you will have regrets. No, no, no. I would not be the person I am today without all these life obstacles to make me work around them and make me the better and more skilful person I am today. Never give up – find a way. “Where there is a will, there is a way”. I was taught with half Northern Irish and Scottish heritage that we never gave up until we had checked all of our options. Not many are told that these days and instead walk away from a marriage that could work if they both saw that compromise is possible. That is if it has the right ingredients together: unconditional love, respect and to listen to one another…compromise! Realise we are all different. I like coffee, my husband likes tea. I like to stay up late, he likes to go to bed early. In so many ways we are opposites – they say opposites attract.

We can all say, ”I should not have eaten so much”, ”I should not have drunk or smoked so much”, “I should have exercised more”, or “I should have saved more money”. I should have, I could have or I might have. The list is endless and I am sure you have heard them all.

“I might have” is a great one these days, I have noticed. “If I had saved more when I was younger I might have more today”. “If I had not eaten so much when I was younger I might be a smaller size today”. These are all irrelevant, it seems, as we are who we are, we are who we are meant to be. We can all improve our lives and empower ourselves by being more positive and loving towards others.

Self improvement has always been there. That does not mean you need to be something you are not. Just be the best who you are and know you want to become. It is never too late to empower and improve ourselves. If we have a habit we dislike we can, if we want to, improve that for our own self worth.

Self worth is priceless – you cannot buy it and you cannot find it, you earn it. You cannot regret if you do not have self worth or blame others for what you do not have or what you have become. It is all about not feeling worthless and unworthy. Nice things can make us feel worthy once we have obtained them, but for how long? Love yourself as who you are and who you have become. That is a priceless gift to pass on to our young ones. It is not what we achieve, it is the journey of how we achieve.

Loving myself when I was young, I was told that was vain. They did not think, if you did not love yourself, how could you love others? If you looked in the mirror too long you were vain. Not realising the mirror is of ourselves and how we present to the world. How often do you hear someone these days when they see a fashion disaster, ”I wonder if they looked in the mirror before they left home”? I laugh every time I hear this as we were told to look and check if our seamed stockings were straight as others had to look at crooked seams and would not present a good picture of who we were.

Glad those days are over; trying to always keep the seam on stockings straight as we hobbled on stiletto heels, feeling so glam. Now we look in the mirror to make sure nothing is tucked in the wrong place.

What do you think? Do you have any regrets or are you happy with who you have become?