When was the last time you were in a rather disenchanting situation? Do you remember what you were going through and how you dealt with it? How would you do things over if you had the chance? I have a pretty strict policy about regret. I simply don�t do it. I�m sure that there are cases in which had I done something differently, my life would have worked out better at the time. However, the problem with regret is that you are looking back at a situation with the valuable asset of hindsight, and, of course, bias. You cannot accurately say that if you had chosen a different path that things would have ended up better for you. Without knowing every single factor, there is no way to predict the future.
Since I�m an engineer, I know that there is no perfect plan. In fact, in most assumptions, you have to include the �chaos factor� or the �Murphy�s law� factor. Things will inevitably not work, and the difference between success and failure is how well you handle these �little� failures along the way.
That�s why I think that I�d have to answer my first question with a simple, �I don�t know.� It has been way too long since I�ve had a major setback. Considering that I, too, have the asset of hindsight, I�m not even sure, looking back, if the situations that I encountered were even that �major�. When I look back over my life, I view all �mistakes� that I�ve made as a sort of learning experience�hence, in the end they weren�t mistakes at all.
Am I lying to myself? Who knows? But I manage to not beat myself up most of the time, so I think I�m doing a pretty good job of handling myself.
I have a friend who has convinced himself that he is going through a major life change. Whether or not it is would be, of course, up to him. To me it may not be that big of a deal, but to him�.who knows?
I find that the way that he handles �dealing� with the situation as completely foreign to me. When encountered with a problem, I often analyze it for a short period of time, make a quick note for a plan of attack and jump into action. Well, maybe I don�t always immediately jump into action. When it comes time to face the problem, I �solve� it according to the way I have outlined in my head. I don�t make an elaborate �fool proof� plan on how to fix things. To me, that�s a waste of time and energy. Circumstances may change by the time that the problem arrives, so there�s no sense in giving yourself an ulcer of it�s impending consequences.
Anyway, he seems to think that analyzing past mistakes will help him through life. That may or may not be true, but the way that he goes about it seems counter-productive. Every situation is different, so there�s no way of knowing that the scrutiny you placed on one earlier situation will reward you in a future one.
As an example, his car has been totaled. It�s basically too expensive to fix. Unfortunately, this is not the first problem that he�s had with the car. He�s poured a lot of time and money into trying to �save� this car over the past few years.
His response to the problem is to analyze the past few years, how much time and money he�s put into the car, and then get upset with himself for doing it. This isn�t just a momentary process for him. He does this for days, if not weeks. He feels nothing but regret about the situation.
As I said before, regret, to me, is nothing but a parasitic emotion. You can�t do anything about the situation that caused you the regret, so there�s no sense in feeling it. My take on the problem would have been:
Problem: Car is broken.
Solution: Get new car.
Now that I have the solution, I would have to find a way of implementing it. Would that be hard? Probably, but what choice do I have? Without a car, I can�t get to my job. Without my job, I can�t pay off my student loans or live in my apartment. So�the choice seems quite clear to me�.
The other thing that I�ve noticed is that I stay quite calm in most situations. Lately, there hasn�t been a whole lot of tragedy for me to deal with, but perhaps that is because I prepare myself for tragedy by implementing fail-safes. I mean, when you are designing a whole system of electronic devices, you don�t attack the whole system at once. You start with shells and work your way out. When you have individual components, you make sure that each functions on its own�and then you put it all together.
If something goes wrong with one of the components, you want to have a way of protecting that problem from entering the whole system�or a failsafe. For example, if someone hooks up a battery wrong, with the incorrect polarization, you want to make sure that the surge in power doesn�t fry EVERYTHING in the whole system�.so you put in a diode. Power can only go one way in that case.
I digress. The point is that with regard to my life, I have a foundation in place in case things crumble. I don�t ever rely on ONE thing to make me functional. If something in my personal life is going wrong, well at least I have my job. If my job is hellish, at least I have my personal life. If both are in a bad state, then I have my hobbies.
The big picture is that I always have something to make me feel �better� if I can�t cope with solving the problem at that second.
Everyone complains. Everyone has bad days. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes on choice and wishes that they had made the other. The difference is that most people focus on the big picture. What�s one wrong decision out of how many billions of decisions made? What difference does it make when it�s made? So I charged too much on my credit card this month�.? What impact does that have on my whole life? It means that I have to live a little more frugally the next month.
I don�t turn that little decision into a monstrous problem so big that I find myself too paralyzed to do anything other than worry about what I did wrong. Was it because I bought that Brita water pitcher? Was it because I bought those cross trainers? Should I have eaten less?
Even if I figured out what the most pointless item was that I had bought, how much of my time was spent figuring that out as opposed to making sure that I didn�t overspend again?
I guess I just don�t let things really bother me. I truly do believe that things work out in the end and that causing myself pain when so many other things already can�..well that�s just stupid.
