Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole Again, A show about helping us embrace life with mindfulness and resilience through the wisdom of cons, Sugi on Fridays. I love sharing a short episode with you to help you shift your mindset and impact in a very substantial way, your ripple effect. And today let's talk about regret.

But before we do, if you happen to be listening to this on a Friday or maybe a different day of the week and you're just having one of those weeks or one of those days, I feel you. You're not alone. It makes you perfectly human. So let's start with a shared deep breath together. A nice full breath in

and a releasing breath out. Give yourself a chance to relax into this moment. As we talk about something we don't necessarily talk about all that much. Regret. I looked up the origin of the word and it means way back in the day to cry again. How often do we do that? When we look back on moments in our lives, things that we did or didn't do, and we keep kicking them around in our mind, we ruminate and ruminate and ruminate.

It can bring up emotions like guilt a did a bad thing, or shame. I'm a bad person for whatever I did or didn't do. What I've discovered along the many years I've traveled is that long-term regret, the kind that lingers quietly in the backpack you carry. Because we all carry a backpack. Those rocks are so freaking heavy.

They can be some of the heaviest rocks that we carry. These rocks that we carry lead to a whole bunch of shitting on ourselves. And who loves that? No one, I don't think, but we do it all the time, right? Oh man, I should have done that. No, why didn't I do this? Why the fuck did I do that? Oh my God, I can't believe I was that dumb.

Holy cow. I completely missed that opportunity. I'm so fucking stupid. Sometimes it can feel like that narrative is on a loop, a never ending loop, and it completely changes how we see ourselves and the conversation that we have with ourselves, which then impacts the conversation we have with everyone else, and therefore impacts our ripple effect.

Now, I'm not saying we should go through life with a whatevs attitude. Oh, yeah. I did that or I didn't do that, whatever. I think a lot of times when we take that attitude, we're emotionally bypassing our lives. The thing is, if we're living life, we are going to make mistakes. Things that we did, things that we didn't do, times where we fucked it up, they shape us.

These moments, they help us grow. We can even feel like they break us. It can hurt, but we know this, through the wisdom of Kintsugi, we can find a way to come back together. They can teach us. So it's not about forgetting or whatevs our past moments. It's about seeing them and realizing they can be a teacher we can move forward with.

More wisdom, the real work in life, or as some would say, the inner work we gotta do isn't about avoiding mistakes. It's about learning how to move forward with wisdom from them and not with guilt that you did a bad thing and not with shame that you're a bad person. Rather the knowledge that you can catalog that moment away and realize you might tap into it someday in the future.

Ah, the last time that happened, this is what I did. I have another crack at this. I'm gonna do it a bit differently. This can help us see moments that we once regretted much differently. We don't have to walk around with a backpack full of regrets. Those heavy rocks that weigh us down, we can see them as a chance to grow, to learn, to gain more wisdom.

So today I would love to invite you to take a moment, maybe after this episode is done, before you move on to the next thing, hit pause, take a few deep breaths, and in a moment of reflection. You can ask yourself if you're carrying something in that backpack of yours that you may wish to let go of. It's a life event that may be holding you down for the last several years, and you no longer have to look at it as a moment that you regret, but more as a moment where you had a chance to learn something that makes you a bit wiser as you go forward.

Although people try to do it, you can't rewrite the past. What happened happened, but you have power and part of your power is in your ability to write the next page or write the next chapter, and you're so allowed to do that with grace, not guilt for thinking you did a bad thing, not shame, believing you are a bad person.

With grace. That deep breath that we did upfront felt pretty good. So let's do another as we wrap up, nice full breath in, breathe deeply, and then slowly release the breath as you do. I would like to remind you that you're not here to be perfect. You're here to feel whole. Create a wonderful ripple effect.

So thanks for being here and thanks for being part of our community. And if you haven't yet signed up for the free inspirational text messages I send out a few times during the week, you can do so by texting whole again to 8 6 6 6 1 2 4 6 0 4. I'll set you up

and if you wish to further enhance your digital health, I'll invite you to take my smartphone wellness check and you can access it through the link in the show notes, or you can visit my website, which is Michael O'Brien shift.com, and it's absolutely free, and it'll help you scroll less and live more.

And of course, I hope you'll join us here on whole again every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and discover how to heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience. Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this and we've got you.