Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Sweet f*ck all
Who came up with this rubbish?
You’ve read all the articles, blog posts, and social media captions about how if you could go back to your younger self [insert pointless age here] and have a coffee with them, what would you tell them to do differently?
What sanctimonious advice would you give your young, cheeky, carefree self? You’re so far removed from the person you were back then that the sheer notion that you want your younger self to take a different path than you did is terrible for your mental health in the present day. Think about it.
You’re not a failure.
I get it. The whole exercise is one conceived out of learning from your failures along the way. It seems well-intended, but it’s counterproductive because it only helps to create a rod to beat yourself with.
You cannot change that person back then via some time machine, so wanting to go back and tell them you’re failing in the here and now is detrimental to you in the present. Also, you’d alter your eighteen-year-old self in ways that you cannot foresee, and would undo the great things that happened to you along the way.
Yes, look back and learn from your mistakes so you don’t make them again, but you’re not a failure in any way. I’m fifty-six years old and look back at my nineteen-year-old self with a big fat smile and a shake of the head. I was in the Air Force at the time, got a girl pregnant, and became a father with no real prospects. My school leaving grades were dismal, and I wouldn’t have been accepted into any university or college if I’d tried. I was, what you might say, a little on the wild side and went on to make a gargantuan number of mistakes over the subsequent thirty-odd years.
It was a bumpy ride, but it also brings warmth to my heart at the thought of the great, winding journey, with its loads of successes. These successes I measure against myself, not by what others perceive to be successful for me. I’ve travelled to fifty-three countries and worked in nine of them. I’ve been married three times, finally finding my partner for this earthly journey (eighteen years together). I am a father and grandfather. I’ve previously worked as an IT consultant and have been a photographer for thirty-five years. I’m a published author of eleven works of fiction and three nonfiction books to date. I’ve carried fake-blood-covered placards at many environmental protests around the world and taught myself to day trade during Covid. I made a lot of money doing so, but lost just as much of it. So what? Now I write about midlife resilience and coach men over fifty to create a blueprint for the rest of their lives. I don’t regret anything in my life, so why would I waste my energy thinking about the chances my twenty-year-old self may have missed out on?
Regret is a waste of your time and of your life.
I’ve been called out many times for saying that I don’t regret anything. People say I can’t possibly be like that, but I’ve never really entertained the idea of regret because I find it a wasted exercise. I acknowledge my errors in judgment and mistakes I’ve made, but I understand that I made them (along with all the great decisions) with the information I had available to me at the time. How can I possibly judge myself and be filled with regret based on what I know today?
I’ve learnt the lessons of failure and pat myself on the back for the successes, as I stuff them all into my experience toolkit. That’s all the past is meant to do for us, and of course, to give us epic memories of both happy and sad times, as well as a wealth of wisdom
Start from today, then look forward.
My 19-year-old self didn’t look back to judge my 5-year-old self, wishing he hadn’t eaten that whole bag of sweets, and then vomited all over the house. Acknowledge your failures and errors as episodes that taught you a lesson, and then move the hell on from them.
So many people fail on the self-help hamster wheel because they were always doomed to fail without a foundation of self-acceptance (loving themselves warts and all). My advice is to take responsibility for all the good and bad that’s happened. Own it. Then, work on where you are today, accept yourself, and focus on a better future version of you. All of these issues and successes are yours and have made you the interesting person you are today.
Obviously, if there were major traumas in your past, you may need help to work through them if they are crippling you now. As an adult, you are the only one who determines whether these require intervention. If something happened to you and you’re willing to leave it in the past, keep moving forward. Don’t believe the nonsense that every small issue in your past needs to be addressed. You cannot drive forward by focusing on the review mirror. The world is ahead of you, not behind you. Don’t forget that.
We have such a short time on this fantastic planet. A finite life in an infinite universe. Why keep focusing on what you wish you had done when you were young, when you could instead focus on the great stories you want to tell when you are 80?
Deathbed confessors show more regret about what they didn’t do than what they did. Start working on the things on your bucket list that you’d feel bad about not doing over the next thirty years. All we have is the present, so make the most of it by creating memories that your future self will be proud of.
Wayne Marinovich is a Resilience Life Coach and the founder of A Resilient Path, a coaching platform for people struggling to envision their future. He focuses on providing a coaching environment with tools to help them create a blueprint for a compelling future and navigate the turbulent times ahead.
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