Jeff 00:00
Hello, everybody out there. Today we’re going to be talking about an emotion called regret. This emotion can paralyze you when you’re going through your divorce, and it could definitely affect your feelings and your emotions after divorce. So if you’re ready for Episode 164, let’s get started.
Doreen 01:04
Hey, Jeff.
Jeff 01:05
Hello Doreen, how are you?
Doreen 01:07
It’s been a trying day.
Jeff 01:09
I think it’s it’s been a 24 hour day, and it’s been nothing but successes and progress. Because when you’re when you’re having difficult days, that means you’re making the most progress. That’s what I look at it.
Doreen 01:22
Thanks coach.
Jeff 01:23
Coaching the coach. Hey, what’s that static in the background?
Doreen 01:28
Oh, it’s pouring outside.
Jeff 01:29
It’s pouring down, raining outside. You might see lightning, you might see thunder. But as you may remember from last week, we do our podcast from our living room, and sunny, well, not so sunny, South Florida.
Doreen 01:40
Right and so you can, you can check us out on YouTube as well.
Jeff 01:44
Yes.
Doreen 01:44
And I have Zen here, and hopefully he’s going to be nice and calm.
Jeff 01:48
He’s the producer.
Doreen 01:50
Zen’s our a little Frenchy.
Doreen 01:52
Anyhow, so regret. We’re going to talk about regret, which we know is not a very useful emotion, and it has us basically worrying and stressed, and the bottom line is that we’re usually regretting over something that already occurred or maybe didn’t occur. In the case of many of our listeners, it has to do with the divorce, what some will consider the breakdown of the marriage, or the failed marriage, which I always take an issue with, as you know.
Jeff 02:23
Right.
Doreen 02:24
Saying that a marriage failed because there’s the marriage didn’t fail 100%, right? I’m sure everyone out there who is going through divorce or went through divorce, had good times in their marriage, right? Either you have children together, you had good experiences, you loved each other at some point. There are good things. So failed marriage, I don’t really like that.
Jeff 02:47
And there’s typically not one incident that takes down a marriage, as you know, of course, years and years and years of some you know, things that are going on, but when it comes to regret, I think you’re thinking about decisions that you made or decisions that you didn’t make, and you’re disappointed about those things. That happened in the past that you really can’t do much about.
Doreen 03:14
No, I think, you know, one of the most important things is, I think that, you know, we’ve learned this as we’ve developed our coaching skills throughout the years, is that there are no real wrong decisions, right?
Jeff 03:31
That’s true.
Doreen 03:31
You want to explain that more?
Jeff 03:33
Well, there’s two things, two concepts, that deal with that. The first one is, you are where you are because that’s where you’re supposed to be. You make the mistakes that you’re supposed to make. You make the decisions, or not the decisions that you’re supposed to make, or not supposed to make. So I think that they’re not really anything you should regret, because you are where you are because you’re supposed to be.
Doreen 04:02
And I like to add that we talk a lot about when you when you have the the emotion of regret. So it is an emotion, right? I think it helps to start or to understand that life is a balance. We talk about 5050, both a perspective of good and bad, right? Good things happen to us. Bad things happen to us. Some we control on some level, some we do not. So when you look at regrets, and you can identify what those are, and you combine that with the balance in life of good and bad, right? I think that it can almost be calming. Have an effective calmness on you, just to know that this is just part of the human experience.
Jeff 04:58
And if you think about it, for every wrong decision you’re going to make, then you’re going to make a right decision. Or for every correct decision you or action you do, you’re going to have eventually a bad action that balances out that 50/50.
Doreen 05:13
But you know, when you think about regret, or your regrets, right? It’s really interesting, because if you look at things that maybe you could have done different, didn’t do right, whatever it is for you, those decisions, those regrets, led you down a path, right? And that path took you in a direction, and some of what you probably have today that are the good things, the great things that you love in your life or that you enjoy are a result of a decision that you made or didn’t make, that you looked at as a regret that now has become something positive. Does that make sense?
Jeff 05:59
Absolutely. It sounds like we call that a learning process. When you make a mistake, or you think you’ve made a mistake, and then maybe a similar situation comes in front of you, you’re going to remember those decisions you made in the past and make maybe a different decision, or maybe you like the same decision, but that regret can become a positive learning experience.
Doreen 06:23
Absolutely so I think that’s really important to recognize that you know meaning, recognize when you’re having that feeling of regret, that emotion, and identifying what it is that you’re regretting. You know a lot of times you might feel like you regret something where you don’t really understand it, right? We haven’t really worked it through. Because I think you also have to look at if I would have made a different decision, or if I would have done something different, or even if I would have taken action where I didn’t, and that’s the regret, what would that, course have looked like, versus where you are?
Jeff 07:04
I can easily give you an example of that. Okay, I have been known to regret my first marriage. However, looking at it proactively, if I didn’t get that marriage and didn’t have that divorce, I don’t think I would have met you. I don’t think we would be married today or and as happy as I am today. So that marriage led me to you, ultimately, if you look at it with an open mind and a learning mind. And that’s the kind of the way at now as a coach, I’m looking at a lot of things that I’ve regretted in my days, or a lot of things that I’ve made decisions, or maybe some things I wish I had thought of, or wish that I made decisions to do, that I look back and say, well you know what? Again, like I said in the beginning of the podcast, I’m here now, and I am who I am because of those decisions.
Doreen 08:05
Absolutely and I think, you know, I’m going to use business as an example, because, you know, I’m running the two law firms right now, and we work together, you know, in life after divorce, coaching and all of that. Decisions in business are made all the time, right? And sometimes you make a decision, let’s say to place a specific ad, or hire somebody, or whatever it looks like, right? And so you’re making decisions, hopefully with thought, and then it doesn’t work out. Let’s say you hire an employee. You think that they cross, you cross, all the T’s, dot, all the I’s, they seem great, and then it just doesn’t work out, right? Now, you can regret that decision of hiring that employee, but it’s part of business. It’s part of business to make decisions and then some work out, some don’t work out. You know, it’s that constant trial and error, but that’s with any goal, isn’t it? That’s with any goal. I’m just using business as an example. And so if I stopped making decisions, where would I be? Right? You can’t regret decisions, because that is just part of who we are as the humans. We have to make decisions. We have to decide to do, not do certain things, to move forward with any goal that we have.
Jeff 09:29
Kind of reminds me of our definition of failure. You know, failure is a good thing, and then it helps us to learn, helps us to move forward. So if you have failures that you regret, maybe it’s your thought about the regret that you need to check out. So in other words, if your thought is that was a good thing because I learned from it, I’m not going to make that mistake again, actually we’re more successful now because I got rid of that person I hired or now we hired this other person, and they’re so much better. So if you think about it in the right way and have those the correct thoughts that serve you, then the regret can be a positive thing. Again, you have better results.
Doreen 10:14
Right. I think a lot of people that are listening, you know, obviously are regretting things in their marriage that they did or they didn’t do. Or they’re regretting maybe things that happened during the divorce process. You know, maybe they over litigated or they weren’t reasonable, or it affected their children on various levels, whatever those regrets look like. I think there’s a lot of regret when it comes to divorce in general. There’s a lot. It’s one of those areas that you’re going to see more of that. And I think it’s really important to not beat yourself up. You know, because I think a lot of times regret comes with a lot of self guilt and self sabotage and really being cruel to yourself, because you think I could have done this differently, or whatever it is, right? And I think the first thing to do is to really be kind to yourself, to be forgiving of yourself. You know, if you’ve ever had a good friend, for example, regretted something they did to you, right? They’re sorry for it. I regret that I called you that, or we had a fight, or whatever it is. Sometimes we tend to be so much more forgiving to someone like a friend than we are to our own self. And I think it’s really important when you’re going through divorce and you’re recovering from divorce, that you always give yourself that break, just like you would your friend. Think about, if I was talking to my best friend, what would I be telling her or him? Right? I always think that there’s an opportunity to learn, and that’s the most important thing when you’re dealing with regret, is to learn. You know, yeah, maybe I regret it, maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should look what happened as a result, not beat yourself up and then learn from it as to what you might do different.
Jeff 12:21
And you can still do something about it. Maybe extend that olive branch to your friend, or make amends with somebody that you maybe your ex spouse and say, you know, at one time we had this, you know, it didn’t end very well, but let’s think about what we do have, maybe that for the children or for our own emotional health. Let’s get on with our lives and and stop living in regret.
Doreen 12:51
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of different areas of regret that you can if you really feel it’s the right thing to do for whatever reason. Hopefully you’re doing it primarily for yourself, in other words, not just for someone else, like “Oh, I’m gonna, you know, extend that olive branch, because I know it’ll make her him feel better” or whatever it is. I want it to come, I would suggest it come from a place of honesty and sincerity. But I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of things times that you can regret something and you can make it better.
Jeff 13:32
In most, in a lot of cases, I’m not going to say most, but in a lot of cases that I’ve dealt with, with clients and with people that I’ve known, where they have forgiven others, it’s amazing how the true emotional benefit goes to the one that gave the forgiveness. So in other words, if you forgive somebody for something they did to you, you’re going to reap in the benefits more than the person you forgave because you were the bigger person and all that weight came off of your shoulders, all that animosity, all that regret, everything came off your shoulders, and it’s like, “Ah, I can breathe now.”
Doreen 14:15
But you might still have the regret, Jeff. I mean, you might feel a sense of, you know, I took the higher ground, or what do they say? What’s the expression?
Jeff 14:25
Higher ground.
Doreen 14:29
Right. And I extended that olive branch, or I tried to make it right, you know, whatever that looks like. But that may not help with the regret that you’re still feeling. It might help you feel better, but the regret of the decision and what happened might still be there, right?
Jeff 14:51
Well, that is part of the healing process, I guess.
Doreen 14:54
Of course. And it might help. I mean you know, we’re human. We’re not all going to make perfect decisions in life. That’s just not possible. It’s not doable. And to think that every decision that you’ve made and we make probably, you know, I’m sure there must be some stat on this, but we must make hundreds of decisions every day. Some are big, like hiring an employee or getting divorced. There’s a decision.
Jeff 15:29
I’m sure there’s more than hundreds, if you count getting out of bed.
Doreen 15:32
I wasn’t finished. And then you have the smaller decisions, like getting out of bed on time, eating a particular thing, you know, all the things, picking up the phone, not picking up the phone, answering an email, like all the things, right? There’s no possible way that you can’t have regret when you make so many decisions on a constant basis. Now, I guess you could hide and hide in a cave and never make a decision, never reach out to anybody, never put yourself out there, and then you would never deal with a regret. But you also would have a very boring life.
Jeff 16:08
Yeah, never accomplish any goals, never to get anywhere in life.
Doreen 16:11
Exactly, you would just be, you know, basically like a zombie sitting there.
Jeff 16:16
Well you know, remember the old saying that resistance makes us stronger. So that resistance of accepting that you’re going to make mistakes, accepting that there’s going to be faults, and regrets, and actually, like we teach in failure, look forward to those. Because you can’t be successful without them.
Doreen 16:36
But I think regret is a little bit different. It’s a lot different than failure. Failure is, you tried something and it didn’t work. Now, getting to the heart of the reason why, is another issue, but regret. Is I made a bad decision. This is what you’re thinking. I you know, like your thought is, I made a bad choice, a bad decision, and I regret that, right? That’s different than failing at something.
Jeff 17:06
Well, what I think I meant was failure can be seen as I regret I failed, but not necessarily regret can be a failure.
Doreen 17:18
Can you explain a little bit?
Jeff 17:19
Yeah, I can regret not going to college. But that can be maybe not necessarily a failure. But maybe some of the failures in my life could be because I regret not having gone to college to learn these things. So it could be one way or not the other, but it’s all in your thoughts. It’s all in your thoughts. The way you think about something could be perceived as a failure and you regret it, or it could be, I regret it, but I’m still successful.
Doreen 17:50
Well, I think that’s the important thing is, is if you made a different choice when you’re thinking about your regret and when it’s really bogging you down, because it can be overwhelming. I mean, you can live in a state of regretfulness that can really pull you under, right? And really swallow you up and be almost debilitating at times. And so I think the important thing to do, especially when you have regrets about your marriage and your divorce, is what would have happened if I made a different choice? The one that you think you regret, if you made the other choice, to stay in the marriage, to not file for the divorce, right? To maybe not litigate a particular issue, or whatever it is. If you made a different choice, kind of think through what would that look like? Where would it be then? Take the best case scenario of that even, compared to where you are now. Because I think that the things that we regret are the things that also build us up and can make us stronger. Because we’re learning, hopefully we’re learning, and we’re we’re trying to make a next decision more carefully and not get paralyzed by the regret. Because I think some people get paralyzed when they have too much regret. Yeah, they’re just so afraid to make any decisions because they’re so afraid they’re gonna regret it. That happens a lot for people when after the divorce and they’re starting to date, and they start to, you know, fall in love, let’s say, and they they’re like, “wait a second though I really regretted getting married because I got divorced, and I regret that, and so I don’t want to get married again” and it like debilitates them from moving forward. I think you have to come to peace with it.
Jeff 19:44
Yeah and you hear often I regret not getting divorced sooner.
Doreen 19:49
So play that out, though. If you have that type of regret, oh, I wish I would have divorced a year earlier. Then think about all the opportunities, people, experiences, that you would have missed, if that would have been your choice. So regret is really, as you started this whole podcast, I think you said, is just a very unuseful emotion. It doesn’t really serve any purpose. Sometimes an emotion can really lift us to a higher level, like even a sadness and anger, regret is one of those ones that it’s like, “yeah, and so?”
Jeff 20:29
I consider that like a waste. You know, if when you regret something that you have no control over, you’re burning energy, calories. You’re burning your energy, your thoughts are going in the wrong direction. And again, like I said in the beginning of the podcast, where you are is where you’re supposed to be. Maybe that’s a little heavy for some out there, and a little, you know, a little, woo, woo. But we make the decisions that we’re supposed to make at the time we make them. And I truly believe that you know, you may give a higher value to your regret than you should, you devalue it.
Doreen 21:14
What do you mean?
Jeff 21:15
In other words, you may really put a lot of value on regret that you married your spouse and really blow it out of proportion and really let it control your life.
Doreen 21:27
Yeah, get stuck in it.
Jeff 21:28
It gets stuck.
Doreen 21:29
It’s debilitating.
Jeff 21:30
And you give it a lot of value.
Doreen 21:31
You spend a lot of time and energy stuck there and thinking about it. You can’t undo it, right? You can’t undo it. You can only learn from it. You can only forgive yourself. You can only be kind. You can only remember that you are a human, which means you are not perfect. There is no perfect. And that life is both good and bad. I mean, it is what it is.
Jeff 21:53
What else you say? It’s also a dress rehearsal.
Doreen 21:58
It’s not.
Jeff 21:59
It’s not a dress rehearsal.
Doreen 22:00
It’s not a dress rehearsal.
Jeff 22:02
Yeah, it’s not a dress rehearsal. So we only have one life to live on earth. No about another planet.
Doreen 22:10
I’m talking about the afterlife. You know, people are spiritual, and they believe in what they believe and that’s a beautiful thing, and I think it helps. That’s another subject.
Jeff 22:18
Let’s not regret that you don’t believe in it.
Doreen 22:20
What’s that?
Jeff 22:21
The afterlife.
Doreen 22:23
What are you talking about? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Jeff 22:28
I regret saying that.
Doreen 22:29
I have no idea what you’re talking about. But anyhow, so that is it.
Jeff 22:35
Well, I want to thank everybody out there for listening to our podcast and watching our podcast on YouTube.
Doreen 22:41
Yes, it’s fun. If you have any questions, comments, or have anything that you would like us to talk about specifically, either legally, you know me as a lawyer from Florida, or coach wise, or moving on, dating tips, all the things. Look, I’ve been doing this 30 years. I’ve been coaching for a long time as well. Jeff and I have been through our own experiences of divorce, some good, some bad, some we regret, but we move on, and yeah, we’re here for you.
Jeff 23:10
Yeah. I mean, there’s so much value in just talking to somebody absolutely so again, you get a 30 minute free call, free coaching call, if you just book your call on the website.
Doreen 23:19
Yeah call us just to shoot the shit.
Jeff 23:22
Yeah, whatever you have to say about our podcast.
Doreen 23:26
Yeah we would love that. So take us up on it. We’re always available to reach out to.
Jeff 23:31
There you go. Till then, we’ll see you next week.
Doreen 23:33
All right, everybody have an amazing week.
Doreen & Jeff 23:36
Bye.
Jeff 23:45
You have the vision of what you want your life to look like after divorce, but maybe you just don’t know how to get there. So if you’re ready to take control of your life and want to find out more about our coaching, visit us at LAD-coaching.com. That’s LAD as in LAD-coaching.com
Doreen 24:04
Until next time, have an amazing rest of your day and remember, yes you can,
Doreen & Jeff 24:14
Have an amazing life after divorce.