Break Free of Past Regrets That May Be Holding You Back

By Hamilton Beazley, Ph.D.

Why aren't you getting promoted? Why aren't you earning more money? Why do you often feel that work is unsatisfying? It may be because you harbor unresolved hurts and regrets from your past. When we carry around regrets, we are likely to be less decisive, bold and innovative on the job and so we may not reach our true potential.

Instead of feeling stuck and later regretting that you didn't do as well as you could have, examine your workplace persona. The following nine “toxic thought patterns” can keep you stuck in a rut:

1. Perfectionism: You want things to be exactly right all the time. Because this is an impossible expectation, it will perpetuate your sense of failure and frustration, and exasperate those who work for and with you.
   
   
2. Exaggerated control: You need to micromanage every project, don't know how to delegate and want everyone else to do what you want. Your workplace relationships will suffer and you will be unable to benefit from the valuable input of others.
   
   
3. Foreseeing the future: You believe you should have seen that mistake coming and could have prevented it. Expecting yourself to be psychic keeps you blind to a range of solutions and possibilities that may be right in front of you.
   
   
4. Knowing what others are thinking: You believe you should have known what was in your boss', client's or fellow employee's mind rather than asking them directly, which is the only way to know. You will always blame yourself when things don't go well, and that hampers your ability to see what's really going on in the situation.
   
   
5. Personalizing events: You believe everything that happens to you at work is about you personally. Thinking this way increases stress and impedes the team effort.
   
   
6. Incomplete comparisons: You falsely believe that others are paid better than you, treated better or the boss likes them better. You think that they get more interesting projects and more kudos for their accomplishments. If you perceive yourself as a victim, you will be treated like one.
   
   
7. Undeserved guilt: You blame yourself for everything that goes wrong in the workplace, whether it's your fault or not. Being accountable is great. Being a whipping boy for imagined wrongs is not.
   
   
8. Reimagining the past: You fondly remember the good old days at work, when things were different and so much better. This process of selective forgetting and enhancing keeps you from working on important issues and forging alliances right now.
   
   
9. Using regrets as a justification for inaction: You allow “if only” thoughts to keep you stuck in a holding pattern. For example, you could have found a better job, if only you had finished college. The justifications you use for inaction excuse your failure to exert the effort, exercise the discipline or overcome the fear that achieving goals demands.

In my book, No Regrets: A Ten-Step Program for Living in the Present and Leaving the Past Behind (John Wiley & Sons, Jan. 2004. I identify ten steps that provide the structure through which you can let go of your regrets. To let go of a regret means to come to terms with it intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, and so remove its power to hurt you in the present. It means to release the guilt, anger, pain and shame associated with it.

If approached as a whole, the steps can be intimidating. Taken one at a time, however, they are far easier than they first appear. Each step will empower you to work the next, so that the movement through them can be quite rapid.

The Ten Steps described in No Regrets are:

• Listing Regrets
• Examining Regrets
• Changing Toxic Thought Patterns
• Grieving Losses
• Making Amends
• Identifying Lessons and Gifts
• Developing Compassion
• Forgiving Others
• Forgiving Ourselves
• Living Free of Regret

By the time you get to the eighth, ninth, and tenth steps, working them will seem quite natural to you as part of the process of letting go of your regrets. What appeared to be impossible at the start will now seem both achievable and desirable.

If you would like to learn more about this topic, consider these AMA seminars:

• Moving Ahead: Breaking Behavior Patterns That Hold You Back
• How to Build Resilience in Your Staff and Yourself

Author Bio: Hamilton Beazley, Ph.D., is the author of the new book, No Regrets: A Ten-Step Program for Living in the Present and Leaving the Past Behind (John Wiley & Sons, Jan. 2004). Dr. Beazley has appeared on national television and has spoken before both houses of Congress as an expert on addiction recovery. He is the former president of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, and a former associate professor in the department of psychology at George Washington University. He is currently scholar-in-residence at St. Edwards University, Austin, Texas. For additional information about his book, visit www.noregrets.org.