Are You Leaving a Trail of Regrets?

As I was watching the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament this year both at home screaming for my teams to make it to the big dance and in person for the first time ever at a Final Four, the topic of regret showed itself a lot.

I believe it was the Elite Eight game when ESPN showed a piece of Pat Summit’s locker room half time speech. She said to her Tennessee Lady Vols as they potentially faced the second half without their star Candace Parker (who is essentially like the Michael Jordan of the women’s game) something along the lines of getting out there and giving it your all or you will look back on this opportunity and regret it for the rest of your lives.

I thought about how brilliant those words were. Sure there can be words of rah rah rah, give your 100%+, you need to pick up the slack, etc. But the power of the thought – “r you’ll regret this for the rest of our lives” is a visceral gut check of emotion. For a non sports fan you might think – my goodness talk about hype and hyperbole! And yes it is just a game, but for these women, many of them have literally dedicated their entire lives and abdicated the freedom of childhood for the goal of playing and willing a National Championship. You don’t want to do all that, get so close and then let it slip away because you weren’t willing to show up fully.

While our day to day lives are not often as dramatic or intense as one of these great moments in sports (thankfully!), it still pays to ask yourself:

Are you showing up fully and living the life you yearn for?

Are you leaving a trail of regrets?

To live without regret does not mean we always get what we want. It is not some pie in the sky happy nirvana. After all, the NCAA tournament starts with 64 teams and only 1 can wear the title champion. Yet, for those who gave every last ounce of what they had on any given night and left it all on the floor – even if they lost, the regret factor falls away. Sure they might be disappointed or even heartbroken. But they know they did all they could possibly do.

Are you doing all you can do?

Regrets are painful. I know because while I don’t have a lot I most certainly have had a few of them. Here is what I know for sure.

Regrets most often show up in your life because you didn’t do something you could do (not because you tried something and it didn’t work out).
When you carry around a regret it weighs down your entire life, you’re prone to feeling hopeless about it, and will beat yourself up mercilessly (consciously or unconsciously) about it for a long damn time.
You sabotage your future success in order to punish yourself for this shame (again you may do this consciously or unconsciously).
You must make peace with your regrets and have complete forgiveness for yourself and/or others in order to move forward and it can often be difficult and take while to be able to do so.

As I see it living a life without regrets boils down to:

No Regrets =
Trusting your inner voice
+
Doing what you can do
+
Showing up fully in all that you do.

And, as a little coaches secret I want to let you know that what you CAN do is far greater than what you think it is. I see proof of that over and over in my own life and in the lives of those I coach. The possibilities really can be endless.

If you need support busting free of old regrets or creating a plan forward so you don’t leave a trail of regrets, contact me because I can support you in doing just that.