Entry 73 - Lesson on Regret

8/29/19

All four years of high school, I was really into tennis. Not just kind of, but really into it. I didn't do much besides playing tennis almost year round, and I loved it. This was before my realization that I loved acting and would pursue it, so I had a lot of time on my hands just to play tennis, and tennis did I play. 

For some reason, most of my college life, I did not play tennis. I started back up right before my major surgery in the spring of 2017 and was obviously out for a while, but I could've started year 2014, but for some odd reason I waited a good three years before I went back to it. The regret came because I genuinely don't understand how I could not do something I loved so much. What was going through my mind?? How is it possible to just forget something that you did every single day?

But when you do some thinking and gather some valid reasons as to why you should not beat yourself up for waiting so long to start again, you'll release yourself from that regret. For example, college was a MAJOR transition for me and quite a big one to say the least. I was on my own, meeting new people, going new places, and doing new things. I was constantly going and going and there were so many new activities and new groups to join that you could say it really kept me busy.

On top of that, once I found a good core group of friends, people I kind of did everything with, and since they didn't play tennis I never did it. Maybe it crossed my mind, but maybe I genuinely didn't have time for it because I was filling my life with other things.

With gathering reasons as to why, it helps you have sympathy for your actions and to come to a realization that everything happens for a reason. We can't change the past, but we can choose to live today how we want to live. Maybe you wish the old you would've done something, but did the old you want to do it at that exact moment? Have sympathy and compassion for yourself, knowing the past is the past and now is now. All you have is now, so use this time to do exactly what you want to do.

Right now, I'm living my best life in every single way because I'm choosing to. I'm doing improv classes at National Comedy Theatre, I'm making YouTube videos, I have a close-knit group of YouTube and TikTok friends that are motivating and encouraging me to keep posting content, I'm playing tennis each week, I have the absolute best friends I could ever imagine who deeply care about me and who I deeply care about too, and I am free from chronic anxiety.

There's no reason to wish for anything because where I'm at is exactly where I want to be. My state of mind is rooted in the present and because of that I am able to maintain peace better than before as I remind myself that no matter what happens outside of me, the only thing I genuinely have control over is my state of mind. A problem is only a problem if that's how you perceive it. Your perception is what governs your reaction, and the accumulation of your reactions can dictate cycles of happiness or unhappiness. So just like you have the ability to remain in control over your mind, you also have the capacity to remain in control of how you perceive the past.

So try your hardest to only think of past memories if they can somehow serve to help you in the present. If you start to feel regret, try to use that past memory first to motivate you to be conscious of how you want to live your life right now, and then get the heck out of the past and start living your life. And if for any reason regret returns, give yourself some sympathy and compassion that things were different but that now, you have full control to do what you want with your life, and the only one who can stop you from enjoying the present, regardless of the circumstances, is you. You got this boo boo.