Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I don't know if anyone
else felt this way this past week, but it was
a doozy and I just felt completely spent for most
of the week, like this is the most solid I've
slept in a long time. I got in bed at
nine point fifteen on Wednesday. I mean, I was quite tired,
(00:24):
and I don't know if it's because work is definitely
starting to ramp up a little bit more, or maybe
there's something with the pollen in the air. It seems
like a lot of people I spoke with also felt
very tired. So anyway, I hope you all were able
to take the weekend to recharge and feel more energized.
Speaking of work ramping up, so I am working on
a bunch of different projects, and on one of the projects,
(00:47):
I'm working closely with someone who's helping me get information
and who's reaching out to people on my behalf. And
this person did something that wasn't detrimental. It wasn't bad,
no harm, no foul, but it was something where we
can probably do it a little differently moving forward, and
it would probably be just as effective, and this person
felt really bad about what they had done. And I
(01:09):
get it, like people want to do well at work,
but you know, I was kind of surprised that this
person felt so bad. And while I was talking with
this person, I couldn't help but see their remorse and
like feel a lot of compassion for them because they
want to do the best they can and I love
that and I feel the same way. But I also
wanted to kind of shake them a little bit and say,
(01:30):
you got this, You're fine, Like we are good, don't
worry about it. And that got me thinking about kind
of having regrets and then also the importance of learning
how to forgive yourself. And so because of that, I
decided that I wanted to chat this week about exactly
that regret and self forgiveness because it's hard, right. Regret
(01:50):
is one of the most agonizing feelings I think that
I feel outside of grief maybe, and it just it
totally sticks you in the pit of your stomach, and
I feel it in my heart, I feel it in
my head. I just it's this feeling of like, oh,
my goodness, my life could be different had I done
something differently. And that's that's a rough one to grapple with.
(02:11):
And so, because of this, and because of how intensely
I really hate the feeling of regret, I've tried quite
hard in my life to live intentionally and thoughtfully so
that I avoid regret. But obviously no one can avoid
regret one hundred percent. And so in prepping for this episode,
I wanted to do some research onto what are the
(02:31):
most common types of regret, right, And there are four
types that I found pretty universally written about, and they
are foundational regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets.
So foundational regrets are those where basically we feel like
we could have done work better, We could have prepared more, practice, more,
done better work, things that are finance related, health related,
(02:56):
career related, things that we feel like we failed in
terms of the prep work done. And so when thinking
about how we can avoid foundational regrets, I think the
big key is to think ahead, to do a lot
of thorough work, and to really thoroughly prepare. The second
type of regret is boldness regrets, and as you can
(03:18):
probably expect, this revolves around inaction and the regret of
not trying something, not doing something, not asking the question,
not asking the person. Apparently this is a pretty big
one that people feel towards the ends of their lives,
like if they didn't learn a new language, or they
didn't ask someone on a date, or they didn't go
after a career that they wanted, or they didn't take
the trip that they wanted, you know, things like that.
(03:40):
And so the way we can think about trying to
avoid boldness regrets is to win in doubt, go for it,
do what you want to do, try the thing that
you're thinking about, and don't err on the side of
comfort or control or being reserved that kind of thing.
The third regret is moral regrets, and as I'm sure
(04:00):
you can also imagine, this one revolves around when you
know that you should have done something a different way
because of how it impacts others, kind of taking the
low road instead of taking the high road for whatever reason.
I think this is the area where we really need
to lean into our sense of values and what tenets
we live by. But if we're trying to avoid moral regrets,
I think the easiest way to think about it is
(04:22):
to win into out take the high road. The last
type of regret is connection regret, and this apparently is
the most common type of regret that people have when
they get to the end of their lives, because it
revolves around not nurturing and supporting relationships, whether it's not
reaching out to someone who you were thinking about, or
if it's not putting enough time and effort into relationships
(04:44):
that you deal with regularly. People really hate the feeling
of wishing that they had made a phone call or
cared more about someone, or put more time into someone.
And so I would say the lesson here for how
to avoid connection regret is to have empathy and to
put the effort into people that you care about. After
reading about these types of regrets, I realized that most
(05:07):
of my regrets are foundational. For example, in twenty nineteen,
I was racing in the Canadian NASCAR Series and I
led a lap in that race. I ran second in
that race for a long time with my teammates who
were both champions in the series, and after a round
of pit stops, I wasn't at the front of the
pack at this point, but I was trying hard and
(05:28):
I could tell I was getting a little sloppy. I
could tell that I was missing my marks a little bit,
that I was continuing to push really hard, and I
knew that I was getting a little sloppy, and instead
of getting my act together, I just kept pushing hard
while being a little sloppy, and lo and behold, I
found myself in the outside wall of turn four. So
that was rough because that was kind of, you my
(05:51):
best opportunity that year to do really well in a race.
I was great at that track. I liked that track,
the car was handling well. So anyway, big time regret
because impacted the whole rest of my season. And had
I just been smarter about stopping the sloppiness that I
acknowledged I was doing, I probably would have had a
much different season. So that's a rough one to swallow.
Another example of this kind of foundational regret for me
(06:14):
is when I was on Survivor. So I made the
active decision to not tell people I went to Stanford
because I wanted to focus on the racing. But I
also I knew that going to Stanford came with an
air of privilege, and since we were playing for a
million dollars, I didn't want people to think of just
this privileged little kid, and so I didn't talk about that,
and it impacted the game, it impacted my play, it
(06:35):
impacted my relationship with people on the show, and I
just did badly and I got no real airtime, and
it just it went so much worse than it could
have gone in my opinion, And there are definitely elements
out of my control, but this very specific decision I
made totally backfired and as my one opportunity, although I've
(06:55):
applied to be on Survivor again, I will not get
on it, I don't think. And so it was my
one opportunity to really do something super cool, and I
feel like I totally fumbled it, and I do regret
that to this day. I don't feel like I have
a ton of connection regrets, or boldness regrets or moral regrets.
I lived pretty strongly by my moral compass. I think
(07:17):
I'm pretty compassionate and thoughtful towards other people, and I
really love the people that I have relationships with, and
so I don't find that I have many regrets in
that area. But in thinking about all of this, I
was trying to think back to win. My first real
feeling of regret came, and surprise, surprise, I think it
was on a go kart track I was eleven years old.
(07:38):
It was my first full season of racing, and I
hadn't won yet. But I was leading this race. I
was several cart lengths ahead of people. I had a
really dominant lead, and I was probably five laps from
the end of the race. And I thought, Oh, my goodness,
this is so exciting, and I started to let my
mind wander. I started to think about winning. I started
to think about celebrating. I started to think about how
proud my parents would be. I started to think about
(08:00):
how great it would feel to win a race. And
the next thing I knew, I was spinning through the
grass and watching go karts go by on the track.
It was awful. I felt so low in that moment,
and I couldn't tell you what happened from the time
I was leading the race at the time I was
in the grass. I just missed something because I wasn't focused,
And oh, it was so agonizing and so embarrassing and
(08:24):
such a profoundly clear memory for me. And so I
think once that happened and I knew exactly what I
could have done differently, I really tried to minimize that
feeling moving forward, and that's kind of easier said than done.
Right to say that you want to live a life
with no regrets like cool? But how do we do that?
Because most of us care about what we're doing, and
(08:47):
most of us care about how we treat people and
can recognize when we do things that aren't great. I
like to think about it as living very intentionally and
very thoughtfully. So how how does this translate into day
to day life? I religiously focus on what's in my control.
I am extremely compulsive about this. In any situation, I
(09:08):
think about all the elements where who can I reach
out to, What action can I do? How can I
prepare things like that? And by focusing on that, I
know that I'm giving it my all, and even if
things don't go my way, if I've impacted everything that's
in my control, that's kind of a maximum that I
can do. I also really think about when I'm in
the moment and deciding how to behave, how to act,
(09:29):
how to talk to other people. I ask myself if
I'll be disappointed in myself later, particularly if it doesn't
end up going the way I want. For example, when
I was training for racing, you know the idea of
doing a really long hot cardio session sounded terrible, but
I was like, Okay, well, if I fatigue in the car,
am I gonna be disappointed in myself? Hell yeah, I'm
(09:50):
gonna be disappointed. I'm going to be like, Julia, you dumb,
dumb why didn't you just train harder in that moment
so that you can do better in the race? Things
like that. I think about that when it comes to
paring for a keynote, Right if I feel like it's
not super smooth, but it's it's kind of tedious to
practice a forty five minute keynote over and over again.
But if it's not there and if I don't perform, well,
I'm going to be super disappointed in myself. So thinking
(10:12):
about these things really helps me gauge how to behave
so that I don't have regrets later on. And then
the last thing is that I put a lot of
effort into thinking about how other people feel, how I
would want to be treated in a situation, and that
helps me stay grounded in making sure I don't have
regrets and how I treat people that I love and
care about, because that is oh, that is just so
(10:35):
awful to feel that you have heard someone that you
care about and that you love, which I've done recently.
So I was really upset with myself and saw what
I could have done differently. No matter how much we
try to avoid regret, obviously we can't always do that.
And even if we're super thoughtful, even if we're super compassionate,
even if we prepare a lot, we all have regrets.
So I now want to pivot and focus on how
(10:58):
we give ourselves forgive. I don't know about you, but
I'm really good at beating myself up when I regret
something I've done, whether that's regretting how I delivered a
keynote even if the client's happy, if I knew I
could have done better, I beat myself up about it.
I make sure I overpractice for the next one to
make sure I'm not making the same mistakes. You know,
(11:18):
Or if I'm hungover one morning, I will be so
angry at myself for not being more responsible and diligent
the night before. And it's just like, you can see
where you can do better, and if you know that
you can do better, obviously think about that. But beating
a dead horse is not effective and it doesn't serve anyone.
It doesn't help you very much. And so I want
to focus on what we can do to work on
(11:41):
self forgiveness. And there's multiple steps that I go through,
And the first thing I think about is did I
learn something? Did I learn how? Something about myself, something
about the process, something I could do better? And as
long as there's a lesson, there's a net positive. And
if there's not a lesson, then yeah, maybe you should
feel a little regret, and feeling that regret will hopefully
encourage not to do it again. But if you did
(12:02):
learn something, think about that and focus on that, and
you've just made yourself a little bit better. This next
step that I think is really important is to let
yourself feel remorse. I am big on letting myself feel
my feelings because I think that's how we grapple with
them sooner. I feel like that's how we move on
from negative feelings sooner. And I firmly the belief that
(12:25):
being uncomfortable is the best motivator to change. If you
are deeply uncomfortable with how something is and it's your
own doing, especially like you will change it because you
do not want to find yourself in that position again.
So while feeling remorse is important. It's also important to
have compassion for yourself and to forgive yourself, to understand
(12:47):
that you are human and that everyone makes mistakes and
that it's probably not detrimental, but to have compassion. It's
also really important to make amends. If other people were
involved in this regret, that you have to make amends
with them. And the key thing that I have to
actively remind myself to do is to stop myself from
revisiting what I did over and over again. My mind
(13:08):
will take me back to a specific moment over and
over and over again, and I will replay it, and
I will continue to be in that not so great spot.
If I can instead catch myself and I catch myself
thinking about it again and revisiting, be like, stop stop
thinking and literally change your focus to something else. It's
easy to get in that cycle of beating a dead
horse and revisiting things you could have done differently, but
(13:31):
really focusing on trying to stop yourself so that you
get out of that cycle and you focus forward is
really really important. All right, team, That's all I got
for you today. So reminder, there are a lot of
different types of regret. Foundational boldness, moral connection regrets. Everyone
has regrets. But the more that we can live intentionally
(13:51):
and thoughtfully and think about the silver lining and let
yourself feel remorse and make amends but also have compassion,
the better we can work on self forgiveness. And I
think a key step for improving ourselves is to give
ourselves the grace to move on from it. So I
wish you luck as you embark on this journey of
(14:13):
trying to minimize regrets and maximize self forgiveness so that
we can make positive change. If you like this episode,
I hope that you'll leave a review, rate the podcast,
subscribe to the podcast, share it with someone who you
think it might be helpful for. As always, thank you
for letting me be honest with you, and I look
forward to seeing you next week