Whenever I speak about balance…
I have to speak about neglect and its role in self-inflicted crisis. I call neglect a “procrastination of attention.” Anything that is of value in life, if neglected, will soon be in crisis. This can pertain to anything from your car, to your house, to your career, to your health and relationships.
Regret is often the result of losing something we care about or the recognition of lost opportunity (something we should have done, but cannot do now). Often the thing which we lost was the product of neglect.
The three most devastating arenas of neglect and regret, are the areas of health, relationships, and business/career.
If we are in a position of regret in one of these three areas it is usually because we have neglected our way into a major problem. Yes, there are times when things happen in these areas that are out of our control…but that is not the norm, the majority of the problems are self-inflicted.
None of us can afford to neglect these three areas. If we have in the past and are now dealing with the fruit of the neglect, here is my perspective on regret:
Regret is a worthless emotion. It is depressing and focused on yesterday. It is a waste of time. But that doesn’t make it any less real. I have many things in my life that I can regret. It has taken me years to push them aside and realize that every tiny piece of life affects the other. To regret anything in the past is to wish that every single aspect of your circumstances today were different. We can’t pick and choose what would have turned out differently, because everything would be different if any single part of our history would have been altered.
What we can do is eliminate the potential for regret from this moment forward. What and who have you been neglecting? Plan to give time to whatever is being neglected and you will eliminate this possibility for regret from your future. Don’t wait to make the correction…that’s procrastination. Make the changes now.
