Is having regret a good or bad thing? For the past couple of months I have talked to a handful of friends that have told me that they don’t have any regrets and I shouldn’t have any in my life either. At first, I was all gung-ho, but then I thought about it and realized that without regret in my life I would repeat the same mistakes. Life is too short to keep on making the same mistakes.

Oxford English Dictionary explains that regret is “[t]he expression of grief, distress, or sorrow; lamentation; an instance of this”. So, for an individual to not have any regret is for them not to feel disappointment or sorrow. It would seem that an individual that doesn’t have any regret is bound to make the same mistakes. Without regret how can one grow and change as a person? Having regret should be a personal learning experience, and not something to turn away from.

One regret I have is that I took my time graduating from college. I took the minimum amount of units (12) and didn’t study as hard as I should have. I relaxed and let things come to me. Doing this made things a lot harder on me to get my career going. Since realizing this (which was the last year of my college career; a bit too late) I have started to take destiny into my own hands, which is something I should have done a long time ago. Without my regret, or rather disappointment in myself, I would still be that same individual I once was.

People view regret as a negative factor because they see it a weakness, but in reality it isn’t a weakness at all. It’s a tool to help create a better you. I’m not saying to dwell on a regret, because that would just turn out to be a bad thing, but one should have some in their life. By being disappointed in myself has changed me into a better person, and it’s something I will never live without. Maybe, you shouldn’t either.