Jill Goldson: Is it possible to have no regrets?

Shyness is a personality trait and not a social phobia, says Jill. Photo / Getty

Regret is a bit of a prickly cactus of an emotion. That backward-looking and rather unpleasant feeling where you blame yourself and wish you could undo the past - not to be confused with remorse (which is the guilt and disquiet we experience when we have hurt others by our actions).

The hauntingly beautiful words of singer Edith Piaf, "Non, je ne regrette rien" - "I have no regrets", always feels somehow full of bravura and romance. But is it possible to have no regrets? Regret's troubling tentacles seem to inform so many of the conversations I have with clients.

Which of us hasn't felt that tide of self-directed frustration when we realise it would have been far better to have consulted with a mechanic, or thought twice before inviting so many people over for Christmas, entered that relationship with a cooler head, or resisted capitulating to persuasion from a teenager?

One of the elements of regret is the sense that we must always make the best decisions we can, with an eye to the future. We also know that time and chance are factors and that we have a relative liberty to enjoy freedom of choice. Apart from that, there isn't much more in the manual.

Psychological research reinforces what we probably all know already, and that is that we regret more frequently than previous generations did - because we have more choices. In many ways this makes regret both more possible and more complicated.

The research tells us that the short-term regret we feel for actions we wish we had not taken is painful and acute. And it exacts a toll on our wellbeing, as we rue what we often see as our own stupidity. Much as we can try and focus on the positive, the reality is that as humans, we deplore loss more than we enjoy gain - and we remember unhappy experiences more vividly than happy ones.

But the research also tells us that it is the omission - the path not taken - that creates the most regret: the place we didn't take up on the university course, our refusal to attend the wedding of a close relative, the partner we let go without a fight. Only later can we know whether what we didn't do was cause for regret. The opportunity for grief and self-blame for what we didn't do is very real and it can play havoc with wellbeing.

In my practice I also see clients who become anxious about keeping regret at bay - and are so focused on not making a mistake that they cannot manage the calculated risks they need to take to achieve their goals. The principles at play are a bit like the experiment where the opportunity to taste 6 types of jam in the local delicatessen creates 10 times more buyers than when 20 samples are put out. In his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, underlines the fact that too much choice can freeze us. The example is just about buying jam - but the same principles apply in brain chemistry.

The person frozen in fear about regret is often the same one who will worry later about a lost opportunity - over and over in an act of self-blame and reproach - and this is closely linked with depression, chronic stress and compromised immunity. Poorly chosen behaviour is one thing - but opportunities not taken at all can cause incessant despair.

"Look before you leap" and "he who hesitates is lost". These old proverbs came into being because of the nature of the dilemma of choice. Whichever aphorism you might subscribe to, the fact is that when caught in a spiral of regret, you have a terrible sense of having taken the wrong path. We are hard on ourselves, some more than others. Maybe we should be cutting ourselves a bit more slack.

Reassessment and reflection are survival tools as old as mankind. We can only learn by experiences - call them mistakes if you will. There is no path we "could have taken" that does not automatically forfeit other choices and benefits. A wealth of learning and refinement of choice can follow the experience of regret - if we can mute the shrill self-criticism and condemnation we can too easily inflict on ourselves.

When we make - or don't make - choices that we later regret, we would probably do well to remember that personal freedom is demonstrated by a conscious movement shaking off earlier constraints. That you regret a choice demonstrates that you have evolved and progressed as a person and are on the threshold of different ways of seeing and understanding. The same constraints no longer apply. The fact is that most of us acted with the information available to us at the time. In the end we are constantly learning and evolving and feeling our way consciously as we move through life.

As overwhelming as regret can feel on a bad day, the only valuable way to see it is to recognise the role that chance and outside factors play in life - acknowledge the hand we were dealt, and the steps we take that mark our progress.

The fact is, we are born who we are, in time and place and circumstance. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards, as Soren Kiergaard famously said. Maybe that existential understanding is the spirit of resolution with which Piaf sang of her lack of regret. And what Woody Allen was referring to when he said, with his infectious dark humour: "My only regret in life was that I was not born someone else."