Dawn Geschiere is a life and empowerment coach and owner of Yes To Life Coaching.  She is the parent of 5 adult children and has lots of experience to share with us.

The term “no regrets” pulls us into a “guilt,” and when we do have regrets, we already have the idea that we want to have no regrets.  

It’s impossible to have no regrets and when we struggle to achieve that goal, we wind up stuffing all of our “stuff” down with expectation of getting closer to “no regrets.”

So, if we live our lives believing we should have no regrets, are we setting ourselves up for failure?

YES

Because we are believing something that just isn’t true or real.  It turns into a toxic positivity where you think you can get to a magical place.

Each time we wallow in the shame of regret instead of just listening to that voice inside our heads, we get stuck.  We can’t undo the mistakes that we make, but we can learn from them.

We need to allow ourselves a little bit of time with those bad decisions and we need to listen to our regrets.  What is it telling me?  What is it showing me?  Don’t feel shame, at least not for very long.  Don’t wallow in guilt and overcompensate.  Instead, let the regret become your teacher.  Process it, own it, be with it, let yourself feel guilty, see what it teaches you, and then move on.

If your child is developmentally there, you can then talk it over with them.

Our emotions reveal our humanity.

Sometimes we set ourselves up with the expectation that there’s a “right” way to parent.  I think we can all agree that there’s no “right” way or “wrong” way, but there are parents out there living in that binary world.

Our parenting is just a big series of science experiments.  Sometimes the experiment goes well, and sometimes it doesn’t happen the way we hoped.  What you feel matters and what your child feels matters.  There’s some dependency there, but your children are separate beings.  We get to guide them on their journey.  They’re going to mess up, and so are we, as parents.  

There’s a side to “striving” that is harmful to us.  It makes us uptight and brings a sense of pressure and stress to our kids.  We end up striving for something that isn’t even attainable; “no regrets.”

What if we just stayed present when things went wrong?  What if we tried to work through things with our kids?  We react and then we regret how we reacted, and that’s ok.  So, how do we allow regret to be our teacher?  We process through it.  We own it.  We realize that we made a mistake and learn from that mistake, and it’s a continuous process.  Is it a big deal?  Is it a big regret?  Is it a pattern?  What is it showing me?  We’re going to learn how to move forward and be better for it.  

You can find more information on Dawn Geschiere and Yes To Life Coaching in the following locations:

Dawn’s Monday Mamas - FB Group and then also “Member Mamas,” which is a pay-as-you-go option.

email: dawn@ytlcoaching.com

ytlcoaching.com

Dawn’s Breast Cancer Journey: 
https://www.caringbridge.org/signin?returl=%2Fvisit%2Fdawngeschiere%2Fjournal%2Fview%2Fid%2F61f2a6166f88d6721a8ce740