‘Do you regret doing it?’ We ask and hear this question a lot. As humans, we make mistakes. A lot. We might jump into things too quickly, not think things through enough before doing them, or sometimes we do all of this, and the outcome is still less than desirable. Sometimes we have to make a really difficult choice, only to discover later on down the line, that maybe this wasn’t the best move to have made.

So when people ask me this question, or if I’m self-reflecting and ask myself, my usual answer is ‘no’. When it comes to the smaller things, it might be easier for me to say yes. For example, if I’m trying really hard to stay off junk food, but give in to my sweet cravings for some Ben & Jerry’s or chocolate, then yes, I might regret it afterward. But when it comes to the bigger things, like when I’m at a fork in the road for career choices, or moving country, or quitting something, I don’t regret it.

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Sure, there’ll be a part of me that thinks ‘Oh I wish I hadn’t done this’, or ‘if only I’d gone in a different direction.’ But then I pause for a minute and think about it properly, and I realize what I gained from making the choice that I did. Maybe this may not have been the right school to go to or the right job for me, but thinking of all the people and connections I made along the way, that never would have happened if I’d taken a different route in life.

Even though aches and pains in life, I don’t regret any of my choices. Because every single thing I do affects my future and influences how I will make the next decisions. Each situation I have found myself in throughout my life has molded me into the person that I am today. And I like that person. I truly believe that I am the person that I am today because of every decision I made and every path I went down. And if I regret something, and wish something had happened differently, then I wouldn’t have turned out the way that I am, and I’m quite happy with the way that I turned out.