Choosing Opportunity Over Regret

What do you do when you wake up every single day, living your life as if it was designed by somebody else? Someone else's dream someone else's goals? Someone else's plans? You literally feel like you're on the sidelines watching this life play out, and it's not the way you wanted it. Your answer is radical empowerment. I am pleased to announce that my book The radical empowerment method is now available on Amazon. Click the link in my show notes and grab your copy today. Step into your power pal shoes. Dig deep into who you are, why you're here and what you were created to do. Find you believe that you are worth every dream you dream simply because you are. I am your biggest fan. I wrote this book for you get your copy today. Welcome back to another episode of Coffee and Tea with Carrie Vee. We're going to talk today about choosing opportunity over regret. It's something that I hear a lot of people talk about when I speak on stages, or I work with a client one on one or even in group coaching. Or in networking events I go to I hear people talk about their regrets. And women especially women especially will stay Stuck in regret, rather than moving on, they will stay stuck in choosing to feel badly because we kind of feel like we kind of wear it as a badge of honor.

Right? The things that we didn't do that we to the potential that we thought we could or maybe something we said that hurt someone if we didn't mean to hurt them. But we we tend to internalize these things and hold on to them. But there is a way to choose opportunity and the feelings that opportunity brings rather than tuning into the regret and the feelings that the regret brings. And it kind of all bubbles into this topic of forgiveness, which I love to talk about. When you when you are living in regret, you are grieving something, maybe you're grieving something that you said, you're grieving the loss of a friendship, you could be grieving the loss of a job, grief plays in that which becomes stronger. When we live in this attitude of unforgiveness, not forgiving ourselves. We'll focus in on that one today not forgiving ourselves for something, which then leaves us sitting in this path of regret, when there are a whole bunch of opportunities out there to make a difference going forward. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So think about a time in your life where you have felt regret. Is that regret over a business decision you made or didn't make? Is it regret over maybe not starting a business that you'd always wanted to? Is it the regret of an opportunity you took that didn't quite turn out the way that you thought it was? I've shared recently I believe about talking about starting a CBD business and then it not going the way that I planned and deciding to move away from that. I could sit in regret over that. Gosh, I wish I hadn't invested in that. I wish I hadn't wasted time. I wish I hadn't done this. But instead, I have flipped that in my mind to what I could learn from it. And are there opportunities that could catapult off of that experience of that opportunity that didn't go the way I planned. I don't call it a failure because I learned so much from it. It's still a success to me because I did it because I tried.

But there's other regrets in my life as well. You know that if you've listened to my podcast, listen to my story, you know that my mom lived with us for the final three years of her life, and she just passed away five months ago, in my arms in our living room. And when that happened, I went through I played through the previous three years and beyond in my head. Had I snapped at her too much had I been patient enough, had I been the best caregiver for her. Could I have done more could I have taken her to get her hair done more, I could have taken more walks with her cash some some nights, some nights when I was making dinner, I was impatient with her because she was slower setting the table than I would have liked. All of these things played through my mind. And it really started to wear me down that regret of I could have done better. Well, the fact is, my mom lived with us, and we did care for her and she was happy. And we were human. We were 100%. Human. We moved another matriarch into a house with a matriarch living here already. We lived another, we moved another strong personality into a house with two strong personalities already. We were human. And we took time to to get into a groove and get to know each other. And when I realized that that regret that I was holding on to was simply keeping me stuck in a place I didn't want to be. Because Stuck. Stuck is a state of feeling, right? It's a feeling it's not really a place. It's a it's a mass of feelings. And I was staying stuck in this feeling of regret, and it was affecting every area of my life.

And when I turned it and owned it, and determined to learn from it, rather than tearing myself down, I learned so much about myself, and about everything that was going on in my life. Owning responsibility brought me to a place of acceptance of the fact that we're human, and we all make mistakes. And we get to forgive ourselves for those mistakes. Missed Opportunities and regrets. Only fester and become a feeling of being stuck when we allow it. When we allow it by pretending it didn't happen. By pretending we didn't have a part in it. They not forgiving ourselves. The grief of regret is so deep. But we can turn that all around and we can own it. We can learn from it. We can learn from everything. Did you miss getting an article in on time? Did you miss a deadline, own it, own it and move forward forgive yourself and and determine and acknowledge to yourself that it happened and then determine you're not going to do it again. So own it, number one. Number two, look for another opportunity. Whether it's in business or your personal life, look for that opportunity and channel it into the next opportunity, the right to look for the opportunity and channel into the next opportunity, a determination to do better to have learned from the previous opportunity and bring it into your present opportunity. That can be a business thing. It can be a business investment. And knowing okay, I made this investment last time I made an investment I didn't pour myself 100% into it this time. I've learned from that. And this time I'm giving 100% to this investment. It could be in your personal life. It can be I have learned a lot over the experience of living with my mom for three years, and being able to see new opportunities that are coming in to care for others. And understand and hold on to that piece of patience. That learning of seeing things from another perspective of being okay with me TV playing all the time. I learned so much. And instead of sending in regret that I wasn't more patient than I get to own it. Look for an opportunity to be more patient now. Own it, look for the another opportunity and channel what you learned into that next opportunity. And number three, identify the positives from the missed opportunity.

Because you don't have to live in that regret you get to live in the in the opportunity. You get to live in what you have learned, identify the positives, I am a far more patient understanding person, at the end of three years of having my mom live with us than I was at the beginning, way more, that is a positive. It's a huge positive. I get to take what I learned from living with my mom for three years and bring it to others who are maybe just heading into that area of their life. I learned so much my mom and I learned so much together about an A grown daughter, and an aging mom living in the same house. By choice, we both learned a lot. I get to forgive myself for any of the times where I wasn't my best self with my mom. And move forward, learning from it and putting it playing it forward into another opportunity. I get to take a business venture that didn't go the way I wanted it to, and learn from it and take the lessons I learned and channel them into the next opportunity identify the positives and move forward with even more growth. I get to learn from the days that I wasn't fully focused on my business that I literally left money on the table. I get to learn from it, I get to own it. And they get to take what I learned into my next business opportunity, identify the positives and move on. It works in every area of your life. Every area are you raising teenagers that works there? Because you are going to be learning a whole lot of lessons when you're learning when you're living with teenagers.

Every day we are learning lessons. Are we forgiving ourselves when we fall short. We get to do that. We get to choose to forgive ourselves when we fall short and we're all going to fall short. It's part of life guys, it's part of life. Nobody is perfect. Oh no it own missed opportunities and learn from them. Look for your next opportunity number two and channel what you've learned into that next opportunity. And three, identify the positives. Going forward, remember to forgive yourself for when you have fallen short. I encourage you every single evening to pick up a journal and spend five or 10 minutes journaling about things you wish you had done better things you wished you had said differently. ways you wish you had handled the situation. And then the ways that you were able to apply things that you've learned and a situation that you handled better today than you did the day before or the week before or the month before or the year before. Journal that out. So you can see the amazing massive growth going on inside of you. As you learn to forgive yourself. Own missed opportunities. Look for a new one and pour what you've learned into it and identify the positives. They're always there. It's up to you to decide to see the positive versus the negative and choose. Choose the opportunities coming over the living in a feeling of stuck regret. You're not going to go forward. You'll be there forever if you don't. Allow yourself to channel what you've learned to make a change going forward. Choose to live in opportunity and let go of the regret.