“One thing that makes it so difficult to stop feeling sorry for
ourselves is how real it feels when we are full of self-regret.”
-Guy Finley (The Courage to Be Free)
Regret, in any form, nags at our consciousness continually reminding us we’re unworthy or incapable of achieving greatness or even mediocrity.
Be it a relationship, job, school, or whatever, the regret of something we’ve either failed at accomplishing or even started, binds us to the past and keeps us in the dark unable to see the possibilities available to us.
Consumed by self-regret, we sink into a morass of self-pity and low self-esteem. Even the possibilities available to us in the present moment are overshadowed by our past regrets.
Even though it sucks—a lot!—its familiarity keeps us bound to a cycle seemingly impossible to break.
“The secret attraction behind self-pity—why it’s so hard to set down—is that the part of us that feels like nothing makes the part of us that points out this nothingness feel quite special!”
–Guy Finley (The Courage to Be Free)
We can look at two sources for the dilemma of being stuck in self-pity and feeling sorry for ourselves: lack of choice and fear.