What it Takes to Lead a Regret-Free Life

What are we thankful for this holiday season? Living regret-free. The holiday season is about celebrating what you have, and we believe that includes what you have done and accomplished.

The holiday season isn’t a time to reflect on the coulda, woulda, shoulda in our lives. Along with all those things we left undone comes regret. Regret that we focus too much on work, rather than family. Regret that we don’t act on our dreams to make them a reality. Regret that we don’t have the career we always wanted.

The time to change that is now because the longer you wait, the more likely it is that your last holiday season will include regret as the main course. This season celebrate the start of a regret-free life.

What it Takes to Live Without Regret

We’ve got something you’re sure to be thankful for – insight and advice on how to get rid of regret starting today.

Truth

Being true to yourself and what it is you want is the only way to achieve a regret-free life. You can take action and bravely put in effort towards big goals, but if it is not what is in your heart, you’ll still be left with regret. Your parents, spouse and friends are important parts of your life, but it is your life. When you are true to yourself you can put yourself together properly, which in turn puts your whole world in order.

Know that it’s okay to be who you expect to be, not what others expect you to be. Ask yourself if your career, where you live, how you appear is what you really want. Identify the motivating source behind your decisions. If you aren’t the driving force, it’s time to change course.

Action

A 1994 study by Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec found that without a doubt what we did not do was the greatest source of regret in people’s lives. Actions can have a short-term regret like getting Montezuma’s revenge during your adventure excursion in South America. But in the long-term you would have deeply regretted not getting to sit on top of the Mayan pyramids sickness and all.

Start putting goals down on paper and planning out the steps that will get you there. The ONE Thing resources contain everything you need to take action towards your long and short-term goals. Once that’s done keep on actively pursuing those goals, and don’t stop until you reach them. If you let the momentum slow – for even a short period of time – not following through to the end will just be another regret you have to live with.

Purpose

You can take action every day, but without purpose you won’t get where you ultimately want to be. Purpose fuels productivity, it gives actions meaning. It also helps you prioritize your life so that focus is on what matters most right now.

Find your ONE Thing. Think about the key areas of your life and ask yourself the focusing question for each, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do to _____ such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” The answer to the question is driven by purpose and makes it easy to identify priorities that need to be addressed first on the journey to a life without regrets.

Faith

Faith and fear live inside all of us, battling like two angels on either shoulder. While fear creates doubt and holds us back, faith is built on conviction that gives us the confidence needed to take action. Which one you decide to listen to is your decision, but without faith there’s no way to move forward with purpose.

Make the voice of faith louder. Match every doubt with a known, every negative with a positive. Visualize what you will achieve by taking action and make that your first thought when you wake each day. Remind yourself that it is your choice to follow faith or fear.

Effort

Without effort, achievement is not possible. You can begin the journey, but if you don’t put forth the effort you’ll never finish. Effort is the follow through. It’s the lining up of all the dominoes, not just the first few.

Put your ONE Thing at the top of your priority list. When you time block the activities of each day put that ONE Thing at a time when you have the energy and focus to put all your effort into it.

This Thanksgiving, between the turkey and football games, take the time to reflect on your biggest achievements and what those meant to you. Use that as a positive platform for seeking out the truth of what you want most in life. Take this first step to begin your journey to living without regrets.

Original Source: http://www.the1thing.com/blog/gary-keller/thanksgiving-live-a-life-of-no-regret