Regret is something I wish I could live without.

While I’m a full believer that everything happens for a reason and that I wouldn’t be the person I am today without the mistakes I’ve made, we all still wonder. We wonder what we could have done differently — how life might look if we could go back in time and tell ourselves just one thing.

Don’t eat that.

Buy Bitcoin.

He will only bring you pain and misery.

It’s easy to think one small warning could have changed everything. That one sentence, delivered at the right moment might have saved us years of heartbreak, stress or self-doubt. We replay those moments in our heads, imagining a version of ourselves who knew better, chose differently and somehow avoided the hard parts.

The truth is that the lessons that shaped us couldn’t have been learned any other way. The relationships that hurt taught us boundaries. The mistakes we regret taught us resilience. The moments we thought broke us turned out to be the ones that showed us what we were capable of surviving.

So maybe the point isn’t wishing we could go back and change things.

Maybe the point is recognizing that we made it through.

Now take your own advice and use it moving forward because you’ve already overcome the hardships that made you who you are today. And that version of you would probably be proud to see how far you’ve come.  

Photos: Gina Horan