Emotion

Acknowledging Regrets Can Move You Forward
Emotional Health

(Photo Credit: CDC)

We all have our regrets.  Although we shouldn’t live a life full of regrets, it can be quite liberating to deal candidly with your regrets.  You may have invested greatly in people who have evinced that they were not worthy of your time, but the time you devoted to them speaks volumes about your character.  Even though those individuals may now be your enemies, learn to appreciate the lessons you’ve learned from your interactions with those who have proved themselves to lack gratitude.  Don’t allow your life to become consumed by focusing on regrets; instead, take the necessary time to think critically about the things you regret.

Too often people are afraid to confront challenges in their lives that make them uncomfortable.  Although many would have you to believe that you need to do whatever it takes to make you feel comfortable, it’s beneficial to have a constant healthy level of discomfort present.  Discomfort unveils to us that we’re human.  If you’re always avoiding phenomena that cause discomfort, then you’re trying to remove yourself from experiencing inexorable dimensions of the human condition.  You’re going to have to recognize that staying away from discomfort is going to limit your progression significantly.  Ultimately, you will discover your most impactful regret is failing to assess the emotional and physical toll of your regrets.

Forgiving yourself and the people who have hurt you are essential to experiencing true progress.  The regrets you have about past and present relationships and decisions you’ve made have to be placed in the proper context: you and others are human.  Every human being has made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes.  When you don’t forgive yourself and others for mistakes, then the weight of those mistakes hold you down, stifling any chance of you moving forward in life.  A failure to forgive yourself and others results in bitterness, even if you don’t recognize it.  You have to resolve whether you’re going to allow your own mistakes and those of others to defeat you.

Be open to a new beginning with yourself and others.

It’s important for you to realize you’re not the only one who has regrets.  Spend some time talking to others about their regrets and how they process them.  The discourses you have with them can offer you some practices you can employ to place your regrets in an appropriate context.

What if someone has hurt me so deeply, though?  Welcome to the real world.  On this planet that we inhabit, someone is going to do something to cause you harm, whether it be directly or indirectly.  Learn the lessons from your experiences with the person and move on to better people and things.

Don’t turn your regrets into more than they should be.  Do you really just want to be a drama queen or king?  If not, make a commitment to transform every regret into an empowering opportunity.  No one desires to be around someone who is emotionally exhausting.  You can run the people you need to succeed in life away from you.

Take a close emotional inventory.  What are the things keeping you from progressing?  How can you address them?  After you respond to those two questions, devise a practical plan for implementing the solutions birthed from your critical emotional inventory.  If you would like to involve others in this process, understand that this can be beneficial.

Refuse to allow your regrets to dominate you.  Choose to live and win!

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Stop Letting Your Husband or Boyfriend Beat You

For that woman out there whose husband or boyfriend is beating you, I pray that you will contact the police and let them know what is going on. Women, you are too precious and beautiful to allow a man to beat you. Of course, I understand that women do beat men, but this piece is devoted to women, who are unquestionably the greatest victims of physical and emotional abuse. A man does not have to physically hit you for it to be abuse. The most damaging abuse is emotional abuse because it can be more difficult to overcome. If your man is emotionally abusing you, please get out of the relationship with him.

I have seen too many men who emotionally abuse their women and do not see the tremendously violence that they are doing to them. You don’t own these women! When a man emotionally and physically abuses a woman, he is simply a coward. Why don’t you step to another man and try to do the same thing? If you need someone to pick on, I am always available! For men who are friends with other men who abuse their women, you guys need to be real men and stop them from beating on their women.

About three months ago, I had a conversation with a guy in Madison, Wisconsin who believes it is not another man’s place to try to intervene in another man’s relationship with his woman when there is some question about whether the man is abusing the woman. I let him know I disagreed with him very much. I think it is always best to err on the side of life and on the side of protecting our women from harm.

I have some strong feelings that a man I know in Madison, Wisconsin is emotionally and/or physically abusing his wife.  I have to admit that I don’t care too much for the lady’s husband anyway, but I do love the sweet personality of the man’s wife. I’m going to get this man arrested and put in jail because I am a mastermind and am going to prove he is beating his wife. He thinks he has been getting away with it, but I am going to bring him down!

I want women to start rising up against domestic violence. In your efforts to rise up against domestic violence, I want you to be more concerned about not being emotionally and physically abusive to men too. Women must form partnerships to combat domestic violence because most cases of domestic violence go unreported. I refuse to sit on the sidelines and watch the women in my environment continue to be victimized by abusive men. I will lead an effort and movement to see that any man who hits a woman ends up in jail for a long time. Keep your hands off these women!

Stop raising your voices and screaming at these women trying to intimidate them—this is emotional abuse. If you are a man and you feel the need to raise your voice at a woman and scream at her, please forget about yelling at her and come scream at me. I got the cure for all that screaming! Women, when these men start yelling at you trying to intimidate you, call the police on them. Now, I am not telling you to do trifling stuff like call the police on men just to try to make them mad, but I want you to call the police on men who are legitimately trying to intimidate you and who have a strong possibility of putting their hands on you in a violent way.

Stop the violence today!

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison