The six letter word to banish from your vocabulary.

I don’t believe in regret.

Yes, we have infinite choices and infinite possibilities in life. Yes the world is our oyster. Yes, in this exact moment there are myriad versions of how my life could turn out based on what I decide to do in the next 30 seconds.

And yet, there is no such thing as a wrong decision. There is only the decision that you make. As soon as you choose, that’s your choice. The other choices you could have made but chose not too dissolve and their existence becomes immaterial. What lays before you now is a fertile, endless field of new choices and potentialities that is only possible because you just made the choice you made.

To those who are afraid of making a wrong turn, of choosing the wrong person, of missing something, of looking one direction and not seeing what was happening the other direction, listen up:

What is for you cannot pass by you.

(My dear friend and very wise woman Sandra Chiu tells me this from time to time when I get lost in the tangled web of my mind. Thank you angel Sandra.)

Since you can only make one decision in any given moment and since the next choices in your life unravel only as a result of the decision you just made, how could you choose wrong? You can only choose what you choose.

And therefore, I do not believe in regret. Regret inherently means that I made one choice but that I should have chosen something else. It means that I chose wrong. But how could you possibly unravel every single moment from the present moment to the moment in which you felt you may have made the wrong choice and discard it with a quick flick of regret?

How can you dismiss all of the pregnant moments between here and there, now and then and say that those precious gems, heart warming or heart breaking, should not have been?

Here’s the thing: the web of our lives is far more intricate than we could possibly comprehend or even imagine. The choice you make today makes tomorrow possible. And tomorrow when you’re living in the richness of every moment full of more choices and possibilities, please, please, please don’t throw them out with the overly simplified idea that you could keep all the moments of today (which is yesterdays tomorrow) and still go back and make a different decision. It’s, in a word, silly.

So next time you’re faced with a decision, may you hear Sandra’s words whisper in your ear:

What is for you cannot pass by you.

May you remember always that there’s no such thing as a wrong decision. There is only the decision you make. Make it with gusto. Make it with panache. Make it with the wonderment that must accompany something without which the rest of your life would cease to unfold.

And don’t worry. There’s no such thing as opportunity only knocking once. If you miss her the first time around she’ll come back later. What is for you cannot pass by you. Don’t worry, you can’t screw it up.

Throw regret out the window. Treasure today because without your brilliant choices yesterday, it wouldn’t even exist.

9 comments

  • I am SO with you on this. I believe that everything is in divine order. The moment we begin to embrace the idea that things should have been different, the frequency between who we are are and what we do begins to shift alignment.

    All things are aligned just the way they should be.

  • Vikki Hemrich

    Kate, I dearly love this philosophy. I will repeat it often: ‘What is for you cannot pass you by.’ Thank you for sharing; I feel like I’ve found my freedom in this new mindset!

  • Sauce

    Thank you so much. Exactly what I needed to read today.

  • Sarah

    Dear Kate,

    Thank you SO much for this word of wisdom….Sometimes, I forget that it’s all Divine and that there is no such thing as a wrong decision.
    This quote feels so liberating and soothing to me. IT will be added to my lists of favourite motos :)

    “What is for me cannot pass by me…” I shall repeat it everytime I get scared of making the wrong decision or when regret tries to rear its ugly head. Ha!

    Thank you so much again :)

  • Molly

    This is great and true! Love the saying. It reminds me of another great one which I heard from Iyanla Vanzant: Man’s rejection is God’s protection.
    Regret is not helpful – -you are so right — life is an escalator moving in one direction — can’t go back or change anything — and all that is good right now — and most of it almost always is good — is worth being grateful for, however one got “here and now.”

  • My dearest Kate, what an important and altogether lovely reminder for us all. And, what an honor to be cast in your blog post! I just wanna throw out there that though I wish I was so wise to have come up with that quote, it was shared to me by I believe it was Alice of Alice Hair (my first Big Sis in Mastery) and I think is an old Irish saying. Though I certainly will take credit for being genius enough to love it and share it! As are you!!!

    Definitely one of my fave fave mantras that I wear often – a psychic wardrobe staple if you will. Pass it on!

    Love you!

    xo

  • Ariel

    Wow!!! I so needed to hear this today! Thank you so much for this life changing post and words of wisdom. I will move forward now with peace and a “knowing” that all is well and every choice is the RIGHT choice! Thank you Kate! Muah! ~Ariel

  • Such a lovely post. I’m particularly struck by the idea that when I think about whether I could have made a different decision in the past, I’m throwing out the richness of today. I’ve done that a lot. It’s difficult; I made a decision, years ago, that in looking back led to a period of time that I still have trouble seeing any point to. I don’t know the purpose of a good decade of my life, and I tie that back to a single decision. However, I know that’s also a story I’m telling, I don’t actually know that one decision led to that decade, and it’s far more empowering to let go of the thoughts about making a different decision, and not knowing the purpose of those years, and trust that somehow my experiences then have created who I am today. As I struggle with the decisions of today and tomorrow (which I do, in fact I’m writing an ebook on making decisions through mediating internal conflict since I’ve had so much struggle with it), I will sit in the richness of those choices and possibilities and try to let go of the worry that I could make a wrong decision.

  • Hooray! Thank you for this post and for the ever perfect reminder that we’re on the path we’re on because it’s ours. Because it unfolds all the lessons we signed up for to experience and learn in this life. Beautiful! :)

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