Usually in my videos I prepare a script but for this one
I wanted to speak from the heart.
So I would hope that you would watch till the very end for
the idea worth sharing of sorts. In this video
I want to talk about the power of regret.
We all have experienced having regrets at one point or another
and fortunately with most things in life just the simple
mechanism of rationalization or turning a negative to a positive
suffices for many of us when it comes to getting over
regret, I look back on my own life
and I look at the multitude of mistakes that I've made in
my career and my personal life, etc.
Etc.
And for the most part I'm able to rationalize them and spin
them into positive learning opportunities just based on the
principle that you know, if you don't make mistakes and you
don't learn then how would you ever grow? And I understand
that and I live by that principle.
It makes a lot of sense to me and I know it makes a lot
of sense to a lot of you guys out there as well.
But I think back to one mistake in my life that no matter
how hard I try,
I am still not able to fully come to terms with it.
There's still something about that mistake that gets to me
and when I tell you what it is, it'll hopefully make sense.
Growing up,
my parents worked a lot.
They were a really hardworking immigrant family.
So I spent a lot of time with my grandmother on my dad's
side, Grandma Tran. She would tell me stories,
we would do arts and crafts.
I would just hang out with her and I would learn all about,
you know, my ancestral roots, where I came from through her,
through the stories that she told and she was in so many
ways, my first best friend. As I got older,
so did she. I just naturally started seeing her less and less
and part of that is just a matter of life. We always
live in the same city.
I never left. And in the last chapter of her life,
she was in a wheelchair, in a nursing home.
Just a 30-minute drive from where I lived. Running a marketing
agency, living my millennial ambitions.
All of that.
I had many opportunities to see her in her last chapter of
her life, specifically in her last year, but I just didn't
make it a priority.
I kept telling myself that I would see her next time. Something
about next time was such a bargaining chip for me or just
was so appealing to me. The fact that I could have my cake
and eat it too.
The fact that I could prioritize my own fears my own greed,
ahead of the things that I truly valued. And the thing about
next time is that it doesn't allow you to delineate between
your fears, your greed and the things that you really value.
It all just seems like one big list of things to do that
you have to do and that if you get through your list, you
would eventually get to the point where you could have done
everything without sacrificing anything. And I bought into
it and I bought into it so much and for so long that before
I knew it, next time had turned into the last time and before
I knew it, and before I knew it I was desperately bargaining
with the last time to make it last forever.
I remember when I got the call from my dad that my grandmother
was dying in the hospital.
It was a Sunday night and I was in my office working on who
knows what, and when I got that call from him.
It was as if everything had come to a standstill. And in a split
second the illusion that I had been buying into had shattered
and finally I could see things. There was like a moment of
clarity and in that moment of clarity,
I rushed myself to the hospital and I was able to see my
grandmother before she passed away and I was able to tell
her how much I loved her and what she meant to me and I'm
really grateful that I was able to do that and that I had
that opportunity.
There's just the fact that in the last year
of her life, she was in the nursing home
probably just wondering about all of her kids and her grandchildren
that I was somewhere off completely lost in my own whatever
just not in touch with reality at all.
I was completely focused on the things that don't even matter
to me today and this mistake really gets to me because no
matter how hard I try no matter how much wisdom I try to extract
from that learning, the learning opportunities presented by
that mistake.
I can't see my grandmother ever again, she's gone.
It's hard even drumming up memories of what exactly I thought
was so much more important than the things and the people
in my life that mattered most but I would tend to believe
that this experience that I had is a very human experience,
especially as humans living in today's world.
I think we're all after happiness in the end, but we make
it so complicated and we tell ourselves that our livelihood
is contingent on so many things. I could have shown you like
my extensive plan for the year, that year. That happened three
years ago.
My regret is that I didn't have the clarity of mind then
that I tried to cultivate now via a daily meditation practice.
This is why I meditate. I meditate to familiarize myself in
the present moment. Io detach from what my mind tends to automatically
do. To get me invested in my fears or in my greed. Our mind
is just by default
so, so busy looking for things to think about looking for
things to do and sometimes if gone unchecked it can really
alienate us from what our intuition is telling us is important.
The truth of the matter
is that everything we need, we already have in this moment
right now. Or at least when it comes to the peace that we
seek we have it in this moment right now. And so meditation
and meditation every single day, twice a day,
however long it takes you to familiarize yourself with the
present moment and to find solace and peace in the present
moment. That in turn will make you less reactive in your life,
less reactive in your relationship.
Which in turn can make you at least for myself anyways, a
better friend, a better daughter, a better citizen of my community.
That experience I had of not showing up for my grandmother
especially as she was dying.
I never want to repeat that ever again with anybody else
in my life.
I want them to know if you're in my life that I love you
and I care for you and that I want to do my best to be there
for you. Meditation has become so mainstream now in our
society and it's not, it's no longer seen as the thing of
the niches and people meditate for various different reasons,
but the biggest reason for me to do it, to incorporate
it into my life
every single day, is in hopes that I can minimize the power
that future regrets might have over me because I've done
the best that I could or at least made an effort every single
day to be present and not reactive.
That's why I meditate every single day.