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The book of regrets

I’ve started reading a book by Matt Haig called The Midnight Library. It’s about regret. The main character Nora has access to The Book of Regrets. Here she can see all the regrets she’s had over the years. She has the opportunity to test out different versions of her life as it could have been if she’d made different decisions. There are infinite possibilities. Maybe she’d kept up her swimming, maybe she’d treated her brother differently, maybe she’d pursued a music career.

Although I’ve only read the first few chapters, I’m already discovering that the life you thought might been better, having made different or better decisions, isn’t necessarily the case. Things might not have actually worked out better another way.

“It can drive you insane, thinking of all the other lives we don’t live.”

I’ll find out what the overriding moral of the story is when I get to the end. But for now what I’m taking from it is that there’s not too much point regretting the past – without doing something about it now. Day dreaming about time travel and doing things differently won’t change anything. But, we can start doing what we’ve always dreamed of, now. Maybe in a smaller, simpler way.

Or, remind ourselves that we’ve kept ourselves small. Or listened to others instead of to ourselves in the past. And that from now on we’ll be listening more closely to ourselves.

If you’d like my support with your career change, you can book a package of 3 x 1-hour coaching sessions with me. I’ll help you make a plan to move forwards. Find me on LinkedIn or email me at joaopoku@gmail.com.

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

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Letter from my 80 year old self (she told me not to worry).

I recently took part in an online writing workshop. One of the prompts given was: write yourself a letter from your 80 year-old self. What would they want to say to you? Would there be a general message? What would they plead with you to stop doing?

This is how my letter started:

“Stop worrying. Stop. Worrying.

You can’t control everything. Everything passes. Some things will turn out as you want them to, some won’t. 

What’s going on now, will pass. It will last a day, weeks, months, a year or so perhaps. But not forever. You’ll look back and it will be this blip that you overcame.

Think about the things that worried you when you were 6, 16, 29, 35. Last year, last month. Do they still bother you now? Can you even remember what they are? Did they seem gigantic at the time, but feel insignificant now?”

I guess it shows what’s top of my mind right now – worry! Worrying about so many different things.

Quite rightly all of us are concerned about the coronavirus right now, it’s a scary thing. But perhaps for me it’s highlighting all the other ‘little’ things I don’t really need to spend time worrying about. It’s giving me perspective.

I know there’s not much point worrying. I know that the things I worry about either don’t happen, and I’ll chastise myself for wasting time worrying. Or, they do happen, and then they pass. And I recover.

It’s hard, when going through something difficult, to see the bigger picture. That it will pass. But, this exercise was a good reminder. In the future I’ll look back at it as ‘that time when…’ It won’t last forever.

If you’d like to have a life coaching session with me, sign up here on LinkedIn. Or email me at joaopoku@gmail.com.

Written during Writers’ Hour. Join me on the next one. 

Photo by Bundo Kim on Unsplash