REGRETS

Whatever you REGRET - be it harsh words you uttered, a lie, letter, phone conversation, vow, promise, an infidelity, or a choice, a decision you made -- it's a pothole in your mind.

You get stuck in it, spend a lot of time mulling it over.

Do what I do! The real me, Dr. Em, ex-dancer, novelist, blogger, John Cullum's wife says:

Buy a notebook.

Pick a pretty color and carry it with you wherever you go. Whenever a regretful thought pops into your mind, write it down -- scrawl a word or two or write a paragraph that will ring a bell when you see it.

Once REGRETS are in your note book, when the woe-is-me thoughts pop into your mind, open the notebook. Look at it, skim what's there on the page, instead of mulling things over again and again and again.

Regretting is heading backwards into the past.

Make a Job, Career page. Put down stuff you've been telling yourself, like "I'm in the wrong profession -- I'm too old to change -- I'm bored, hate what I'm doing -- I am stuck -- I don't have any other skills."

Then, REVERSE it -- remove, erase, excise too old. Lop off 10 or 20 years. Consider what you'd like to do; what skills to acquire, what you could study, and names of people to whom you could talk. Write down on a page, even vaguely possible possibilities.

Do an Age/Weight/Me page --include all the bad stuff -- you're over the hill, you've got health problems, you don't have energy, etc.

REVERSE the negative, item by item. Out loud, declare I am not over the hill. My health isn't stopping me! I've got energy! If you are overweight, asthmatic, diabetic -- whatever ails you -- if you're disabled and you want to go for a walk, ride a bike, dance -- just REDEFINE what going for a walk/bike/dance is.

DO A SKILLS, SELF -IMPROVEMENT PAGE.
Wish you could teach? help the poor? take care of pets, travel, write a book? be an actor? Whatever you wish -- make a list on a separate page.

Make a sub-list -- put down what you need -- college degree, a person to contact, a starting point.

Make a CONTACTS page. Names, phone numbers. Make a sub-list for volunteer work -- things you could do for NO pay

Okay, suppose you're out of money.

REMOVE/ REVERSE this reality. Create a list of the number one, first, most important things you'd like to do. Sub-list all the ways you could acquire money. Once this stuff is in your notebook, lack of money doesn't divert you, stop you, from figuring out possible actions.

Got a LOVE problem? Put it down --are you stuck, do you have an unbreakable commitment? Make sub lists of what you could do if you were free. It'll be a revelation -- there are plenty of things you can do.

With a notebook and lists -- reversing, lopping off years, removing negative concepts, and restrictions -- you will get fresh ideas about what you can do today.

The guy who invented the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, said. “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”