Do you want a life free of regrets? Me too, but I don't think anyone on this planet has no regrets. So, how do you live a regret-free life?

1. Embrace your past mistakes. Embracing your mistakes that caused pain in your life can hurt a lot, but it is an essential step to regret-free living. Owning up to your wrongs, holding yourself accountable and then forgiving yourself and others is so important to your growth. It's one of those things that is easier said than done though. It can often take days, weeks or even months to work through this process. Sometimes past regrets visit me years later, and I have to stop myself and choose all over again to re-release it from taking hold over me.
    
2. Learn from former errors. Now that you have had a chance to face your pain head on, you have also likely had plenty of time to think about the events of your life that caused regret. Take time to process those things and learn from them so you don't make the same mistake again and expect different results.
    
3. Create new thought patterns to break bad habits. This step is critical to regret-free living. You have learned from your mistakes, so now you can think in new ways that are averse to negative pathways. The actions all start in the mind. If you find yourself entertaining thoughts that aren't what they should be, don't believe the lie that those thoughts are harmless. Take the thought captive and choose to think of something else. You do control your thoughts, words and actions after all.

Take some time to process past regrets and establish new thought patterns, and next time we'll talk about how to turn the new positive thoughts into regret-free actions. For more on this subject, read Regret-Free Living by Stephen Arterburn. You can!