I was once told that second chances don’t come unless you make them. And, even so, when you do make them for yourself, most of the time it isn’t the best decision for you to take that second chance anyway. Making that second chance for ourselves is our regret speaking to us. It is whispering false judgments and memories that we thought we experienced or that we failed to do. The regret takes to our life like our unconscious thoughts takes over our minds in random hours of the night. We let our regrets conjure our cringes when we look at the past and we let our mistakes decide our next journey on a more cautious pathway. But all we really need to understand is that forgiveness breaks us free—the forgiveness of ourselves for not taking that experience when we could have or forgiving someone else for hurting us when we feel they shouldn’t have. We need to realize that this regret we feel is not hurting anyone else but ourselves.

A good friend of mine pointed out to me that forgiveness is the best gift you can give to yourself. When you do not forgive, whether it be yourself or the actions of someone that did you wrong, you trap yourself within bounds. You find yourself thinking of things to do in spite of that other person or doing things that instigate the terrible path you once took or, even worse, deprive yourself of the things that you want but think you can’t have because of your regrets. This doesn’t seem so worthwhile to me; it doesn’t seem like living to me. It’s not worth it to live in between the bounds of your regrets and making sure they never happen again. And yes, we have to learn to let regret slide off our backs like butter on a hot knife, but letting it marinate isn’t always the worst thing because it is inevitable in the life we lead.

Yes, regret is inevitable and dirty but it can also teach you something that you knew nothing of yourself while you were making the choices you so desperately want to go back and change. That’s the upside. This person who you were when you were making the decisions you now regret, was who you were at one point in your life, whether you like that fact or not. So, even if you do regret, you will soon understand that the choice you made in your life was a choice that you once absolutely wanted. Do not press your past self to a wall with your hand to their neck and urge them to tell you why in hell you did that one thing or make that one move. The one move or that one action happened and you wanted it to happen at one point. You should be telling yourself thank you, thank you for being your absolute self and for doing something impulsive by choosing exactly what you wanted. Thank yourself for doing exactly what you wanted to do at one point in your life then, instead of lingering over your regrets, you can forgive them. And now, if your present self is stuck in some place that you don’t like, change it. Don’t scream at what you used to be but rather, use it as a reason to understand yourself more. Remember in the future that mistakes are hard to come by and learning from them is the best way to forgive and to thrive after they happen. So, continue on like your past self and make a choice that you want right now. Whether you think regret will come after that decision or not; remember in the future to not shame yourself forever for making such a choice because you wanted it now and now is the time that matters.

Remember that we cannot tell our future and we cannot tell whether something will be a part of our regrets. We think that we want to know what our future is so we can make the best choice now that will be of optimum benefit for later. We just want our lives to end up exactly how they are planned to be. But, life is not about choosing the right directions to get through to your already planned life. Life isn’t planned at all. That’s because we shape our future in every decision we make right now. We shape it with the twist and turns that we once regret and the mistakes we once made, and even with the ones we are making right now. Never ask yourself what choice I should make to reach the life I have planned for me. Because life is not a factor of following a future that is already made, but choosing things we want in the moment to create what we want in the future. It’s hard to realize in the moment we choose to do something, but we are shaping our lives with every decision we make in the “now,” that is the reason we should forgive our regrets. These choices are the exact things that define what we do next in life. They are the exact elements of understanding that the decisions we make and the regrets we have truly do shape our future. But that is only dependent on how we choose to forgive them.

We don’t need to ruin the adventure of our lives with the regrets we hold to intuitive decisions made in the past. The way I see it, we have two options, forgive them or embrace them because it proves we absolutely are the makers of own selves. And, personally, I’d much rather be a puppeteer than the puppet.