Do you hold strong regrets of not accomplishing certain things?

Yes, but there is still time.

Uh... yeah. So get help. If you're actually partying and turning into an alcoholic, stop that shit. If you think you have regrets now, wait 'til you're forty-something and your body has noticeably slowed down and you're still trying to get to the bottom of every bottle you can find.

EDIT: On the topic of depression - yes, I've dealt with some of that, especially in the past few years. And I beat myself up (figuratively speaking) over the things I hadn't accomplished. Want to know what I actually did do? Finished college. Dragging myself out of bed every goddamn morning was a feat of its own, and making it to the end of the day was a big hit on my nerves. I don't want to go into much more detail about my personal problems during college. Easily the worst time of my life, but I pulled through.

But now I will get a little personal in the hopes that you'll listen. I spent a lot of this past summer regretting and hating my time in college, and blaming myself for not doing the things that I should have done. And it's made the depression and anxiety even worse when I thought that stuff would be over after college. I slowly started to realize that blaming myself for doing terribly, both socially and academically, isn't going to get me anywhere. Whether or not it was my "fault" isn't a thing I can ponder, because I just won't accomplish anything. What I can do is focus on how to move ahead and get past that, and focus on what I actually did get from college instead of what I didn't.

If you've got issues with depression and anxiety, get some help. Spending a lot of time thinking about your past failures, like I have, is just going to make you regret things more, and partying and drinking "to take your mind off of things" is also just going to add to regrets, guilt, depression, etc, and then you really will have a pile of issues to look back on.

Absolutely. Theres plenty of things i regret. Lots and lots of regret.

I had counselors in the past. All of them did a great job of being a compete waste of time. Hearing them talking all their bullshit didn't do nothing for me. Paying people to hear me vent off stress isn't worth it.

I don't think there's a day that goes by where I don't dwell on the past, at least for a moment.

I always regret not working harder in school. When I look back at the time I spent in school, the me of that time would have regretted missing out on all the video games I played when I was younger. The me of that time was rather short sighted.

I've since learned that my lack of effort being put into things goes beyond video games but I struggle to overcome it. I listen to a lot of the Nerdist podcast where a constant point is brought up about working extremely hard at something your passionate about, but I often wonder whether I'm not passionate about anything, or whether my lifetime of consuming media has caused me to not see a passion because I'm constantly thinking about and viewing media content. I'm not extremely poor or unhappy but I feel like if I don't find some momentum in my life during the next 10 years then I'm going to be very unhappy in my 40's.

Well, I made an edit suggesting to get help again. Oh, well. I still hope you'll listen.

Therapy, counseling, etc., might not be for everyone. I did go to a school counselor several times in my senior year and she did help me a lot. I think I was able to finish college because I was actually talking to a counselor for some of it.

May I make another suggestion? Write. Just sit down, every night, and spend five or ten minutes writing what you're thinking and feeling into a Word document. That also helped me.

In any case, finding ways to ignore it is just going to make it worse. If you're feeling bad enough to make a thread about it, then do something about it. Anything to improve it.

I feel the exact sameway.

I didn't push myself hard enough, and at the time instead of facing my problems. I would always try to avoid them, and next thing I know I ended up with more problems.

I regret being so "addicted" to video games. People aren't exaggerating when they say it's like a drug.

I remember reading about the negatives of marijuana legalization and one of the most important points is how people could use weed to pass the time, filling that void when that time could be used to do something productive. Video games.

I always wanted to be an artist. I could have been so much more of one if I played way less video games and didn't have to immediately look for the next thing to play.

I regret loads of things, that's a part of human life.

If I had the chance to do it all again, I wouldn't do anything different, who knows what would happen. I am happy as it is.

@falserelic: I remember being praised a lot during grades 1-3 for how smart I was and for how talented I was at writing and drawing. I remember during standardized tests (EQAO) for Ontario students in grade 3, trying to live up to that by writing some long creative writing piece that would blow the pants off anything my teacher had ever seen, and then needing a week long extension just to finish. From grade 4 onward the procrastination and late homework began.

I remember reading in a magazine a few years ago about a study where two groups of kids were praised differently: One was praised for being really intelligent, the other for working very hard. Both groups took two identical tests before the different motivating methods were applied. After, the two groups were presented with the opportunity to take either an easier test, a test of equal difficulty to the last test, and a harder test. The former group gravitated to the easier tests, and the latter group went for the harder tests. They learned that kids from the former group wanted to maintain the perception of being intelligent and took easier tests to ensure that continued, while the group praised for working hard wanted to fulfill that narrative by tackling greater challenges and overcoming them.

I sometimes wonder whether the above study has something to do with how I developed as a child, but then I feel guilty that I'm blaming outside forces when I can always choose to work harder and should just stop slacking.

Exact same except I was proficient in math and grammar not writing and drawing.

Nope. All my past accomplishments and failures have built me the life I live today. I have a beautiful wife, two children (a third on the way), and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Yup all the time. The worst regrets are the things you didn't say, didn't do etc. I wish could say they go away with time, for me they haven't. But I suspect they will if I manage accomplish certain things.

The only thing I know of that ever makes that feeling go away is to seize the day and throw myself into some endeavor. I do my best to try confront problems these days, don't always succeed, but I sleep better when I make a 100% effort.

One thing that never ever works is partying and drinking when you haven't dealt with your business. All that crap does is make the problem twice as bad the next day.

I wish I asked for more help as a student. I scraped by with C's in every class but English (Perfect grade).

I've never been the brightest guy. The schools I've went too didn't teach me much. Especially my high schools years that was a doozy. I've been to alot of different schools when I was younger, and I can honestly say I hated every minute of it.

My passion for Video Games have been fading away. I still do play Warframe, but most of the time that's it. After dealing with abunch of bullshit at my job. I'll end up drinking afew beers on my days off from work. I'll walk outside and just sit by the creek for afew hours listening to music. Newest song I've been hearing is this.

I heard it during a porno once, it got stuck in my head.

There are times when I wonder what could have been with certain paths, but then I just let it go and look forward. What happened happened and couldn't have happened any other way.

If you live in the past, it'll hold you back. Make sure to enjoy the moments you experience now.

Nope. Your great grandkids will barely know anything about you. Their children won't know you ever existed. Within a century, you'll be a meaningless name somewhere back along the family tree for the one or two people that bother to put one together in your family.

If you're a popular author, a pop star, a movie star, a porn star, a politician, an artist -- you'll be forgotten within decades, unless something significant happened to you like a major controversy. In a hundred years, only a few of the most popular of each of those fields will be known. In the long run, you'll have your Hitlers, your Lincolns, your Einsteins, Nixons, Tolstoys and *maybe* a Spielberg. Who even knows if half of that list will mean anything more to anyone in a few centuries.

The percentage of people who will have ever lived who will have any lasting impact on people around them -- much less society and civilization as a whole -- for any real duration is almost infinitesimal. Norman Borlaug easily saved a billion people, recently died, and is scarcely known. There are hideous mass serial killers and torturers with tallies of dozens or even over a hundred who are only known by name among those who are infatuated with serial killers lore.

So if almost all of the most notable and generous people who contributed to mankind and even the most of the brutally violent and hideous and horrible will be forgotten to time (and not eons -- but decades or centuries) then what is the probability that you or I or anyone who will ever read this will have any impact to be important ten years from now. Or fifty. Or a hundred. Or five hundred? And that's just here. On this shitty little speck of dust in one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the vast universe which, in itself, probably isn't significant, either.

In other words, no matter how great or horrible you are, it probably doesn't matter. So if you're just an average joe doing average stuff within a standard deviation... nothing really matters. How you spend your free time, who you fuck, how many you do or don't fuck, what kind of car you drive, how nice you are, how much of a dick you are, how big your retirement fund is, or what your career is and how much time you spend reading... is all irrelevant. Do what you want. Regret stuff you wish you had or hadn't done, but don't do it on some weird philosophical or moral account that you feel society shames you into. Only regret things you personally truly regret. And know that even those things don't matter outside of yourself, mostly.

Hell, look how much time I've wasted from our lives by writing this and making you read it. And even that doesn't matter. :)

Kids. I really wish I had had kids by now. Maybe, I will have kids someday because life is strange like that.

Very reassuring. Maybe I should just exit to stage right then

@branthog That's a very cynical view on life and it's perceived meaning. Sure, not all of us if any will be remembered for however long homo sapiens roam the earth, but that doesn't mean your existence doesn't have intrinsic value.

Your life is what you make of it. Everyone has regrets, or things they didn't do and wish they did. It's all a part of the human experience. You still have the ability to move forward, so that's what I would suggest. Find something you like to do, and pursue it. If you become good enough at said task/ability then you may end up getting paid for it.

Living in the past, and get hung up on past regrets will only keep you from creating a better future for yourself. Schooling isn't always the answer. Many people have lives successful lives without going to college.

Good luck!

How is it cynical? The entire point is that no matter what great or terrible things you do, it will have zero consequence in the rear-view mirror of time. Even if there are large immediate ripples, they'll dissipate into nothing just a little ways down the line. So why spend your time hung up over what you did or didn't do or what someone else did or didn't do or feeling guilt or pressure imposed upon you by people in your life or society as a whole? The only real impact and consequence of how you life your life and what you do with it are those immediately felt by yourself. Everything else is aspiration and theoretical.

People dwell too much on external judgement of themselves rather than living with what little time they have left. Find a lesson in the things you regret and move on, because dwelling certainly won't help anyone else and all that really ultimately matters is whether or not you enjoy your life.

@monkeyking1969: Hah! Same. Although, now as a guy in my thirties, when I do have my kid, I'll be much more financially prepared than 21 year old me was.

I see the world differently than I did as a twenty year old, and I'm at a point in my life where I want a family of my own, not just to keep up with family and friends who do it because it's the thing to do and then struggle because they were blind sided by it.

Counselling doesn't work unless you're willing to engage with the process.

I need to get my shit together and get back to school. Just fyi to anyone lurking: depression is a serious thing if you don't get it treated. If you feel really fatigued/unmotivated/etc for long periods of time, then seriously see a psychiatrist and get medicated. Obviously you can't fix all your problems with pills, but if you don't know what to do getting help is probably not going to hurt. The one thing I regret is that I knew I had problems for the longest time, but never got help and thought they would just go away. Protip: this is often not the case.

Lots of shit. How I behaved towards people, in part also not knowing earlier that I had issues connecting with people, making a couple of decades unnecessarily shitty. Also kinda regret I never got around to releasing any music back when I seemed to have some alright ideas. You want to get better at stuff, but I've just seen a consistent decline in quality for the stuff I make, peaking 10 years ago.

Don't dwell on the past and let it get you down, otherwise in a couple years you'll wish the 2014-you enjoyed life more. Give future-you something to think back to with a smile.

@falserelic:

I don't know why, but from time to time I find myself going into a guilt trip. There's apart of me that wish I've enjoyed my teenage life when I was younger (Instead of being depress), and wish I had certain things done that would have made things better for me now. Instead I had to learn things the hardway after making a dumb choice.

Nowadays, I'm partying and turning into an alcoholic. All to put my mind more at ease.

Trully I don't. Don't get me wrong, I failed at some crucial things, but I accept it. Running away to partying and alcohol won't solve your problems, and actually it will turn them into deeper issues. Personally, despite how hard my life becomes sometimes, I accept that this is a path I have chosen consciously and was led by myself and life unconsciously too, so there is no escaping it. I made some bad choices, that I could have avoided, but some others I couldn't, because I didn't see any other choice, or if I see them they weren't attractive, and life happened in the meantime too, bringing changes that I didn't see coming and complicate the whole deal. Still there is only escape to a shitty situation: to face it and work out the solution. Running will only deepen the problems, and create new ones, turning a bad situation into worse.

Plenty of regrets, doing things when I was younger what I didn't want to do, not being brave enough to do certain things I felt I wasn't ready to do.

One of my regrets i'm fine shing is not training my voice regularly, I used to be a decent vocalist but puberty came and f*ck that up. I could still hold a note back then mind, however as the years went on my range was severely restricted to the point my throat burns if I sing loudly.

I hate that happiness is such a moving target.

I wish it would sit still and allow me to enjoy it.

I think I actively attempt to forget my past, and the successfulness of it scares the shit out of me. However, ....HA! I found an error in the auto correct~!

Take that robot. Successfulness is totally a word. And the red squiggly line underneath it changes nothing. NOTHING.

I wish I didn't jump right into college after high school. That's about it, only because it was an expensive mistake.

lol that song almost seems perfect for porn!

I just started working a dead end job but after a long day of work you just want to go home and do nothing.... or video games. But I kind of refrained from that. Trying to find a better job, and working on my art. Time is limited, never too late I guess.

Also I miss drinking.

Afghanistan.

I wish I had applied to graduate school. It would be such a better option than looking for a job right now.

Thankfully my academic performance was excellent though, so if my current plans don't pan out it may still be an option.

True.

Sometimes stress tends to get to me at times. First there's personal issues going on in my life, then a girl at my job (that I like) got arrested for shoplifting, and now I start wondering what's my plans for the future. I know I have to carve my own path, but finding a way to do that is the tricky part, but that's how life can be for all of us. Some people can handle life better then others.

@falserelic:

About the girl it isn't your problem she was arrested for shoplifting, so you should try and separate yourself from other people own issues. You have your own problems to deal with. You don't need other people's issues. Everyone has them and has to deal with them, although we can help each other, but we can't face others's problems for them.

You should pace yourself about your future. Because a solid plan for the future doesn't bloom over night. You should build it at your own pace, at the pace it brings you security.

About

Some people can handle life better then others.

To me that is directly connected with absorbing the shock of the events, and moving past them. And takes the time one needs. It has to do with our will, personal truths and tiredness.