Dealing with regret >= Accepting regret

Let's examine the chart that was presented during the presentation that draws things that we regret the most. Focus on education and career in the survey results that were presented in this video indicate a common viewpoint of priorities that are shared by the people of the society. Certainly this is correlated to the cultural dimensions of North American people, and their protestant work ethic. This is something that we cannot escape and we will inevitable place more importance on these values, statistically speaking.

When talking about regret one has to have a reference point of comparison of their actions. Often if not always this comparison is found in the outside world, which is explained by cultural tendencies, or dimensions. For example, I regret not doing this major at school because it is in demand now, or because the one that I have is not sufficient or useful for me, both of which make me less competitive in the job market and competitiveness is highly valued in North American culture. 

I also believe that acceptance of regret can be used as a form of excuse for lack of action. Fact of the matter is bad decisions should be examined and if you are blessed enough to commit enough of them you can determine a pattern in the motivations and use that as a tool to understand yourself and turn that perceived weakness into your strength.

For example, I have discovered a while back that I have this tendency to doodle things when I ought to be focusing on the lecture that is being presented to me. Having to rely on these sporadic and rather useless notes caused plenty of regret. So I read up on note taking techniques and realized that perhaps I have a tendency to think visually, which later on I have included into my study methods. So when taking notes I draw plenty of dependency charts, which actually helped me significantly, furthermore when preparing for exams I would draw these Idea maps to cover the material that I had to memorize and that also helped me immensely.

My point is, things that you regret for the most part are culture driven, rather than merely accepting things as they happened everything you do can be turned into an opportunity to explore yourself, which in turn is an opportunity to better yourself.