bizMe

I spent the first 30 years of my life pursuing an acting career. Yep, I’m being literal here: I wanted to be an actress since birth. I do recall brief stints of wanting to be a veterinarian, gymnast and journalist when I grew up, but I always came back to acting. I nearly went to an arts conservatory rather than an actual university; it was only due to my parents’ insistence that I get a “real” degree that I pursued a Bachelor of Science in Arts from Northwestern University. It was a compromise, as they offered an incredible performing arts program as well as a strong liberal arts education.

I’m praying my parents never read this article, because they’d never let me live down what I’m about to say:

I’m so grateful that they pushed me towards a more general education, because I would’ve truly regretted it if I had gone the conservatory route.

Why? Because ultimately, even though it took me 30 years to figure it out, I was in the wrong profession all along. I wasn’t an actress. I was a writer. And my college education and credentials allowed me to switch career gears on a lark, and pursue journalism and writing. I became the Editor-in-Chief of a widely distributed local magazine, simply due to a contact I’d made—where else?—at my university. This led to my realization that I enjoyed my new industry far more than my old one, and I haven’t looked back since.

Okay, that’s a bit of a lie. I have looked back. Because while I don’t regret my education (and again I’ll say it: thank you, Mom and Dad), I do regret wasting so much time pursuing the wrong profession.

If I allow myself to dwell on these things, I’m haunted by “what ifs”. What if I’d stayed on the school paper rather than dropping it for drama club? What if I’d attended Northwestern’s prestigious journalism school, rather than its theater program? Where would I be? Would I have already published several books, rather than plodding away at my first nonfiction endeavor? Would I have a byline in a major magazine, or be a household name?

That’s when I remind myself that those first 30 years were about finding myself. I got to see the world, meet tons of colorful people, and learn a heck of a lot about psychology (I’m telling you, acting training is far more conducive to understanding the human psyche than any formal training in therapy). More importantly, though, I explored that side of myself; I guarantee that if I hadn’t, that if I had gone down that road not taken and stayed on my high school paper, I probably would be writing about unrequited dreams of Broadway stages and feature film roles.

If my friends are any indication, I’m not alone in thinking about the “what ifs”. We’re all in our early 30’s, and for some reason, this seems to be an age of reflection—we have enough distance from our early 20’s to look back objectively, but we’re not at that mid-life point yet where our options seem to be dwindling. It’s almost as if we’re subconsciously dwelling on the coulda been’s in order to navigate our future choices more successfully. But that doesn’t make it any easier to handle the embarrassment, guilt, sadness and frustration that go hand in hand with certain types of regret.

Gen Y women raised with more choices, expectations and opportunities
On the surface, you’d think Generation Y would be immune to this emotion—especially as we had opportunities our grandmothers wouldn’t have dreamed possible. We were told we could be anything and do anything; most of us had the opportunity to go to college, if not grad school; we tend to marry later, thus protecting us from getting “tied down” into a certain kind of life too soon.

According to The Center for Creative Counseling, a therapy practice out of New Jersey, these actually might be the very reasons regret runs so rampant in Gen Y women. On their website, they attribute the “epidemic” nature of what-ifs in our generation to a number of societal factors—we have too many choices, too few rules, and a desire to be too self-sufficient. We also constantly compare ourselves to other people, which leads to what I like to call “grass is always greener syndrome”. This all contributes to a society where there are “many more opportunities to regret the paths we didn’t take.”

Haunted by the Ghosts of Choices Past
Add our struggling economy, poor employment outlook, and dismal real estate market to the mix, and you can see why we’d be over-thinking our choices as both a society and as individuals. Especially when it comes to work, education, and money, young women are constantly forced to make peace with their past decisions—because we are certainly being haunted by the Ghosts of Choices Past on a daily basis. Dr. Mary Gresham, PhD, an Atlanta-based psychologist, explains that “As I have encountered regret in young women, much of it has to do with accruing debt and now finding that the debt is keeping their current lives more restricted than they want it to . . . Other regrets that are typical for the late 20′s and early 30′s women have to do with actions that are affecting them now, such as majoring in an area with few job prospects or staying too long in a bad relationship.” After discussing this issue with a variety of Gen Y women, I think I can safely say that Dr. Gresham is right on the money (no pun intended).

. . . and the real-life regrets:
“I regret putting such a large down payment on my condo,” laments Kat, 25. “I should have left that money in the bank. I also wish I’d have decided to rent for a year or so because the buyer’s market changed so drastically and I could have gotten more for my money if I had just waited.” Real estate depression hit Lila, 31, in another way, when she quit her fast-track job as a corporate lawyer to pursue commercial investment properties—right before the market collapsed. “I spent all this time getting my real estate license, interning at a big commercial real estate firm . . . basically, it took me two years to get to a point where I could really start my new career—and then, the you-know-what hit the fan in the industry. I couldn’t get a job anywhere worthwhile, and even when I thought I might go back to law, no firms were hiring. I felt like such a moron.”

For the thousands of young professionals currently scouring the want-ads, career regret goes all the way back to their undergraduate experiences. 31-year-old Juli told me that her biggest regret is choosing to major in religious studies. “I got a degree in something that couldn’t be used. So many people I know majored in things like religion, philosophy, etc, and now we’re stuck. We have no useful skills.” She brings up the fact that in our parent’s generation, most people had a “plan”—they intended on being doctors, lawyers, or tradesmen, and they pursued the proper training for these careers. Now that going to college seems more like an expectation than a privilege, we aren’t taking our undergraduate education as seriously—or, even if we do take it seriously, we come out seriously ill-prepared for reality. Says Dr. Gresham, “We have to make decisions before we know anything. You have to attend law school and pass the bar before you can figure out what it is truly like to be a practicing attorney in a law firm. In terms of careers, we truly just make our best guess at the time.

Regrets can come because we were not able to guess accurately enough what we would need in terms of our work lives and it can become hard to make changes down the road . . . The truth is we have to make major life choices without knowing the outcome and we have to make these generally in our 20′s and 30′s.”

College Regrets
“When I graduated, I went to one of those career placement firms, and they had me take all these tests in typing and various computer programs,” Juli explains. “I hadn’t been trained in any of it, and I didn’t pass any of them. It made me wish I’d at least taken some practical courses along with my religious studies. You just don’t know the ramifications of picking a major until it’s too late.”

Many other women I spoke to echoed Juli’s sentiments, especially considering the cost of higher education in our country, the need for postgraduate degrees, and the low opportunity for adequate employment once we do graduate. But interestingly, even for those who have been successful in their chosen fields and found their college experience professionally rewarding, a lot of regret is centered on the coed years.

“I didn’t do more than one summer of a performing arts group in college because I felt I had to be responsible and take summer classes. I didn’t do study abroad because I felt I had to be responsible and work instead. I didn’t travel to Europe after graduation because I thought I should be responsible and get a real job right away instead. All my do-over wishes have to do with me regretting that I chose responsibility over experiences at a time in my life (my early 20′s) when it should have been the other way around,” says Ginger, a successful marketing executive in her early 30’s.

Helene, 28, also thinks her ambition and drive made her miss out on valuable experiences. “I never did much of anything fun in college. I worked three jobs, was a full time student, and I finished my astrophysics degree in 3.5 years. I really wish I had been able to enjoy my time some more and relax.”

The more women I interviewed about the issue of regret, the more I started to see a pattern: those who had success in their professional lives often regretted things having to do with their personal lives, and vice versa. It makes sense, if you think about it; Gen Y is still just starting out in the world, figuring out exactly what they want out of life. If you’re not completely satisfied with your life, it’s easy to dwell on what you could have done differently. But according to Neal Roese, PhD, author of If Only: How to Turn Regret Into Opportunity (Broadway, 2005), this is exactly where regret can be your best friend. “Regret . . . is useful for signaling to people that it’s time to change their strategy,” he tells writer David Dudley in an article for AARP Magazine. “If you’re ruminating daily on how things could have been better, that’s not good, but a sharp, rapid emotional response followed by a behavioral change, followed by the disappearance of the emotion—that’s perfectly good for us.” Translation? That twinge of regret might be the kick in the butt you need to make real, positive change in your life.

For many of us, regrets involve a specific attitude or behavior we possessed at one time, which may have caused us to make bad choices. Juli expressed annoyance at her younger self for being so self-conscious. “I guess I could be positive and say that all my choices led me to the life I live now—and I am genuinely happy in that life—but I was so insecure in my early twenties that I feel like I missed out on everything.” For those with body image issues, looking back at old photos can bring on big-time remorse. “I always hated my body in high school and college,” says Jessica, 27. “But when I see pictures of myself from those days, I wish I could go back and smack myself upside the head. I was so skinny! I would kill for that body now.”

Personal Regrets
For Megan and Joanne, both of whom are in their early 30’s, their biggest regrets are tied up with grief over losing a loved one—and wondering what they could have done differently. When Joanne was going through a rough time, her father offered to fly out and be with her. “I told him . . . not to bother. Not because I didn’t want to see him, but I was getting ready to try to go back to work . . . I didn’t want him to waste money on a last-minute ticket. I was also a bit worried about my dad traveling. He had had a heart attack the prior June and was still making sure he didn’t over-exhaust himself, though he was definitely feeling more like his old self. I didn’t tell him any of my worries; I just said I was about to return to work and that I’d feel bad with him sitting around my house all day by himself.”

Unfortunately, Joanne’s dad passed away unexpectedly, several months later. “In effect, I turned down the last opportunity to see my dad in his glorious, fun, hilarious, adventurous prime . . . People have told me to let go of this regret. That it wastes time and energy on something I cannot change and that my dad would hate for me to hang on to . . . yet it is easier said than done. What I learned through all of this is that I overvalued money. I missed over 10 years of Thanksgivings and Christmases with my parents because we decided to avoid the holiday hustle at the airport and expensive flights. I passed up my last chance to be with my dad because I didn’t want him to waste $800. He was willing and able; it was me that said no. There is no amount of money saved that makes up for the family moments missed.”

After the sudden death of her friend Carrie, Megan dwelled on how their friendship had dwindled in the months prior. Carrie had given birth to twins while Megan was dealing with her own fertility struggles; it was just too difficult for her to be around her friend once the babies were born. “I will always regret that I wasn’t big enough to put my pain aside and be a friend . . . I’ll never get the chance to be there for Carrie. So, the best I can do is to learn from my horrible mistake and to try and put my feelings aside and be there for the people who need me.”

Even the romantic choices you made in the past can inspire debilitating regret. I’d bet that most of us made at least one bad move in our history. For Beth, dating the wrong guy led to a pretty major road not taken: “I regret staying with my high school boyfriend long past the time that I should have just let that relationship go. He was horrible to me, but I continued to defend him to myself and my family and wasted another two years with him. I turned down a chance to go to Vanderbilt University because he convinced me to stay at a state school to be close to him. I really wish I had gone and learned to be my own person at that time.”

Andrea just had to stare her regret in the face—in a fuchsia bridesmaid dress, no less. Her story sounds like a hybrid of several chick flicks, but to Andrea, it’s all too real. “My best guy friend, Jack, was madly in love with me since the eighth grade. But I always thought I could do better. I wanted to date the popular jocky guys; Jack was that quintessential nice guy. I started realizing my feelings for him while we were in college, but by that point, he had a serious girlfriend; even worse, I really liked her, and we became good friends too. Last month, I was a bridesmaid at their wedding,” she says. “I almost pulled a Julia Roberts and told him when we were alone for a second at the rehearsal dinner, but I just couldn’t. He’s in love. He’s happy. I’m happy for him. But I’m alone, and haven’t ever had a really solid relationship, and I have to live with the fact that I may never find anyone as amazing as Jack. If I could just go back to eighth grade and show myself a photo from that wedding—me standing there in that awful dress, looking like a total loser with no date, and my eyes all puffy from crying the whole night before . . . but whatever. I probably wouldn’t listen to the loser 26-year-old version of me, anyway.”

It’s not always easy to make peace with our regrets, especially when we’re still waiting for our own happy ending. But by reflecting on our regrets in a healthy way, we may be able to secure a happier, healthier, more successful future. In an article for Positive Psychology News, Bridget Grenville-Cleave explains how when a research team interviewed successful professionals in leadership roles, they found that these people tended to “take risks, and to continue to learn throughout their lives, from failure and regret as well as from their acknowledged successes . . . All were also able to describe difficult events or experiences in the past which they regretted, and courses of action that they wished they could have changed. Referring to the birth of their disabled child, one said ‘Coming to terms with first few years was very challenging . . . but in retrospect it is the best work I have ever done.’ Another, referring to a romantic relationship which ended badly, said: ‘It was an awful experience, but I learned a lot. It drove me to do better.’”

Grenville-Cleave also cites research that “suggests several methods for preventing future regrets, among them approaching the decision mindfully, rethinking why the regretted action (or inaction) occurred, and starting with the assumption that one’s behavior made sense at the time given the circumstances.” Basically, if we can learn to accept our mistakes and examine them analytically, rather than dwelling on what could have been, we will begin to see what could be.

Generation Y is in a unique, and often challenging, position. We were raised with more choices, expectations and opportunities than any other generation, and yet we’re coming of age in a time of widespread frustration and dissatisfaction. This understandably may cause internal conflict, as we try to reconcile the dreams of our former selves with the tough realities many of us are living. Dr. Gresham urges young women to view regret as “an important process in terms of figuring out what we might have been or done in the past if we had known better . . . If used well, regret helps us change and grow as a person. When used poorly, regret becomes a repetitive bemoaning of a choice that has already been made.” So rather than focusing on what went wrong, perhaps we can try and use the mistakes of our youth to build a better future. What may feel like regret today could end up being the best decision you ever made.

Platitudes not enough for you? Here’s some proof: remember Beth, who regretted allowing a bad boyfriend talk her out of going to the school of her dreams? “I actually had a wonderful experience at the state school I ended up going to,” she laughs. “And I met my husband while I was in college, so I guess it all worked out the way it was supposed to!” Now that is what I call a happy ending.