I often come across people who ask me questions around regrets.

Do I regret that I couldn’t continue in the Army and had to come out because of a medical injury?

Do I regret that my business luck didn’t work and I had to move back to a job?

Do I regret that those moments happened in my life? Yes, absolutely there’s regret. I will be feigning if I said I don’t regret. If I could have done something differently or been in another place another time.

But that regret has reduced. Specially as years have progressed!

Because, while those failures or mishaps did leave me in a lurch, they also taught me a lot. That realisation has only grown stronger with each passing year.

Yesterday, while taking a walk in the neighbourhood, I was thinking about what I missed in those years when I was trying to run my own business and it didn’t work out. What did I lose?

Of course, I lost monetarily. I could have earned some more money. I lost some hair on my head. Which is not a non-guaranteed outcome elsewhere. I lost some years in the corporate race. As if it really matters.

As I thought about these things, I realised that I have been more than compensated for these losses in the years since (if you don’t consider hair fall to be one really!).

I learnt so many things that I wouldn’t have in a job. I got to do so many new things I hadn’t done ever. And more than anything else, those days opened my vistas and my outlook towards life.

Moreover, I realised life has in some way helped me recoup the self-perceived losses. I am not worse off in any sense because of that lost time.

This made me think – we live our life with regrets. About not having done something or achieved something. What if we flipped it and instead be grateful for what we are experiencing and learning. And how it helps us in the larger scheme of things.

After all, what are a few years when compared to decades of life that most of us experience!