Speaker 1: 0:12

Welcome back to the Practical Spirituality Podcast. We are so excited to have you on this journey with us, where we explore all elements of mind, body, emotions and soul through the lens of everyday life.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Hello Kim.

Speaker 1: 0:30

Hello Gareth, how are you?

Speaker 2: 0:32

I'm doing good. How are you doing?

Speaker 1: 0:34

I'm doing pretty good.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Are you adapting to our new arrangements time-wise?

Speaker 1: 0:38

No, I like early mornings better.

Speaker 2: 0:43

So everyone's aware, since the time change has happened, it went from recording in my evenings and Kim's early mornings to the opposite, into Kim's evenings and my mornings. So a little bit of a change.

Speaker 1: 0:56

A little bit. So I think we have a really interesting topic to talk about this week, gareth, and I really do wonder sometimes where you come up with these things about this week, gareth, and I really do wonder sometimes where you come up with these things, but it's okay. I think this week we're going to confront regret and how do we move forward and leave that regret behind.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Well, when I think about the topics to talk about on the podcast, I just go to the Kim Jewell vault of experience and have a nose around and go that could be good or relatable to the Kim Jewell vault of experience. And have a nose around and go that could be good or relatable to the listeners.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I'm sure they're very bored with my life by now.

Speaker 2: 1:31

I think that's impossible.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Not so sure about that.

Speaker 2: 1:37

So, when it comes to regret, I think it's just a very, once again, universal experience that can creep its head in very different ways as we go throughout life, and I don't think we really all understand what is the foundations of regret and what's to learn from it when it's triggered as we go through life.

Speaker 1: 1:55

So, when we talk about regret, I think one of the things that we want to clarify is that the actual meaning of it is that sense of sadness or repentance or disappointment over something that has happened or something that hasn't happened, or something we've done or we haven't done.

Speaker 1: 2:28

And how we get stuck in the regret is we consider it that we've missed a chance or we are the cause of something that's happened or something that hasn't happened, like a broken relationship or an unachieved dream.

Speaker 1: 2:36

And I can tell you this, as much as I hate to admit it, it comes up quite a bit with me because I think if I hadn't been like this, then I could have done this. Or if I had gotten a little bit more awareness earlier, I could have been achieving so much more. And as doing the work with you and doing my own personal growth, one of the things that it's come to you've explained to me many times, which I didn't want to believe, that I had no choice in that matter, because it came down to the sacred contract. And what comes to the forefront of my mind is a past relationship and I wanted that relationship to work so bad, but at the time I wasn't capable, and I can tell you so many years later, when I often think about it, I go even if I had gotten my way, it wouldn't have worked because it wasn't meant to work. And hindsight is a beautiful thing, because then you can work that out.

Speaker 2: 3:37

But when you're in the midst of it all, you're not able to work that out, or even a mindset at times, because it does and can paralyze us, because when those emotions are heavy it's very hard to see the growth or to understand or to even question why these certain events happened or why these experiences happened or why these relationships happened.

Speaker 2: 3:56

It just becomes as soon as we feel the regret or experience the memory, we just try to push it away. Like everything else, it's negative, we try to bury it. There's not a really understanding of why it keeps popping up as we go throughout life, regardless. If that relationship was 30 years ago, it's that the regret can still be there 30 years later. So it is telling us that there's something here and that's why it keeps appearing. But because there's such a misunderstanding of why it needs to exist to start with, it kind of haunts us as we go throughout life or it can make us feel quite bitter or have a bad relationship with ourselves or the other people involved, because it felt like it was outside of our control.

Speaker 1: 4:34

Well, it does feel like it's outside of our control, but the other thing that happens is there's so many of those emotions, like you said. But the other aspect of the regret is, instead of pushing it away, we ruminate and we go over it and over it, and it's this broken record that we play over and over and over again. And each time we're playing it, there's a good bet that we're blaming ourselves or shaming ourselves or saying, if I had been different, if I hadn't been the one with the problem. Saying if I had been different, if I hadn't been the one with the problem, then everything would have worked out, which is not true.

Speaker 1: 5:09

But that's a hard thing when you're in the middle of that looping. That happens when you're ruminating, or stuck in the regret of it and trying to think that instead of being able so it's hard to go instead of being able to move forward, because when you are ruminating you don't even realize that's what you're doing and even that has its purpose, right.

Speaker 2: 5:32

Of course it does, because the looping that you're talking about, that goes on, even that self-negative talk. In the bigger scheme of things, when we find ourselves in that in the past, what it's actually done longer term is break us down to actually have to dissolve our question different understandings that were given to us that weren't working for us to start with. So, as I always talk about, our system has very unique and misunderstood ways of trying to get us to dissolve patterns, behaviors and understandings that were primarily given to us that actually don't work for us. So the looping is actually because you have to question why do things loop to start with? Why does our mind get fixated on something instead of just going? That was then. This is now.

Speaker 2: 6:15

Let's move on yeah, good question oh no I'd like the answer to that oh no, oh no, digging a hole here, but I think it's because there is so much to learn from those experiences right by itself, which is what it always comes back down to, because, as you said, it's so easy to be hard on ourselves if it was just different or if I had done that differently. But that doesn't mean we're actually fully learning from the experience at hand, especially because we do find ourselves repeating the same patterns, the same positions, and it's as if, as you go through life, we end up adding to the regret instead of actually understanding it.

Speaker 1: 6:52

To start with, and that would be what I would say about some of the ruminating. And you know, like you were saying before, on a psychological level it can be a catalyst that takes us to the next level. But even if it isn't and we're doing that looping, as much as I hate to say it that looping probably is serving a purpose, because we have not picked up what we're meant to gain from that lesson or insight or experience, and so we continue to loop and we add to it till it, like your famous words, it breaks us down to the point that we do look at it. Did I say that correctly?

Speaker 2: 7:32

Yeah, so to speak, it forces our hand to actually have to look at things that we've never been shown or taught how to look at, and that's why it is so painful, because it's never been explained to us.

Speaker 2: 7:43

So, of course, when we think we're the only person in the world going through it, we didn't even know this was something we even had to go through.

Speaker 2: 7:48

Of course it's going to be resistance and a fight and because it's just so unfamiliar and even though we've all been through a lot of negative experiences, even though we don't want them, at least it's familiar in the sense that we know how to navigate it. We know how to avoid it it and not go near it. So but therefore, every time we get to a point where there's a breakthrough of some kind or brings us to that stage, yes, it can serve a purpose in helping us longer term, but it never feels that way and I think regret is kind of getting us to go back to experiences or individuals that we still don't fully understand why it happened or the impact, or the long-lasting impact it's actually had on us as a person. So that's why even experiencing 30 years ago can trigger the regret and all the emotions that come along with that, because it's saying there's nuggets of gold here in your pockets that you still haven't actually taken or used or utilized as of yet.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Well, and not only the nuggets of gold. But I think, as someone who you know the way I say it, instead of looping, bang my head against the wall for so many years on so many topics I think what was important for me is when I finally did get to that point of self-reflection where I hated the regret and blamed myself for the regret and blamed that it was something wrong with me that caused me to be the way I was. And yada, yada, yada. When I finally got to the point where I was meant to process it properly, it was like the penny dropped, the dominoes fell. It's like oh, that's what's made me who I am Now.

Speaker 1: 9:22

It has a whole different meaning to me. The regret doesn't have the same power it had over me in the beginning and it's getting to that point and we don't ever know when that point is going to be. And I can speak from firsthand experience on that, because if I could have moved through some of that regret sooner, I sure as hell I would have found a way. But it wasn't meant to until I got to that stage. And I think that's the part that is hard, because, as you said, we're not taught to reflect. And then, even when we do reflect, sometimes we're reflecting on the wrong part of it.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Yeah, because even if it's regret because we cheated in a relationship, if it's regret because we said something in an argument we think we didn't mean and we didn't mean to say it, it's that. I think regret lives on when we don't know how to take responsibility for our part in what actually happened, because we don't understand why it happened. So therefore, it's better to avoid. But if our subconscious has a question mark or a conscious mind as well has a question mark about why did that happen and we never explored why it happened, then you can understand why it keeps popping it up, as in what about this? What about this? We still don't know about this, and it keeps adding to it until it gets to a point where we don't have any other choices.

Speaker 2: 10:37

We talked about earlier of having to explore it in life, in life. And it really does transform your relationship with regret as something that appears when it's a vessel or a way in which we can explore ourselves, but that opens up that entire door of building a better relationship with our mind, building a better relationship with our emotions. Understand why it keeps appearing in this way. So I do think it can be a very positive outcome in the bigger scheme of stuff. But, like most things, when we have no understanding of the role regret needs to play in our lives, it can feel like something that's haunting us and keeps bringing us down unnecessarily.

Speaker 1: 11:15

So true.

Speaker 1: 11:16

And you know, like for me on my journey, so much of the regret was I didn't understand why I did the things that I did in my life and I couldn't forgive myself as long as I was holding on to some of that regret because I was blaming myself and shaming myself around it, instead of being able to have that helicopter view or universal view and looking down and going, oh wait, a minute.

Speaker 1: 11:45

That's why that happened, and it wasn't really about me being a bad person. This was an experience that I had to have and there was no one to blame for the experience. It was an experience and I missed the growth of the experience because I was so busy blaming and regretting me. And that's where it gets tricky and that's where that really being able to do the self-reflection from a objective point of view, not the height of the emotion that allows us to get some of those lessons from that more, because I do think, is that anything like this, like regret, it's more showing us about our relationship with the individual sets of emotions, more than it does about the experience itself.

Speaker 2: 12:32

I would agree, I'm not saying that the experience isn't a part of it. Of course it is. But I'm saying is that the whole thing is that when we went through that certain experience with those particular set of individuals, that just tells our systems that we didn't know how to process any of it yes and it didn't happen with our permission.

Speaker 2: 12:47

It happens outside of our control. We didn't know how to control it, we didn't know how to process it, so therefore, it's stored away and it's represented exactly as that. And that's where the fear of, and the shame and the sadness, and because it's like I don't know what to do with all of this information.

Speaker 1: 13:02

Absolutely. And so what makes it hard is we think, when we're in that looping or we're in the regret stage and we're not having the ability to look at it, that we could have changed the outcome. If we had done it better, if we were a different person, if we had said something different, we could have changed the outcome. And the truth is no, as you would so lovely say to me, wrong again, kim.

Speaker 2: 13:34

I don't think I've ever been as mean as that.

Speaker 1: 13:38

I don't think you have either, but it's important to get that because that's you know I often say so much of my early recovery and growth was. And the lack of acceptance came because I really believed if I had been different, the outcomes would have been different. And now, having been able to do the growth and really be able to look at things in a different way, because I've developed that relationship with myself, I've learned how to be kind, I've stopped blaming and I've started processing the emotions, and I can go oh, it happened, exactly the way it was meant to happen.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Yeah, because a lot of these experiences or understandings of these experiences is that they're not wrong.

Speaker 2: 14:23

It's just that it's always been very misunderstood and I think, as long as we believe that these were wrong, it's that it was always very much easier for people to manipulate or to control us. So what I mean by that is that a certain experience that's sinful, then we feel bad, we feel shame, we feel as how religions and different things always control so many people. Because as long as we felt that about ourselves, or that experience which, to be honest, was just a human experience we went through, but it's our perception of it is what actually keeps us trapped. Experience is the experience, but if we haven't been guided or shown to understand, as you're saying, the different perspectives or understand the emotions, to free ourselves from the guilt and shame and the control of it, and you can understand how that can be a devastating loop in a lifetime to be stuck in, so to speak. So we can only work with the information that we've been given and we don't always have control over the experiences that end up happening to us. So you can see how that's quite a conundrum.

Speaker 1: 15:19

It's a very big conundrum, and I experience it many times in my lifetime and experience it with my clients all the time, and so much so that one of the ways that I help people understand it is some of these decisions that we make about the regrets that we have are made from a very emotionally immature self that didn't have any clue about life and what we were living, and so we're operating on a system that really is so outdated it doesn't work anyway, and so we have to update the system to be able to understand what the lessons and the growth were. And yeah, I think it's very interesting because most people don't even think about that. They don't realize, if they have a regret or a blame that they're blaming themselves for, that it might be based on their 15-year-old self or their 10-year-old self, or decisions they made about themselves at a very young age that are no longer accurate at all.

Speaker 2: 16:17

Yeah, and I think this was interesting, though, when you share a traumatic experience that happened to you, to someone else, and they might say something to you oh, if that had have happened to me, I never would have been able to get through that as if it's a compliment, as if it was a choice. It's like you know, I don't know if that's a backhanded compliment, but I'm saying I didn't have a choice but to try to get through it. Yeah, it's that there's certain experiences that just happened in this life that we are forced to have to deal with in our own ways with the map of the worlds that we've been given, and then it's through that that we learn how to begin to add to that and redefine a lot of these, as you said, outdated understandings about regret and shame and these emotions. So we can never know. We can change until we're forced to have to.

Speaker 1: 17:01

And you never know when that exactly is going to happen. Until it happens, and when it does and I think again, this is where I'm going to say you know, turning that regret into something that is positive comes from being able to finally extract the lessons. Here's a tip for everybody. I never did that on my own, I never figured that out on my own because it was my best thinking that got me in the place I was at in the first place, and so I hadn't had any new information inputted into that little computer brain of mine until somebody else said hey, wait a minute, why don't you look at it like this? And I'd be like, oh really Never thought of that.

Speaker 2: 17:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:44

And that's when you can start to you know, get the lessons that you were meant to learn, when you've got a different perspective on it.

Speaker 2: 17:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:52

And that will only happen when you're ready for it to happen.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Let's take a step back from this week's episode and share with everyone what we've been up to behind the scenes.

Speaker 1: 18:03

We're really excited to be able to finally offer the Gareth Michael community to each of you. The community offers a range of benefits, including access to our live events, weekly podcast episodes, articles, self-checking questions, as well as a community of individuals you can connect with and interact with along the way. It's designed to offer you support, guidance and a safe space on a day-to-day basis. We'd love to have you join our global community of like-minded individuals. That website address, again, is wwwgarethmichaelcom. Now let's get back to that episode, shall we?

Speaker 2: 18:46

I think, when it comes to regret, it's about looking at the experience and it's not about blaming other people, blaming ourselves, shaming ourselves, shaming other people.

Speaker 2: 18:56

It's about taking responsibility for our role in it. Because, of course, you said, we can't change the past, we can't do it differently. We can learn from the experience, but we have to take responsibility for our role in that experience. And now, of course, hindsight's an amazing thing that we talk about often, but we can't delete the experience. We can't say it didn't happen or that it should have been done differently. That's all fictional. Taking the regret and becoming responsible for now, understanding what we're trying to extract from the experience, as you mentioned, in hopes, and moving forward that we'll apply that, but even then, that's hopeful thinking, because that's not always a choice either, as we both know, depending on the circumstance that we find ourselves in, like previously. So we can always hope that we're able to take our life experience, but it's like we can go to rehab 10 times in hopes that we don't relapse again. But we both know it's not always that simple when it comes to the realities of engaging with life so very true, and what I love about you saying taking that responsibility.

Speaker 1: 19:58

One of the very first things I learned early on was keeping my side of the street clean.

Speaker 1: 20:04

That baffled the living life out of me when they first told me that I'm like my side of the street is clean, and then I quickly learned that no, it's not, because I'm probably meaner to myself than anybody was ever mean to me or blame myself more than anyone blamed me, and I had to learn that beautiful, delicate dance of discernment as to what can I own and what isn't mine to own, and when I am owning it, what do I need to do with that, instead of because we are taught to keep the focus outward, so we're always looking at what the other person did wrong instead of.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Well, wait a minute, what's my part in this? What can I own and what do I need to do differently? I might be wrong about this, but I go. That is one of the biggest leaps in emotional maturity that we have, when we can start to look at what is my side of things. What is it that got triggered in me that I responded that way? What is it that made me choose to do whatever I did in that moment and what was I meant to learn about that experience Overall, instead of being blaming and shaming and hurting myself over it?

Speaker 2: 21:14

But I think that's what's fascinating about it, because a lot of the experiences that we've been through in the past and regardless of what it triggers and in this circumstance we're talking about regret is that it just is constantly telling us about things that have happened to us in the past that we still don't understand, and it's constantly trying to redirect us into wanting to understand, for us to be able to learn how to let things go that happen in life that often are so outside of our own control. So if we're not able to do that, then you can see why it keeps popping up time and time again. You're never going to be eternally grateful or thankful for these negative experiences. You're never going to wish them on other people. You're never going to scream from the rooftops and I'm so happy.

Speaker 2: 21:57

I wrote this into my contract, that's. We're never going to expect or ask anyone to take it from that angle, because it's just not true. But what is true is that if it lives within us and it's festering within us, it's still ours, and that is a misunderstanding we are living with and we can choose to use that information to turn it into growth and still not agree with the experience. We don't have to agree with it, but can we learn how to accept and let it go in newfound ways that we didn't know was possible?

Speaker 1: 22:29

Yes, I think that is one of the things that was. Besides acceptance, the hardest lesson I had to get was that if it is festering inside of me, I still have something to grow and learn from it. I was sure it was festering inside of me because of you, not because of me, because I was so sure it was the other person instead of being able to look at me, and that. I don't know if other people find that hard sometimes, but I found it very hard in the beginning to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 23:05

And I think it's that when we have had a lot of these negative experiences that have happened to us all, it is constantly very hard and I know this is an ongoing thorn in the side when it comes to the spiritual understanding of contracts and divine design and why we would have chose all this.

Speaker 2: 23:20

I can understand why that is so hard to grasp or to completely, ever truly accept right and but I think the reality is that because we're a world of eight billion people and there's only so many patterns, behaviors, experiences, so to speak, that we can all go through, the reason why, you could argue, a lot of these things keep occurring is because none of us have been taught or shown actually how to talk it out, take ownership, take responsibility, share our experience, to actually have a bigger influence, to start changing a lot of these patterns and behaviors that lead to these great negative experiences, so to speak, that we all find ourselves in.

Speaker 2: 23:55

And I think that's when we talk about it at times. And I'll speak on your behalf when I say take responsibility for a reality of what has happened in our past. It's not that if it happened or as if it's a fictional story, it's taking responsibility for what actually has happened. And we talk about how, when we're able to own our own stories, take responsibility with a lot of vulnerability and talk about it, it does create mass impact in the world, or put the listeners around to own their own stuff, and with that comes generational change longer term, to actually continue to educate people on the realities of the negative experiences that we've been through and how to do better, moving forward. But if we're not able to actually do that, to accept what happened to us, to be able to talk about it, how do these patterns, behaviors, experiences ever change longer term in future generations, as we go on?

Speaker 1: 24:47

Well, I think it's very clear to see in our society today that it hasn't for lots of people, and it can be very frustrating because there's those of us that have been on this journey who, you know, kicking and screaming as I was have gotten to that place where I am owning all of my own stuff and trying to be as clear and honest and gain my lessons and let go of the regrets, only to see other people being able to. I don't think they're able to see what appears to be people cruising through without having to do it. But the more I work with people and the more I see those generational patterns and the more I see how dysfunctional that is. The patterns are going to get broken faster, regardless of what we do. I mean, it might not be with us, it might be nicer if it was with us, but when we talk about being on this spiritual quest, isn't that what it's about?

Speaker 1: 25:45

I don't know about anybody else, but going on my spiritual journey was about learning to grow and understand my life and how do I connect with my spirituality, and I didn't know then that what that would mean is going inward. I just didn't know it. You know, I thought it was about higher beings and higher planes and higher energy, which does come about. As I've started to go inward and learn more about myself, accept more about myself. I am naturally traveling at a different level than I was 20 years ago.

Speaker 2: 26:23

I think exploring that at all the different levels, as we talk about mind, body, emotions and soul, is where it becomes important, because they all play a huge part in the human experience.

Speaker 2: 26:33

But this is why it's that, in addition to this topic of regret, if we are not able to talk about our regrets, if we're not allowing ourselves to explore them, if we're not allowing ourselves to accept them as even as factual things that happened and we're not even aware of what we can do with that information moving forward, let's not be unbelief to why our mind, subconscious mind, conscious mind, our emotions continue to be at us, because there's so much growth and lessons within us and if we choose to ignore it or don't know how to process it which I know you can argue is a part of the spiritual experience it happens when this month happened, of course, but it's that that's what leads to the bigger change within us, primarily first and then, as we choose to share that with the world, then of course it'll have impacts across many different age groups and across many different generations with time. We can't change who we are. We can only learn to accept it and be more authentic in this present moment.

Speaker 1: 27:27

And so one of the things I want to say to that that just hit me, as you were saying, that is you know, in reflection of my own journey, I can remember feeling so much shame and so much blame and regret about how I lived my life before I got clean and sober, so much so that there were some things that I swore to myself I would never tell another human being, no matter what happened. And then, lo and behold, I got pregnant and, let me tell you, the game changed in a big time way for me, because I never thought that could happen to me. And then, when it did happen to me, it was like this huge amount of responsibility of am I going to hand this down or am I going to take the responsibility and work on myself? And I can tell you, Gareth, or am I going to take the responsibility and work on myself? And I can tell you, Gareth, now that my oldest child has children, and I see him parenting his children and I see the flow on effects of me doing the hard yards of taking responsibility, of going through so many times when I felt like nothing is changing, but everything was changing, and I see that I go.

Speaker 1: 28:41

Okay, I'm an ascended master as far as I'm concerned. I know Michael might not agree with that, but I go. Look at me what I did, you know, because I'm really proud of the fact that I managed to get that much growth, that much understanding about myself that I could pass on to these people that I raised and I'm sure they still have all their own stuff to go through themselves but I see some major patterns get broken and that makes every single moment worth it.

Speaker 2: 29:12

Because I just think that's where there can be a clash in these understandings, which I understand. It's that saying that everything can be a clash in these understandings, which I understand. It's that saying that everything happens for a reason and this is designed by divine design by us. All that does really. That does not mean that you have to agree or like the experience you and I would never say that.

Speaker 2: 29:32

but whether you or I like or agree with the experience is actually irrelevant, because it doesn't stop the experience from occurring, true, so the fact that the experience is occurring, it's like okay, what do we now do about this? To understand it, to process it, to sometimes even put a stop to it. But we can only do that through efficient communication and by understanding mind, body, emotions and soul and start to share that wisdom with one another. And sometimes that means any of us opening up, being more vulnerable and primarily understanding self first and, as you said in the examples, of passing that on to the next generation in your own unique way. But it's never going to stop them from having their own versions of all of that, because that's their journey also, exactly.

Speaker 1: 30:14

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 30:15

And, as I just said before, you know, there were things I said I would never tell another soul.

Speaker 1: 30:20

Well, let me tell you the way that the universe has of getting you to look at these things, and it's never ceased to amaze me.

Speaker 1: 30:28

I can remember sitting in a drug and alcohol rehab working with a client and this person being extremely just, stuck and not being able to get out of their own shame and blame, and it was my job to help them move through some of it.

Speaker 1: 30:44

And lo and behold, before I even knew it out, these words came out of my mouth that I swore I would never say to another human being, and the compassion and the understanding and the gratitude that person showed in that moment that somebody else could understand what they were going through was huge. And little did I know that as I did that for somebody else, it ignited a bit of self-compassion for my younger self that I had never given myself the opportunity to explore before because I was so dead set. That can't, that can't be exposed, no, no, no. So that is where it hinders us, when we have the regret and we want to bury it and we want to say no, nobody gets to know about that, because that kind of just keeps us stuck and I think that's when we started learning about the common themes across all of these things, the things that we can't let go of.

Speaker 2: 31:38

The emotions negative emotions have control of us or we want to avoid is that they're always the key of actually what eventually frees us.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, it's just silence between us both. It's just such a hard one to get to.

Speaker 2: 31:57

Because we both wish it wasn't true yeah, right, yeah, I think that is true in our own ways, like we wish that it was simpler, easier, more of a silver bullet. But it's just that truth continues to shine through time and time again, and it's that you and I still have experiences as we go through life. We're both still gonna have negative experiences. We're both still going to have negative experiences. We're both still questioned did I really sign up for this? Did I really? And everyone's going to have those days. But when we remind ourselves of the different understandings we've gained from our past negative experiences, the growth that's come from it, it does allow you to want to lean into the present day ones further, because you actually know there's no other route.

Speaker 1: 32:41

Yeah, and that can be confronting in itself at times as well.

Speaker 2: 32:44

You can do it on your own timeline, but you're never going to kid yourself as if there's any other route but to go into it. That's very true.

Speaker 1: 32:51

And I think that level of acceptance that there is no other way, then it becomes a whole lot easier to go. I can. This is like my dad used to say we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way. You know, just lean in and accept and that you know. I can say that today, but you know five years ago. I've always done it my way, which has been the hard way there's the easy way, there's hard way, and then there's Kim's way.

Speaker 1: 33:23

We want everybody else to be a little bit kinder to themselves than I have been.

Speaker 2: 33:27

Yes, that'd be ideal, that would be ideal.

Speaker 2: 33:31

I think in even having this conversation about regrets, the overall theme is kind of like anything that sticks to us. There's still something to learn from it and in this example, regret is the theme. But it goes to show us that we haven't maybe had that safe environment to be able to talk it out mentally, to express what it's meant to us emotionally, what it where the knots are physically in our body when we actually talk about it. Every experience we go through leaves its physically in our body when we actually talk about it. Every experience we go through leaves its mark in my body, emotion, soul. And I think if we've never been taught or shown that or how to value that or how to decode that, then naturally, as we go through life and as every decade worth of experiences attach itself to us, things get heavier. But the hope that's always given me is that if this is mine, if I did this to us, things get heavier. But the hope that's always given me is that if this is mine, if I did this to myself, if this is for me to explore, then there's all upside in this, if I'm willing to go there with the right supports around me, because, as you said, I would never recommend doing this journey completely on your own because, as you said, it's you yourself that got you in this position to start with.

Speaker 2: 34:37

When we learn that there's actually an option to share the burden, so to speak, and to explore it, I think that's where it becomes less and less intimidating and we can have a lot more of that acceptance, self-compassion and understanding not only of ourselves but of the world around us.

Speaker 2: 34:56

And I think we are going to have so much less patience for ourselves or the world around us when we are holding on to so many of our own experiences that we don't understand. Regret is redirection in the understanding of the experience itself, because when it is heavy it eventually gets us to have to explore it. And that's a redirection and understanding of ourselves, mind, body, emotions, of the people that were involved, of the experience itself, and it's going to keep reappearing until we're, until it's time or till we find, as you're saying, the right individuals to do that with. But that is a part of the human experience, so the more that we just talk about it and normalize it, I think that can just be so healing within itself that it's not just us as individuals or the only person in the world going through it. It's a universal experience and the more that we talk about it, the more we can explore it and own it instead of it owning us couldn't say it better.

Speaker 1: 35:52

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