learn from failure

Regrets are wasted energy.

I had a person in one of my online seminars post that she was an oncology nurse early on in her career and was often the last person people spoke to before dying. Many of them shared their regrets with her about:

• Not taking risks in their lives
• Not doing jobs they wanted to do

She had to leave nursing because this was such a depressing part of the job. But what she learned was to live a life of no regrets.

Don’t look at your career development ever as a regret. You can’t change the past… only the future. And it’s how you deal and react to past events that are important. Most of us make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. Remember that when you look back on your career development.  Don’t ponder or wonder “what if…” Let it go and move forward.

The key to regretting something is to look at it and ask yourself, “What did I learn from it?”  I really have no regrets about past decisions and mistakes because I learned something from all of them. I learned that a bachelors degree in Forestry still helps me appreciate the outdoors and to understand ecology in a different way. It was not a waste of five years…and I love the outdoors…as a hobby. So there are no regrets. What I learned by being involved on campus during that time in a variety of student activities was that my true passion was working with people and creativity. That was a good lesson.