While it's always best to try and live life without regrets, we've probably all got some, stashed away in the back of our minds.
Whether it’s not going for that risky job offer, not saying something you wanted to at the time, or simply picking the wrong outfit, they happen regularly. Some regrets we can easily skip over, but others are harder to move past.
However, according to new research conducted by psychologists at Cornell University, our biggest regret may well be something very different to the above.
Tom Gilovich, lead author of the study and a professor at the university, revealed that our biggest regret in life could be never becoming who you want to be.
He explained that not following our dreams – or not becoming ‘our ideal selves’ – could be a regret that sticks with us forever.
Tom explained, “When we evaluate our lives, we think about whether we’re heading toward our ideal selves, becoming the person we’d like to be.”
And if you dont? “Those are the regrets that are going to stick with you, because they are what you look at through the windshield of life.’
He went on, saying, “The ‘ought’ regrets are potholes on the road. Those were problems, but now they’re behind you. To be sure, there are certain failures to live up to our ‘ought’ selves that are extremely painful and can haunt a person forever; so many great works of fiction draw upon precisely that fact.
“But for most people those types of regrets are far outnumbered by the ways in which they fall short of their ideal selves.”
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So it looks as though not doing your what you can to be the very best version of yourself could be our biggest worry in the future – which we reckon is a great excuse to prioritise ourselves for once.
Of course, everyone’s biggest regrets will be different. But it seems that following our dreams and doing exactly what we want is a good bet for helping to ensure we don’t have any regrets at all.
