Archive - July 2008

If a new survey is correct, you’re probably dissatisfied with your career or study choices.

This story from The Sydney Morning Herald suggests that a lot of Australians are unhappy with the way things have turned out for them. The findings come from a worldwide survey undertaken by global recruitment firm Kelly Services.

Among the key findings of the survey, 71 per cent of Australians wished they had studied further while 48 per cent wished they had studied something totally different.

Another 16 per cent said they chose the wrong career, while 25 per cent were still unsure about their career choice.

The global survey sought the views of 115,000 people in 33 countries including almost 19,000 in Australia.

It wasn’t only Aussies who were found to be regretting their choices.

Australia ranked in the middle of the 33 countries with 50 per cent happy with the way the country’s education system prepared them for working life, slightly higher than the global average of 49 per cent.

So are you happy with how things are turning out for you? Do you think you’re in the right career or that you undertook enough study to get you where you want to be? If you could do it all again, would you?

The ache of regret

Regret is an interesting thing. Our regrets are often based on an unreal idea of ‘what might have been’. We become dissatisfied with an area of life and decide that life would be so much better ‘if only’. If only I’d studied more. If only I’d taken that other job. If only I’d married sooner. If only I’d stayed single. If only I’d traveled more. If only ….. and the list goes on.

Of course we really have no way of telling if life would have been any better or worse if we’d taken a different path so it’s an unfair comparison. It’s a comparison that will never let us see our life in a positive light because our imagination tells us that other choices would have turned out so much better. It’s a comparison that will prevent us from living this moment and moving forward. Regret can be such a damaging and paralysing thing.

Regret can be a helpful thing when it informs our choices for the future and lets us move on but when it holds us to the past it can steal our joy and destroy our lives.

If I had to start all over again there would probably be a few things I’d change but when I look at how life is working out I’m pretty satisfied. That doesn’t mean that things are perfect or that nothing goes wrong in my life. There have been ups and downs but my life is full of people I love and it doesn’t get much better than that?

I guess a lot of it comes down to whether we let life’s circumstances hold us back and dictate the way we see life. If we start regretting our choices every time life throws up some kind of difficulty we’ll be disappointed most of the time.

I like what Paul said when he was writing to the Philippians.

I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

Are there regrets you need to let go? Is it time you stopped living with ‘what might have been’ and started living with ‘what’s still to come’?