Our deepest regrets in life are relationship and character failures.

Stop. 

After you read the first sentence of this post, your mind brought back a memory of a failure in your life. Let's unpack it.

Why do you remember it as a failure or lapse in judgment?

Was it an action outside of your typical track record or normal course of action? Do you think it accurately reflects who you are or want to be?

A business failure may stick around as a memory for years, but it isn't a heartfelt regret that keeps you up at night.

When we violate our moral compass, our body keeps track of that action. Thing of it like a tag you would use on a blog post, email, or in Evernote. Your mind is tagging that action as "character mistake" or "immediate regret".

Our mind is an amazing thing. When it makes this tag in your memory, most of the time it never informs your conscious thought process. All you know is that particular memory haunts you. It may have happened years ago, but your mind replays the details in your mind over and over.

No one wants to live in an endless cycle of regret. How can you change something that already happened?

While you cannot go back in time and change the actions, you can recategorize the memory in your mind. You have the ability to put new mental tags on that memory. Instead of "character mistake" it now becomes "learned my lesson" or "really dumb mistake that I will never repeat". 

Being aware of how your mind remembers past events and learning how to change the file system of your mind will free you up to start achieving great results in your relationships.