The other day I was having coffee and catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in over a year when he asked me this question: “Do you regret leaving Google?”
I had made the decision to quit my job two years ago, and I did it because I was fed up with the corporate world and was eager to try something new and pave my own path within the entrepreneurial realm instead. I had no idea what was ahead—whether I would soar upward or crash downward—but I was beyond ready to waltz my way right into this space of uncertainty.
“Of course, I don’t regret it. I was really unhappy there,” I answered. But when I paused for a moment to reflect more deeply on his question, I arrived at this realization: We cannot regret something that has taught us valuable and worthwhile lessons in life.
Truth is, not every decision we make will be the right choice for us. I learned later that quitting my one and only source of income to start an e-commerce business from scratch was a recipe for financial disaster. No, that decision was not the right one at the time.
Perhaps I should’ve followed the advice I preach today: Build your business while working a full-time job so that you can work from a place of stability. But then again, I wouldn’t have learned such a valuable lesson (among many others) had I not acted upon what was truly important to me at the time—the freedom of paving my own path, on my own terms.
When it comes to regret, we don’t have a healthy relationship with it because we usually look at it through the wrong lens. Most of the time, when we look back in reflection, we regret the choices we made after we consider ‘what could’ve been’ had we taken a different path.
What if I had taken up that job offer instead of rejecting it?
What if we didn’t break up?
What if I tried to start that online business idea instead of just talking about it?
