Lamenting what you might have done differently is not only holding you back but potentially making you sick and preventing you from living your best life. Instead of trying to rewrite history, Meg Mason finds it’s all about reframing it
It feels that way, like something concrete and immovable. It’s one of the most universal aspects of human experience, with 90 percent of us easily identifying at least one major decision we’ve gone on to regret, according to tech start-up Happify – and who has ever met a member of the 10 percent? But if regret is so common, why don’t we know how to deal with it? Why do we let it sit there, defining us and informing all our subsequent choices? Why do we lie awake at 3am reliving it, going back and back over how much better life would be right now if we hadn’t done the thing, or had done the other thing, when that only serves to sharpen the feeling and make sure it will hurt just as much in 10 years as it does right now? Or in actual fact, hurt more.
“I think about it all the time and when I do, I feel such a heaviness in the pit of my stomach,” 27-year-old Lea Sharp says of her decision to stay in an unhealthy relationship for years after she first realised how destructive it was, less than a month after it began. She was 21 at the time, pregnant and preparing to be a single mother when she began dating a man who she had known for a while and was already a single parent himself. “At the time I thought, ‘Oh, this man must be amazing to want to take over parenting a child who isn’t biologically his,’” Sharp says. “And he was very doting, to begin with, but after the birth, he became very jealous and threatened by my son. My instincts flared right away but my mindset was that I just needed to stick it out.”
Esta historia es de la edición November 2017 de ELLE Australia.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición November 2017 de ELLE Australia.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Books: Shelf-Care
Find a little respite in this season’s most exciting new reads
Men's Rites
Deciding to go through a gender transition isn’t easy for anyone. But the hardest person for journalist Daniel Mallory ortberg to convince was himself
Kick Start
In these uncertain times, louis vuitton’s artistic director nicolas ghesquière is looking to the past to help make sense of the future
Music: Everything Is Illuminated
Phoebe Bridgers is a musician who revels in the darkness, albeit having earned her place in the spotlight
SUPER NATURE ESCAPISM WILDERNESS BREATHING INFRESH AIR BATHING IN SUNSHINE
IN THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY AND NEW HORIZONS, MODEL GEORGIA FOWLER HEADS FOR THE GREAT OUTDOORS
THE big CLEANSE
WE’VE PURGED OUR KITCHEN CABINETS OF SUGAR AND CULLED THE CLOTHES THAT DON’T SPARK JOY, BUT WE MAY HAVE ARRIVED AT THE MOST BENEFICIAL (AND EASIEST) CLEANSE OF ALL
TALKING to strangers
SINCE THE EARLY 1900S, AN AGONY AUNT HAS BEEN A WILLING EAR. BUT AT A TIME OF DMS AND ASKME-ANYTHINGS, SEEKING ADVICE FROM SOMEONE YOU DON’T KNOW HAS BECOME RISKY BUSINESS
singled OUT
WE’VE ENTERED AN ERA OF MYRIAD RELATIONSHIP STATUSES – COUPLED, FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, OPEN, POLYGAMOUS, THREE-DIGITALDATES-IN-BUT UNSURE-WHERE-THIS-IS-GOING. But is flying solo the last taboo?
GYPSY CREEK
INTERIOR DESIGNER LOUELLA BOÌTELGILL TAKES US INSIDE HER QUIRKY BYRON BAY HINTERLAND CREATION, WHICH OVERFLOWS WITH A BEACHY, HAPPY VIBE
DRIVE: DESIGN in motion
HOW THE HOTTEST INTERIOR TRENDS COULD DEFINE WHAT YOUR NEXT CAR LOOKS LIKE