Regret Keeps You From Success, Where Do Your Biggest Regrets Come From?

Online, August 18, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Regret keeps you from success
Where do your biggest Regrets come from?
By Douglas Vermeeren

Regret is like a weighted anchor that can tether you so strongly to the past that it may prevent you from accessing the best possible future. Regret is defined as memories with high emotional content, particularly with a sense of loss, sorrow or frustration. We all have some regrets and our ability or inability to manage them can be the difference between a life of ease and awareness or a life of stress and turmoil.

The bigger the thought of regret the more difficult it is manage those thoughts. The more heavily they weigh upon you will paralyze your ability to create a better future.

Where do your biggest regrets come from?
To understand this subject clearly we must first understand the 5 ways your brain learns and processes information. (This is something that is covered in greater detail in the book and movie "How Thoughts Become Things." and the practical application of using this strategy to increase wealth, improve relationships and lifestyle are covered in the courses The Neuroscience of Success and Primed for Power.)

Essentially there are 5 ways or categories your brain uses to process information. We all use each of the 5 areas, although we are generally more dominant in one or more of these areas. While all of these areas are important one specific area is responsible for most of the major worries and long lasting regrets in our life.

The 5 ways your Brain learns are Factual learning, Experiential learning, Social learning, Spacial learning and Intuitional learning.

Just briefly, here are simple descriptions of these learning categories so you can understand them in the context of this article.

Factual - This has reference to things that we interpret as fact. For example, 2 + 2 = 4, the capital of the United States is Washington D.C., and the declaration of independence was drafted in 1776. These are facts. Our mind often categorizes opinions as facts too, but that's a discussion for another time.

Experiential - This has reference to things we can only learn through experience or by direct interaction with our senses. (Taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight and sense of equilibrium or balance) For example, something like riding a bike or ice skating can only be learned through experience.

Social - This has reference to what we learn through observing those we interact with. This specifically includes what are we learning from our families, communities, religious environments, business associates, classmates and anyone else we may interact with. This is where much of our moral compasses are established as well as our beliefs and values.

Spacial - On the exterior this has a lot to do with organization and construction. For example, this is the learning you experience as you build a jig saw puzzle, play a game of Tetrus or even hang a picture on a wall. On the inside, in your mind, this has a lot to do with how we organize our thoughts and how we organize things into context. Sometimes this is referred to as conditioning. (As a side note it is in this category that top achievers are separated from those who struggle to create wealth, better relationships and lives of abundance. If you want to be wealthy then you need to learn how to master this kind of learning. More on this in a future discussion or get the book or audio program "The 5 Ways your brain learns" available on either of my websites listed below.)

Intuitional - The source of this learning is often hard to describe as it comes from within and is somewhat intangible. Something either feels right, or it doesn't. With intuitional learning we know or learn something from out 'gut instinct' or a 'hunch.' Intuitional learning is the source of our greatest creativity and power. All significant successes have been sparked into being by this kind of learning.

So where do our regrets come from?

Is it Factual learning? Let's think about this. Have you ever had a lasting regret long term because you didn't know the answer to 12,732 divided by 14? Or because you didn't know the state capital of South Carolina? Or the exact date in history that the Berlin wall fell? You might have been slightly bothered, but the regret soon past. Our biggest regrets don't come from factual learning.

Is it Experiential learning? Perhaps, while trying to learn a new thing like cooking you burnt the turkey or like me on one occasion when baking a cake, I forgot to even turn the oven on. Was it a source of major regret? Not necessarily.

Is it Social learning? No doubt you have called out to someone in a crowd, "Jason!" only to realize that oops, that's not my friend Jason. You duck your head and pretend it was someone else who shouted out. Kind of embarrassing. Or maybe you tripped while walking down the street and picked yourself up quick and ran away hoping no one would notice. Also embarrassing, but not the biggest form of regret.

What about spacial learning? No one has ever been embarrassed long term because they struggled to put a jig saw puzzle together or didn't hang a picture straight. This is not the source of our biggest regret either.

What is it?

It is intuitional. Our biggest regrets come when we felt something strongly and ignored the prompting. We experience the most regret when we know we should have listened to our gut, when we felt inside we should do something and did not do it.

This is where our biggest regrets come from. We will remember our whole life the love that got away, the time we should have acted on something we knew needed to be done, the words we knew would hurt and we knew we shouldn't have, but we did. These are the source of our biggest regrets. Not listening to our inner voice or intuition.

From a science point of view our intuition is the only aspect of how our brain processes information that does not rely heavily on logic. And if you think about it are any of your real dreams built on logic? If they are they're probably not big enough. They should be built on passion. And passion like intuition are both very feeling based in nature and have little to do with logic.

My challenge to you is to listen carefully for that intuitional voice and trust your gut to guide you more often. Especially at the times when we don't see logically how something may work out.

There have been many times in my life when I knew I needed to do something, even though the timing wasn't perfect, or the finances were not in place, or I had to put something else off for the moment. I wish I could say I always listened, but I too have some regrets. One thing is certain, my best answers and results always came when I have seized an opportunity that my intuition, not my logic, told me to grasp.

Douglas Vermeeren is the director of the SUCCEED Research Center which is dedicated to sharing research on the systems that top achievers use to create lasting success. Over the last decade Vermeeren has interviewed more than 400 of the world's top achievers, including business leaders, celebrities and professional or Olympic athletes. Douglas Vermeeren is the author of Guerrilla Achiever (With Jay Levinson) and the creator of The Opus (with Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Dr. Joe Vitale, Dr. John Demartini, Dr. Sue Morter, Marci Shimoff, Bill Bartmann, Bob Doyle and Morris Goodman.) Currently Doug is completing another film entitled, How Thoughts Become Things. This film will explore the process of how our thoughts become manifest in our lives as reality. For more on this film go to: www.HowThoughtsBecomeThings.com For more on Douglas Vermeeren go to: www.SucceedResearch.com Douglas Vermeeren can be reached for speaking engagements and training at 1.877.393.9496.

The principles of the 5 ways your brain learns or processes information is used as a cutting edge tool to create change that lasts, allow you to stay focused with goals that matter, sell more effectively, become a better communicator and manage and grow wealth. All of these strategies and their application are exposed in further instructional materials available in live seminars or products produced through the Succeed Research Center.

Go to www.SucceedResearch.com or www.HowThoughtsBecomeThings.com for a listing of live events and materials available for your further learning. Or call us to reserve your copy of the upcoming book everyone is calling the 'New Think and Grow Rich,' "The 5 ways your Brain learns - and how you can harness this for your prosperity."