Can regret have an upside?

Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share three thoughts or insights meant to help performing arts students and young professionals flourish in their life and career. Today, in honor of my most recent guest on the ArtsBound Podcast, we are taking a fresh look at a recurring theme: aligning our values to those of our work and environment. I’m also announcing a free interactive webinar I’ll be leading next month for high school musicians and theatre artists. 

- 4.5-minute read -

(NOTE: I started ArtsBound because I believe the world would be a better place with more people living their true calling. If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free, and I’ll never share or sell your data.)

1. Special parent episode of the ArtsBound Podcast.

Young musicians, dancers, and theatre artists grapple with any number of internal and external obstacles as they navigate the decision to pursue a career in their artform. 

But their parents have their own set of challenges and concerns, especially if they don’t have a personal connection with someone who has established a successful arts career.

This week, my guests on the ArtsBound Podcast are Esther and Tom van Dijk. Their son, Jasper, is a film composer and sound designer at Bleeding Fingers Music and has also been featured on the podcast (Episode 3).

In our conversation, Esther and Tom discuss how they each supported Jasper in his artistic pursuits and the unique ways in which each of them processed their own feelings about the hurdles, struggles, and prospects that lay before their son.

One of the main take-aways is Esther’s encouragement to other parents: 

Support your children so that they may have no regrets; encourage them to give their passions a chance, even if it means changing course later.

Listen to my whole interview with Esther and Tom.

2. The nature of regret.

After hearing Esther explain her no-regrets philosophy, I thought it would be an appropriate theme for this week’s newsletter.

Most of us are familiar with regret as a feeling that follows one of two occurrences:

• We did something that had a negative consequence; or

• We chose not to do something we would have enjoyed doing.

Regret is a feeling, akin to self-pity, that enacts an immediate drain on your energy. Regret is disempowering, robbing you of your ability to act in the present as it drags your attention into the past.

No wonder Esther believes so strongly in combating it!

In the next item, I’ll dig a little into why I think regret can have such sway over us and how you can transform feelings of regret into something much more constructive.

But first, there’s one more aspect of this feeling we should understanding:

The fear of regret.

I have many vivid memories of wrestling with the fear of regret. In one case, I was sitting in the office of the superintendent who hired me for my first job. He had mentored me through my first two years of teaching, and now he was moving on to a job at another school district. Simultaneously, I was considering leaving that job to follow my girlfriend-at-the-time as she took a new position several states away, and I was seeking his advice.

I was frozen in indecision, too afraid that I would regret what I chose.

He told me this: “As children, we must make choices between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. But when we become adults, the most difficult decisions we face are between ‘right’ and ‘right’. And if we find we’re unhappy with our choices, it’s never too late to choose again.”

Fear of regret fosters indecision. And in my experience, prolonged indecision - ironically, and without exception - leads to regret.

Your personal power and your creative energy lie in your ability to choose. And that takes us to our last item this week.

3. Converting regret into creative energy.

If you let it, regret will sap your energy until you have none left. Regret’s power over us is so strong because the (in)action that evokes regret is, at its core, an act of self-betrayal.

As a result of many factors - the most profound being a fear of our own personal power - humans are prone to sabotaging our own best interest. You may think you are getting what you want or need when as a child you steal your friend’s cookie, or as an adult you stay home from a trip to complete a project for work. But when the friend then denies their friendship, or you feel (probably accurately) that you missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime experience, regret takes hold.

But you don’t have to fully submit to regret. You can actually convert regret into your own unique creative energy.

Regret is a reliable indicator of our most core values, those that might fall out of view when we are tending to external expectations or reacting to base impulses. Acting in alignment with your values is the best way to maximize your personal power and creative energy.

Here’s an illustration.

I find the lens of archetypal psychology insightful beyond comparison when it comes to understanding our individual and collective psychologies (see this article or this newsletter for some of my past writing on the topic). As seen through this lens, every archetype has a light aspect and a bipolar shadow - one pole being hyperactive, the other passive.

See this example of the King archetype:

Expressing either pole of the shadow of an archetype will create a mess for the person channeling that energy, as well as those around them. On the flip side, the light aspect represents the benefits of expressing that archetype in its fullness.

We can look at our actions/decision-making (aka agency) in a similar way:

Whether or not we acknowledge it, dwelling in the shadow of our agency will produce regret. Our response to regret can also be understood within the same model:

By regarding and processing our regret, it loses its power over us, and we can begin to peel back the layers of emotion that encapsulate our core values. And as you might expect, this makes it way easier to live into those values in the future, leading to noticeable increases in creative energy!

See you next week!

Lee

PS - If someone you know (including yourself!) is a high school student considering careers in music, theatre, or dance, check out the FREE INTERACTIVE WEBINAR I’m leading on February 10. This 1-hour program is designed to introduce high school artists (all grades 9-12) to the career design process and get them asking powerful questions to help guide the decisions they will make about what to do after graduation.