Things I Regret - And What I Learnt from my Mistakes

Oct. 11, 2020, 3:40 p.m.

Introduction

You know, I’ve messed up my life a couple of times in the past. And who hasn’t? Looking back, there are multiple occasions where I would have changed my decisions if I were given the chance to choose again.

We all know that there are no second chances at life, but even so, regrets are important because they tell you when you screwed up, why you screwed up, and how to avoid screwing up in the future. Regrets are important not only as an emotion, but also as learning material. No matter how small, having a regret means that something went wrong, and it should be reflected upon so that it won’t happen again.

In this post, I talk about some of the things that I regret the most, in hopes that you will take away something, whatever it is, to improve the way you make decisions and live your life.

Let's get cracking!

1 Going with the flow

A few years ago when I was 12 years old, I moved to Singapore and studied there for about one and a half years. It was a very challenging period of time, as I was in a new country with new people. Unsurprisingly, the 12 year old me did everything I could to fit in as well as possible, as soon as possible. This included smaller things like going out to eat with friends when I just wanted to lie in bed and relax, as well as bigger decisions like choosing what I wanted to do for extracurriculars.

Naturally, this didn’t end well for me. I was caught up in commitments that took up most of time, I was worried too much about my social life and too little about my academic and personal life. Much of my time was spent on things that I wasn't passionate about, and consequently, too little was spent on personal development.

There are pros and cons to going with the flow. Pros: I've attempted things during that period of time, that I would otherwise never have chose to do. Cons: Many times, they turned out to be things that:

I wasn't good at
I didn't like
Made me miss out on things that I would have enjoyed

Time spent following is lost time. Instead of making your decisions for yourself, you are allowing others to take control of your life. Yes, having control also means taking full responsibility of the decisions you make. If something went wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself. But it frees you from the influence of others, who have no stake in the success or failure of you.

With all that being said, the years that I spent there taught me many valuable lessons. It made me more mature than I would have been if I wasn’t exposed to the new environment. At a young age, it taught me to be careful of the decisions I make, and consider the reason why I chose what I chose.

2 Not developing a "talent"

The keyword here is developing. Talent is one of things where it's not good enough just to possess it. Have you ever heard of the phrase "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard"? There are many things that I've pursued for months, maybe years, then stopped when my skills plateaued.

I think many people (including me) underestimate the value of a marketable skill. Sure, it’s what gets you a job in the workplace, but even outside of work, having a marketable skill brings you opportunities that you may never have otherwise gotten.

If you think about it, the ones that have attained the most success inside and outside of school are the ones that have something they are really good at. Be it a specific subject (think of all the Math Olympiad geniuses), sports, music, art, speech, those people are able to leverage their talent to add value to the community, thereby getting benefits in return, in the form of scholarships, connections and a better portfolio.

As I was growing up, I tried many things, including but not limited to: singing, piano, drawing, coding, dance, math. But there wasn’t that one skill that I was extraordinary at.

I gave up on piano after grade 5. This wasn’t a decision I regretted, however, because I hated piano, and almost never practised outside of lessons. If I had persisted, I would just have grown to detest piano even more. After quitting piano, I started to learn singing, which I enjoyed much more.

But even then, I didn’t practice frequently. I wasn’t confident about my ability to sing, and didn’t dare to practice when anyone was within hearing range. As a result, I wasn’t very comfortable with my own voice and had (still have) very little control over it.

My biggest regret about this is that I never persisted with one skill for a long time, I would get distracted by other things that were happening in my life. This meant that I had nothing I was exceptionally good at, which was a great disadvantage compared to those that spend hours every day developing their one talent, and could reap the rewards of such dedication.

3 Not "showing off"

I always have been under the impression that as long as I did my part well, I would be rewarded for my efforts. The way I operated was like a business that had a good product but had no advertising.

I always did my own thing. I studied, I did leadership, I did sports, I did music. But there were 2 core issues with this:

I wasn't very good at anything (point 2)
The relevant people didn't know what I was doing

As a result, there were many opportunities that slipped by my fingers. I wasn't good enough to be considered for scholarships, I wasn't considered for leadership positions, and people rarely found me to do something for them.

Opportunity and ability comes hand in hand. When opportunity comes to you, you can only take advantage of that chance if you have the skills to do so. And if you have ability, then opportunity will naturally come your way, under one condition: that other people know of your ability.

To a certain extent, it is necessary to let the relevant people know what you are capable of. For example, I can code (in the most basic manner), and if others know that I can code, they would come to me when they need something coded. Taking the example further, if a Computer Science teacher has some kind of coding opportunity, be it a competition or a project, they might think, "Oh, I know a suitable person for this!" However, this can only happen if others know your ability and your interests.

Only when others know of what you can do, will they come to you when they need help. For example, if people know you can play a music instrument very well, they might ask you to perform for an event they are organising. If they know you can make very good videos, they might ask you to help them make one.

Therefore, it's not good enough just to be good at something, you also have to let other people know that you're good at it, through whatever means.

4 Not trying hard enough

I have this very bad habit of not trying my best in the things I get involved in. I sign up, I participate, but I don't ever give it my all.

This is something that I've thought about and wanted to change for a couple of months, if not years. I have the tendency to say that "oh, I never tried. If I tried, I certainly would have done better." It's so easy to discount the outcome by saying that you never put in the effort, isn't it?

It's like getting a poor grade on a test. If you put in your all and revised really hard for it, you would be crushed if you ended up doing poorly. It's much easier, and much safer, to simply not revise and give yourself an excuse when you get your test results back. Oh, it's not that you're not good enough, it's just that you haven't revised. It makes you feel better, because you feel that your failure is circumstantial.

This is something I still say and do, even today. When I participate in maths competitions as geeks do, I never practice ahead of the competition. I always just go straight in, and do the best I can. Compared to other people that starts practicing weeks, even months ahead, the difference is like that of heaven and hell.

Even when I was taking my SATs a year ago, I never practiced prior to taking the actual test. I did a total of 3 papers, and I sped through all of them. To be frank, I don't even know why I signed up. My mother didn't even know that I was taking the SATs until I told her a few days before the day of the test. Even at the time, everyone around me were preparing precariously. People signed up to summer courses, paid thousands of dollars for detailed lessons, and completed dozens of practice papers. It's honestly depressing, how little effort I put into the things that supposedly matter.

Moving forward, I want to give everything I try my all. If I'm participating, then I'm going to do my best. This also means that I will have to be picky about the things I participate in. As Derek Sivers says, it's either "Hell Yeah!" or "No".

5 Seeing the world through a narrow lens

There is almost always a discrepancy with how you think the world operates, versus how the world actually operates. This discrepancy between expectations and reality is what often causes misinformed decisions, misguided assumptions and misaligned actions.

One way I made such a mistake was when I chose not to take on any "conventional" leadership positions, such as joining the student council. I thought "since everyone is doing it to make their portfolio look better, it probably won't matter much if I don't since it's over saturated with people that aren't genuine about it." I assumed that because it was a checkbox thing that everyone did, it wasn't a valuable experience.

What I failed to consider was that it was popular for a reason. Yes, everyone did it for their portfolio. But it did make your portfolio look better.

Because of my presumptuous assumption that people didn't really care about leadership positions since I considered them to be "fake", I missed out on opportunities, because I was deemed not good enough on the leadership aspect. And it cost me. More than I would have anticipated.

Often times it's necessary to do something to look good, even if it's not beneficial to your personal development. Combined with point 3 above about "showing off" your strengths, it forms the advertising package for your product, which is you.

Conclusion

The more I write, the more I realise that all these regrets I have, all these mistakes I made are all about a single thing: missed opportunities. Whether it is because of my lack of ability, lack of knowledge, or lack of social awareness, it all led to me missing out on chances I could have taken advantage of, or caused me to fail where I could have succeeded.

If there's one thing you take away from reading this post, I hope it'll be that regrets often come in the form of "I didn't do this" rather than "I did this and I regret it". Many times, it's the things you didn't do and you wish you did that leave a long lasting impression on you.

Therefore, if you ever come across an opportunity that sounds appealing, I urge you to take it, especially if it's not within your comfort zone. Otherwise, you might just end up regretting it for the rest of your life.

Comments

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kiri April 24, 2021, 5:43 p.m.

I really agree with some of the points you raise here! It's also so aggravating to realise, (in point 3) that sometimes the people that get the opportunity aren't even that talented/skilled anyway, but they just market themselves better. I've been absolutely shocked more than once when I see —in my opinion— a completely underqualified and inexperienced person taking up the task when I know for a fact that there are better contenders directly available. And then you realise that's how the job market works and why even though there are a million and one solutions to so many problems, they never get out due to poor marketing. In my opinion it's actually what makes some parts of the science field so frustrating haha, because no matter what sort of revolutionary discovery you've made, if you don't convince people of it's worthiness, it becomes the equivalent of kindle. "The way I operated was like a business that had a good product but had no advertising." This is such a wonderfully apt simile to capture the hopelessness of the situation I also think 'not showing off' has really been a habit in some schools that is the most harmful, in fear of standing out as the exemplary one. Although, I personally do think parts of it are inevitable when people reach their middle school years. Other than the possibility of jealousy, and the lack of regard for 'intelligence' in the classroom, I've had a thought that it might be because people WILL feel like you're trying to suck up to authority. In elementary school, teachers are your caretakers; your secondary parents. In high school, they straddle the line of becoming your friends. Middle school is when teachers and students are divided the most clearly, "Them" and "Us", and so by deciding to side with one, you've betrayed the other. It cultivates into an environment where merit gets punished and you're afraid to succeed. About point 1, I do think you were /quite/ a young age when you went to another country! I can imagine that it's such a struggle with wanting to assimilate. You face the problem of deciding between other's influences and your own direction, and you were forced to choose between them. The act of conscious sacrifice and lost opportunity is something many don't experience until a lot later in life, I'm honestly so shocked that you managed to get such a valuable takeaway from it. I'm tipping my fedora in respect :) Haha...I can really see your pride playing a large role here, and some of your learning points are brought about by the pride in question being laid to rest. You not daring to practice something in fear of others seeing the 'bad', unpolished mistakes you make; you not caring to sign up for leadership positions because you believe you are better than those superficial acts. (Do correct me if I'm wrong, this is just amateur speculation) Through the whole process, even though it's very likely caused regrets, I can see how you've taken the time and effort to reflect. I dare say that all your regrets might very well be extremely worth it! I'm actually curious, though: do you think point 2 — cultivating a talent — matters in particular, if you manage to market yourself well enough? Or is there even a point of doing so, because even if you do develop that skill very well, others who are mediocre that 'show off' better than you will take those opportunities anyway? P.S. I do also think that though it is regrettable for you not to have developed a 'talent' at a young age at which you can feel proud about, it is quite impossible for someone aged 5-14 (I'm assuming you're lamenting this period of increased learning capacity) to have developing prime marketable skills as their focus, and have the emotional maturity to recognise it's importance, rather than doing something that they really enjoy as a hobby. I think that oftentimes hobbies will, in some way, overlap or transfer in a soft skill or a mindset, though this might not explicitly obvious. Throwaway thought. Maybe it's the luck of some people whose hobbies result in obvious hard skills that allow them to be noticed early on.