You've always wanted to take that road trip through the USA or have you considered quitting your boring office job. The trip had to wait because there was no time or money for a vacation. Because you were afraid of the future, you preferred to keep your job instead of quitting. And now you're sitting there and thinking: Was this all a really big and bad mistake? Or maybe you just regret spending the whole summer in the office? Scientists at Cornell University have examined the question of whether we have to regret wrong decisions. No matter whether it's travel, work, love or anything else - the researchers advise above all to avoid the worst mistake!

Think for a moment about your life so far. Have you lived it to the fullest so far or are you constantly making lazy compromises and regretting wrong decisions? Just what that JourneysWhen it comes to life, jobs and relationships, you can actually make incredibly bad decisions that are difficult to correct afterwards. We at Just Wanderlust are not immune to this either.

After completing my master's degree, I actually wanted to hang around in California for a month or two, rent a car, see the country and its people and just have a good time. The cheap apartment in L.A. was already booked, the flight was picked out and we were supposed to leave two months later. That's when I got the promise of my first real job after graduating. Damned! I thought, what bad timing!

Dream job for dream vacation - and I was supposedly “sensible”: The job worked out, the dream vacation in California was canceled. You can imagine what I'm trying to say: Regretting wrong decisions isn't really my style, but in this case it always gives me a chill when I think back to what could have been!

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Learning Acceptance - Each of us sometimes makes bad decisions that we regret

Acceptance of one's own supposedly wrong decisions is therefore the top priority. Tell yourself: I accept that I did this or that in this or that situation because based on the information I had at the time, my decision felt right at the time.

If you accept what has happened, you will find immediate relief and have already taken the first step towards making better decisions in the future. Accept that you have made some wrong decisions so far and accept that you will also make one or the other lousy choice in the future. Accept that making better decisions tend to be a learning process.

If you accept what has happened, you will find immediate relief and have already taken the first step towards making better decisions in the future. Accept that you have made some wrong decisions so far and accept that you will also make one or the other lousy choice in the future. Accept that making better decisions tend to be a learning process.

Sascha Tegtmeyer

You can't just make supposedly right decisions

Just think briefly about your previous life. Have you lived it to the fullest or are you constantly making lazy compromises and to regret wrong decisions? Especially when it comes to travel, jobs and interpersonal relationships, you can actually make incredibly bad decisions that are difficult to correct afterwards. This makes it all the more important to learn from wrong decisions and make better decisions in the future.

Because you can't make every decision correctly - you would have to be clairvoyant to do that. I'm not immune to that either - my dear, how many bad decisions I've made. Especially when it comes to traveling: After completing my master's degree, I actually wanted to go to California for a month or two, rent a car, see the country and its people and just have a good time. But nothing came of it due to a pretty bad decision that I subsequently regretted.

The cheap apartment in L.A. was already booked, the flight was picked out and we were supposed to leave two months later. The anticipation was great and I was looking forward to the trip of a lifetime. That's when I was accepted for my first real job after graduating, which I applied for straight away just for fun.

Damned! I thought, what bad timing! dream job against dream holiday - and I was supposedly “sensible”: The job became it, the dream vacation in California was canceled and I started working right after completing my master’s degree. In the next few years there has probably not been a day that I haven't regretted giving up my life for a job.

Some realizations in life take time

You can guess what I'm trying to say: To regret wrong decisions is actually not my style, but in this case it always catches me cold when I think back to what might once have been. And what then really happened in the end: I have 8 unpaid overtime hours in front of you every week Desktop stuck in a musty office instead of taking the trip of a lifetime. But it gave me a realization that will determine the rest of my life: time is more important than money. Time is the real gold, your most important resource.

And since I probably still have more than half my life ahead of me, I fortunately still have plenty of time to translate this knowledge into action and to fill my life with adventures. On the other hand, however, you also have to accept that some insights in life take time and you can't force them - all the better when you suddenly gain the insight and let it determine your actions.

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There are bad decisions to regret, especially when traveling

Are you always completely dutiful or do you prefer to follow your dreams, even when the bank account is empty and duty calls? Basically, there are always two or more paths: One is the path of least resistance. And the other is the road that leads straight out of your comfort zone and into the unknown. I had a choice between a supposedly secure office job that paid me money and a choppy, open-ended road trip that could have taken me anywhere else. Maybe I would live in California today?!

What if you had taken the rocky road?

Where would you live if you had taken the rocky road more often? Everyone has doubts about their own decisions. But undoing wrong decisions is difficult. I could spend a month in California at any time today, no problem at all. But it wouldn't be the same - and a trip like that wouldn't make up for the bad decision I made back then. But what does science say about the problem of wrong decisions that we regret? In any case, the oft-quoted “there are no wrong decisions” is not one of the researchers’ findings.

Researchers identify the biggest wrong decision that makes you regret it afterwards

I let you participate in my own wrong decisions. But what does science actually say about it? What are the current insights into wrong decisions? Researchers see it this way - read the following sentence several times and let it melt in your mouth:

The majority of people regret wrong decisions because they regret not doing justice to the person they really want to be from the bottom of their hearts.

According to Cornell University study Three out of four adults regret not the wrong decision they made, but - and this is the result of too few and bad decisions - that they did not live up to their own expectations of themselves and were not the person they thought they were should be after.

The most consistent regret is when we live up to the person we want to be. “People are more haunted by regrets for not fulfilling their hopes, goals, and aspirations than by regrets for failing to fulfill their duties, obligations, and responsibilities,” author and psychologist Tom Gilovich writes in the study.

That sheds a whole new light on the decisions - it puts them in relation to the expectations that someone has of themselves, but at the same time detaches the decision-making from a certain action. Because expectations cannot be expressed in terms of a job, a long trip to a completely foreign country or even a two-week trip Luxury vacation in the Maldives fasten.

And the temporal dimension also becomes irrelevant upon closer inspection. It's about the mindset that sees a discrepancy between expectation and reality and that becomes more destructive the longer it persists in life. In a nutshell, that means people are more persecuted for not fulfilling their dreams, goals and aspirations than from failing to perform their duties, obligations and responsibilities. Repenting wrong decisions is precisely related to this. In positive terms, if you follow your dreams, goals and aspirations, you are on the right track.

Result of the study: People actually make too many wrong life decisions

The Cornell University study by author Tom Gilovich draws on earlier research. According to these previous studies, people most regret the things they did not do and not the things they did. At this point we have to throw in the much-cited and well-known quote from Mark Twain:

In 20 years' time, you will be more disappointed in the things you haven't done than in the things you did. So untie the knot, run out of the safe haven. Catch the trade winds with your sails. Explore. Dreams.

Mark Twain

The accuracy of this aphorism has now been scientifically proven. Researcher Gilovich and team interviewed hundreds of patients and online respondents in six studies. The researchers based on three elements that make up a person's self-image:

• 1. Actual attributes that a person believes they have
• 2. ideal attributes such as hopes, goals, aspirations, and desires
• 3. internal imperatives such as sense of duty, duties, obligations and responsibilities

They asked the research participants to use these descriptions to list and categorize their greatest regrets. The result of the study was amazing - and I want to repeat it again: The regrets of wrong decisions always related to the hopes, goals, aspirations and wishes that were not realized and almost never to duties, obligations and responsibilities. 76 percent of the participants indicated that they were not fulfilling their ideal selves. I think: that is understandable. Who regrets not having done a duty in their office job? But we all regret the trip that we didn't make and that we didn't wake up the adventurer in us, even though we actually feel that way with all our hearts.

Undo Wrong Choices - Awakening often comes too late

Yes, what is the worst mistake when you make wrong decisions? Very simple: wait and see and do nothing. Palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware put together a book a few years ago of anecdotal accounts from patients who are near the end of their lives. And in this she gains the following insight, which is probably the quintessence of what Tom Gilovich's meta-study has revealed:

When people realize that their life is almost over and look back at it clearly. Then it is easy to see how many dreams have remained unfulfilled.

Bronnie Ware

Writes goods. “Most people hadn't even fulfilled half of their dreams. And they had to die knowing that the unfulfilled dreams were due to decisions they had made or not made. ”It was now impossible to reverse the wrong decisions.

Gilovich, on the other hand, puts it a little less drastically: We judge our lives by how close we are to the ideal person we want to be, according to the author. If you look back later, you can see the ideal person and whether you were this dream person. The dimension of duty, on the other hand, is irrelevant: at the end of life, very few people feel sorry for whether someone has fulfilled their duty or not.

And this is exactly why I took up the study. Because I say: Most of us are aware of this whole problem. But in everyday life the striving for the ideal self is all too quickly lost. Every now and then you just need a reminder - a small alarm clock to wake up again. Let this ring now.

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Dealing with bad decisions – according to researchers, there is hope

Repenting wrong decisions is one thing. But we can't change it, no matter how hard we try. The world has turned on and here I am, five years after my planned dream trip should have taken place. I can turn myself on my head and yet I can no longer change the course of events. The good thing is: I don't even have to.

Because the problem is and remains the same: inaction! Inaction in the here and now. And with it comes the equally easy solution, as from now and in the future you will never have to regret wrong decisions again: "Just do it!" - "make easy" is the solution the scientists spend as well.

According to researcher Gilovich and team, people are much busier in fulfilling missed commitments than in their ideal self. That would take revenge later.

Tom Gilovich sums up the results of his survey briefly and simply. Because the solution to the entire problem of life-changing wrong decisions is very easy. “Don't wait for inspiration, just do it! And besides: Forget what others might think of you! Failure to be your ideal self is usually inaction, ”Gilovich reports.

That inaction can be a missed trip, your dream startup that you didn't start, or just that girl you didn't ask out on a date. In the end, it's these things that we regret. Not necessarily when we are at the end of our life, but simply pause and look back. Like at the end of summer when we notice that we have been sitting in or out of the office for far too many hours Smartphone have looked instead Sun, beach and ocean to enjoy.

Make better decisions – Overcoming doubts about your own choices

The bad news is, if you have reached the end of your life and not acted out your most honest, real self, you will painfully regret the wrong choices. The good news is: if you get the curve in time and have many years of life ahead of you, you still have a hell of a lot of opportunities to make good decisions and to become the person you have always been - if you are honest with yourself - wanted to be.

Back then, I quickly regretted my decision to choose the job over travel. Fortunately, I started very quickly to make better and more frequent decisions and relatively soon ended up in a job that enabled me to combine exciting dream trips with work relatively well. Quite a fulfilling affair. Until I decided that I had to develop myself further. And there I founded out of the deepest, most personal need Just wanderlustto travel and write about.

Take action and start making important decisions today. Otherwise, you might end up regretting it.

Sascha Tegtmeyer

I love to write - I love to travel - and if I want to be true to my own self-image, I have to bring the two together. Because I wanted to share my experiences with people like you and you Tips wanted to give that make your life just that little bit better. And of course that is that too Motivation this post. To give you an inspiration, a suggestion to do something better (or you just realize that you've been doing all of this right a long time ago).

And so today I no longer really regret my former wrong decision not to have lived in the USA. I have learned a lot more to overcome doubts about my own decisions by acting. In principle, the law can be expressed in a single maxim:

Travel, job, friends and family – so you never have to regret anything again

I clearly believe that there is an easy way to never have regrets. Although there are many motivations and ways to shape one's life one way or another, a few basic behaviors have emerged that simply make your life better and are guaranteed to reduce regrets in retrospect. Whether traveling and vacation, family and friends or the right job: You don't always have to turn your entire life upside down in order not to regret wrong decisions later. I have to remind myself of it often so as not to forget.

1. Spend as much time as possible with your family - mother, father, brother, sister, grandparents

I don't have to say much about that. Most of us take family for granted until they are no longer there. Time is running out and you will end up regretting every single second that you haven't spent with your loved ones. You can also just travel with your family if you get along well. I am always out and about with my parents and brother because it really makes for wonderful experiences and memories.

Nothing in life can be so beautiful that it couldn't be nicer to share with good friends. Even if you are wealthy and have made the most beautiful trips, you will later regret not sharing the time with your closest friends. When was the last time you got in touch with your best friend? Are you starting to plan a trip together now?

2. Search for the love of your life and travel with him / her around the world

Many casual acquaintances may be fulfilling in the short term. But in the long run you will have the best time when you travel the world together with the love of your life. In addition to all the other advantages of a stable partnership, traveling together or an extensive vacation is probably the most decisive and best experience that you will rarely regret later as a wrong decision. Traveling as a couple is the icing on the cake. I really like to travel alone, but compared to a tour with a loved one, traveling alone is rather bland.

3. The thing with the job

Yes we all have to Make money and most of us spend a good part of our lives doing jobs we either hate or just don't really enjoy doing. Do the math: 46 weeks a year, 8 hours a day, almost 170 hours a month, minus something Vacation, you spend time in an office trying to make a living, mostly paying rent and bills. The main reason for this: fear, comfort and indolence - and one of the main reasons for regretting wrong decisions later in life.

So if you think there is another way, then do it now. Build up a side business on the internet - later you might be able to make it your main job. Start saving and invest your money to build passive income. Most workers should be able to put aside between €10.000 and €50.000 in a year or two – €50.000 is more than enough as a cushion, depending on your lifestyle. And then you start something great that really fulfills you.

4. Practice mindfulness in order to experience life consciously at all times

Wherever you are or whatever you are doing, practice mindfulness and be fully involved. One of the worst habits of our time is not to really perceive deeply at all, otherwise being constantly lost in thought and distracted. Also Digital detox can be useful. Because we skim things and end up not even keeping half.

On some trips - especially in Asia - we see people taking a selfie while taking a selfie, only seeing the world through their smartphone camera and not really seeing it anymore. I also take photos for mine Travel reports, but at the same time I take a lot more time to really perceive the world around me. You will regret it later if you have not really been mindful of the important moments in your life.

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Regretting wrong decisions and making better decisions – start today

My conclusion

If you feel like you're not living up to the ideal of yourself, start today. Become clear about which ideal you follow and why. I'm curious and enjoy exploring - and I really enjoy sharing my findings to help other people live better lives. That makes sense to me. What makes sense to you? The lesson you can take away from this post is this: There is no reason to regret wrong decisions.

The task is to live up to your very own self and act accordingly. As you act and thus automatically make decisions over and over again, your decisions will become better and better. According to science, the worst thing you can do is sit idle. This increases the likelihood that you will look back and regret deeply at the end of your life.

Regret wrong decisions - what would you like to do differently? And what tips do you have to help you make better decisions? And which travel destinations would you have liked to have visited? Share your experiences in the comments.

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