Living a regret-free life Part One

Regret in the Quran:

وَأَنْفِقُوا مِنْ مَا رَزَقْنَاكُمْ مِنْ قَبْلِ أَنْ يَأْتِيَ أَحَدَكُمُ الْمَوْتُ فَيَقُولَ رَبِّ لَوْلَا أَخَّرْتَنِي إِلَىٰ أَجَلٍ قَرِيبٍ فَأَصَّدَّقَ وَأَكُنْ مِنَ الصَّالِحِينَ 

[63:10] And spend out of what We have given you before death comes to one of you and he says: My Lord! If You would only reprieve me for a little while, I would give in charity and become of the righteous doers of good deeds?

The Quran often talks about those who do not spend time and resources wisely will be regretful upon death and on the Day of accounting. The Day of Accounting itself is called yawm ul hasrat, or the day of regret. Although regret may be present if we get warning of our impending death, we are told that the regret is most acute on the Day of judgement when we realise the full impact of the time we wasted in life. Today inshallah we will look at what is regret and how we can live life in a way that we are not regretful at the end of it.

In Sura Fajr, the one who had wasted his life says:

-       يَقُولُ يَا لَيْتَنِي قَدَّمْتُ لِحَيَاتِي

[89:24] He shall say: O! would that I had sent before for (this) my life!

1. What is regret?

Definition of regret is “To remember with pain and longing”. That is, to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that has been done, OR over a loss or missed opportunity. Remorse is a more intense form of regret – from Latin meaning “remordere” - “to bite again”

Usually to do with doing something you wish you had not done OR not doing something you wish you had. So action or inaction or both.

Presupposes that you had power and ability to do it – it was within your control.

To summarize:

1)      Someone had an opportunity to act (or not)

2)      The act (or failure to act) affected them

3)      The consequences of the act (or failure to act) violated their own values, or goals

4)      They felt bad in response to it

So regret is the unpleasant feeling resulting from what you did or did not do in the past. Comes from thinking about the past. “For all the sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘it might have been.” If we experience that our present situation could have been better or disomehow if we had done something different in the past.

To feel regret, we need

1)      agency – the power to act and

2)      imagination to know that things would be better if they had made a different choice

Interestingly, psychologists tell us that the closer you are to your goal, the more acute your regret. Eg, So let's say for instance that you're on your way to your best friend's wedding and you're trying to get to the airport and you're stuck in terrible traffic, and you finally arrive at your gate and you've missed your flight. You're going to experience more regret in that situation if you missed your flight by three minutes than if you missed it by 20. Why? Well because, if you miss your flight by three minutes, it is painfully easy to imagine that you could have made different decisions that would have led to a better outcome. "I should have taken the bridge and not the tunnel. I should have gone through that yellow light." These are the classic conditions that create regret. We feel regret when we think we are responsible for a decision that came out badly, but almost came out well.

Now the time when most people feel regret is towards the end of life. If they have suddenly been faced with a bad prognosis and been told they only have a short time to live or if they are quite old and are preparing for death. The regret is very acute because they know that nothing can be done now. That it is too late.

As this ayat shows us, that although their time is up, they feel that they need more time, the idea is that whatever life I had, I did not finish my business in it, so I need more time. But we all know that malikul mawt does not wait for anyone.

This is partly the reason that we are told to remember death so often – to remind ourselves that we need to make conscious decisions while we are still in the zone of action, while we still have time.

Someone once told a member of the family of the Holy Prophet (saw) that nothing impacts me and I do not get ibrat (life lesson) from anything so what shall I do? He was told, join the funeral and when you are giving a shoulder to the body, pretend that you are lying there and desperately praying that you were giving another chance to not do what you did and to do more of good deeds. And when you come home, act as if He has granted your wish and that you have a new lease on life and you now need to fulfill the promise that you made to do good and stop sinning.

Which one do you think is more powerful – regretting what you did or did not do? Most people regret not doing something or missing opportunity much more than doing something and making a mistake.

The Holy Prophet (saw)said to Abu Dharr: “Abu Dharr, with the passing of days and nights, your age decreases and your deeds are recorded. Death comes suddenly. One who sows good will soon harvest good, and one who sows evil will soon harvest regret. In fact, each sower will gain that which he sows.”

1. What do people usually regret? (not doing – as in this ayat)

The top 5 regrets of the dying:

A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings – carried bitterness and resentment

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Other people who have done research on regrets at the end of life point out that what people regret most is what they did not do, the opportunities that they did not take advantage of while they still had the chance.

Putting all the research together, it appears that what people regret is

1)      Living unconsciously – an unexamined life – living on autopilot, going with the flow

2)      Being reactionary rather than proactive

3)      Wasting time on the wrong things rather on things that matter

4)      Not being forgiving and generous of spirit towards people, not healing relationships

5)      Not taking action – waiting for the right time to live your life purpose or your dreams or work towards your goals. So today inshallah we will focus on dealing with this kind of regret of not doing good actions while we can

Seizing the opportunity to do good: Imam Ali (as): No business should hinder you from being busy for the coming world, hence, surely the length of opportunity is a very short time.

6^th Imam relates that HP (saw) told Ali (as): “O Ali, take advantage of 4 opportunities before other things, your youth before your old age, your health before you are afflicted with illness, your wealth before poverty strikes you, and your life before your death overcomes you.”

1. To have a regret-free life:

1)      Life an examined life – according to your priorities

2)      Manage time

3)      Complete relationships

1. Taking action towards a regret free life

Let us focus on taking action towards our goals. Our goals of getting closer to Allah (swt) and becoming better human beings. We hear so many lectures and khutbas on becoming better human beings, improving our relationship to God and changing this world for the better. When we hear the lectures, we tell ourselves that we are seeking knowledge in the path towards God. We need to remember that Ilm and aml go in hand – there is no action without knowledge and no knowledge without action – we need to fly to Allah with both wings. We need to act on knowledge before seeking more knowledge. Whoever knows must act. Allhumma aoozobeka ilmil la yanfa – oh Allah protect me from knowledge that does not benefit.

How do we often respond to them? We discuss the speaker, whether or not he was interesting, his manner of talking, how he agreed or disagreed with another speaker etc. But is this the purpose of the lecture? There is another way to respond: We can ask ourselves if this lecture or dars made any difference to my relationship with God, to my relationship with others or helped me to contribute to making this world a better place? If I cannot see any change in myself at all as a result of attending these gatherings, if the memory of what was said does not even make it to the car park, have we gained anything at all for our efforts?

So how should we respond to what we hear, to what we are likely to hear in the month of Ramadan? Here is a suggestion. At the beginning of the month and before you attend any lecture, make an intention that you will take steps and make changes during this month. Some of us take lots of notes during these lectures. I don’t know about you, but I seldom go back to those notes! It is still valuable to take them because it does help to stabilize the knowledge within the brain. However, what has really helped me is to make one action list called “Bright Ideas that I can Use” and just write down concrete action oriented steps on it. Let us see how the Ramadan experience can be different for me if at the beginning of the month, I made an intention to act on knowledge that I learn. Next, I would make a quick list of things that I need to work on within myself this year. For example, if I recognize that I have a challenge with doing things consistently or if I have a challenge for waking up for fajr or tahajjud, or praying Quran everyday. Now, every time I go to a lecture, I can guarantee you that the lecture will appear to be tailor made for me. My unconscious mind will be scanning and taking in the information from a very different perspective. Instead of wasting my time judging the speaker or the attendees or the decor, I have a goal and a focus and am much more likely to get something meaningful from the dars. Instead of sharing my views on the speaker with everyone, I will be asking myself. “what will I be doing differently as a result of this Ramadan or this particular sermon?”

Hadith: Allah has mercy on the servant who intends an action and rushes urgently to perform that action and takes hopes and expectations of living long out of his mind to do it later

1. How to take action;

Immediate action when you learn something (bright ideas that I can use) 1 thing from each lecture that you hear.

Imam Ali (as): Failure is a consequence of fear (of taking action), just as deprivation comes as a result of timidity to seize opportunities. Opportunity flees away like the clouds, so seize the opportunity for doing good”.

One of the greatest enemies of creating real change is to have it all figured out before we start to act. Wherever you are is the entry point. We all want to do something big – we look at people who have succeeded and want to be like them – we envy people who can read off ayaat and quote from the Quran – we need to recognize that always – ALWAYS – doing something big starts with little tiny steps taken over a period of time – that is why it is said that “It takes 10 years to become an overnight success”.  

There is a lovely story about a group of seekers who were given a task. They were told that they will go through a tunnel and they may see some things on the floor. They were to walk through the tunnel. They cannot back track. If they pick up stuff from the floor they would regret it and if they do not pick up stuff from the floor they would regret it. Strange. Anyway, so they passed through the tunnel. They saw lots of little and big stones on the floor of the dark tunnel. Some picked up a few because they were curious and some did not pick up any because they wanted to hurry through the tunnel and told themselves they would regret it anyway if they picked up the stones. When they passed through the tunnel, they realised that what they thought were pieces of coal and stones were actually precious stones. Those who had not picked up any were very regretful and those who had picked up a few were also regretful that they had not picked up more.

Hadith of Imam Ali (as) Everyone who dies regrets. The doer of good regrets that he had not done more and the doer of evil regrets that he had done any.

In the path of self development, there are three essential steps to taking positive action. The first is Musharata – which means to make commitments to action. So on a practical level, we need to make goals which are specific and achievable. For example, if I struggle with little knowledge of the Quran, ask myself which is smallest action done consistently which will take me towards a better understanding of the Quran. Can I read 1 or 2 ayat a day? All of us struggle with time, but when we make really small action steps which do not require much time and do them consistently without knowing in 3-6 weeks we will have developed a new habit.

There is a wonderful Smartphone App that I recently discovered – it is called “Healthy Habits”. You put down a habit, program how many times per day or week you want to do it and then keep track of it by tapping on a check mark – really easy.

The is the second part of the steps to positive action – the Muraqaba – in other words watching yourself or keeping track of your progress

Finally, we have Muhasiba, or taking account of yourself. The 6^th Imam is quoted in Bihar Ul Anwar as saying, “Fa hasibu anfusakum qabala an tuhasibu” “Do your own self-auditing for the account of deeds in the this world before being forced to be audited on the Judgement Day”. We are also told that the time of self auditing, we have to be pretty ruthless with ourselves. This becomes very easy when you write things down. You have proof of how well you actually did.

Lastly, in order to start taking actions towards our goals, we need to give up on the outcome. This sounds really strange given that I am always saying we need to keep end in mind and that we need to focus on our goals. Once we have made an intention and we are clear what we want to achieve, we need to start taking action before figuring everything out. Let me explain this with examples:

When you are driving on a dark night, the headlights of the car only light about 200 feet in front of you but that is all that you need to get to your destination – it does not matter that you cannot see the full stretch of the road in front of you.

Look at the bee – it goes from flower to flower sucking the nectar because that is what it is inspired to do – it does not ask itself whether it is good enough or whether it is doing it correctly. It does not recognize the impact it is making by pollinating the flowers and essentially helping life to grow. It simply fulfills its purpose by doing what it is meant to do.

We need to only do the process and leave the result up to God.

The golden hour –key to success is to start the day out right –

1)      Before getting out of bed, it is recommended to say “la hawla wa la quwatta illa bellahe aliul adeem.

2)      Begin your day with recitation of Quran which is highly recommended – not a better motivator

3)      After Salaat spend a few minutes planning your day and the goals you want to achieve. Simply the act of pausing and giving your goals attention is an extremely powerful exercise

4)      As you go through the day, check off the goals as you do them

5)      End of day, after Isha or before you sleep, spend a couple of minutes with muhasiba – how did you do today?