The Truth about Avoiding Regret

Regret has a powerful pull.

 

They say one of the strongest feelings experienced as we get older is the regret of not trying something when we were younger.  What stops us from giving those opportunities a try?

 

Fear of failure.

 

That’s the most common culprit.  We’re afraid that we’ll look foolish when it fails, as if failure is some sort of trap from which we can’t recover.

 

That’s crazy.

 

One of my favorite quotes is from Sir Ken Robinson:

 

 

Failure is generally not fatal.  In fact, the little failures along the way are opportunities to get better, but if we never take the risk, we never get the reward.

 

Scott Glaser is a pilot.  In fact, he’s one of the most experienced pilots around.  He has flown more than 80 different kinds of planes, but he had an appointment with regret when he was a teenager.

 

Scott always wanted to fly military jets.  The idea of flying fast, having all that power, and the agility of those expensive planes was positively intoxicating to his senses.  Then a series of circumstances blocked his opportunity to join the military to learn how to fly those planes.

 

Regret had put Scott’s plans on the chopping block and was about to cut them into little tiny pieces…

 

But Scott knew the truth about avoiding regret.

 

He decided that even though he wasn’t able to join the military, he was still going to find a way to become a pilot qualified to fly his raucous aerobatic dreams.  He learned from the little failures and the big ones how to aim high, miss, and aim even higher.

 

Today, Scott regularly flies those powerful jets and other even cooler planes.  For Scott’s full story, listen to today’s episode of the Table Top Inventing podcast:

 

Carpe Diem,

Steve

 

PS – If you come back to this message is a few weeks, here is the direct link to Scott’s show notes page.