Episode #8: The Solution Is Not a Time Machine

Have you ever regretted a decision you made, or something you said or did?  If you're like most people, you have probably longed for the ability to go back in time and fix a mistake you made so you coudl get out of feeling all that regret.  Well, unless you're Marty McFly from Back to the Future, you'll never have a time machine to go back and change the past.  The good news is, you don't need one.  Tune in to this week's episode to find out how the solution to regret is actually in the present. 

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 8. The solution is not a time machine.

I'm Emily Ricks and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hey everybody, today we're going to talk about regret and what to do when you feel it. So regret is a feeling of sadness, disappointment, or remorse about an action that was taken or not taken.

When you experience regret, you feel sad or disappointed about something in the past, something you wish you had said, something you wish you hadn't said, a decision you made that you wish you hadn't. If you're like most people, when you feel regret, you long for the ability to somehow go back in time and change what you did so you could make it turn out differently. So you could get a different outcome than the one you have that you don't like at all.

That's what regret is usually about. So think about a time when you felt regret. Maybe you said or did something and wish you hadn't.

Maybe you missed out on an opportunity to get to do something you would have wanted because of an action you didn't take. And you wish you could have understood at the time what you were choosing. When have you felt that? When have you had a desire to go back and change the past so you could make a different decision or say or do something different than what you did? I'll tell you about a very recent one for me.

So over fall break, we took three of our four kids to New York and spent a couple of days in New York city. We love musicals and shows. And so we were super excited to get to see a few during our trip.

So picture this, it's Saturday night. We have tickets to see the back to the future musical on Broadway. We went to an off off Broadway matinee that afternoon.

We got to see the Lego store on fifth Avenue. We found a restaurant to grab some food and we were getting ready to go to the show at eight o'clock. So we're sitting at dinner and my husband, Kyle is feeling a little uneasy.

It's like 6, 15 PM. We've got plenty of time. And he says, are you sure the show's at eight and not seven? I just want to make sure we're not going to be late to the show.

I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's eight. That's what's just to make sure I pulled up the tickets. And then my heart stopped.

I stared at the screen. I dropped my jaw and I just like sat there looking at my phone because the tickets didn't say 8 PM and they didn't say 7 PM. They said 2 PM.

We had missed the show. We were sitting at dinner at 6, 15 PM. And it was four hours after the show started that we had tickets for.

I could not believe it. My family gathered around me to witness this devastating fact on my phone screen. And we all read it back to the future musical five tickets, 2 PM.

Like we were flying home the next morning. We totally missed it. And I felt terrible.

And I was thinking like, how could I have screwed this up? How could I not have noticed the showtime? Like I ruined everything. We wasted all this money. Like, why am I such an idiot? And of course, all I wanted in that moment was to be able to go back into the past.

Two months before to the day where I had clicked the 2 PM showtime instead of the 7 PM showtime. Back to that day, two months ago, where I was buying all the tickets to all the things where I selected our seats and checked out for the wrong time. And then created an itinerary thinking it was a date and planned everything else around that.

I wanted so badly to go back to that day and do it over. To pay attention this time and get it right. So I wouldn't be sitting at this restaurant, writhing in this regret and disappointment.

My stomach was churning. My chest felt tight. Cheeks got hot.

Have you ever felt that? In that moment, it seemed like the only way I would ever get any relief would be to go back in time and get those tickets to say 8 PM instead of 2 PM. Well, I bet you're wondering what happened next. I'll tell you.

I called the box office and got an answering machine that said I could leave a message and they would get back to me tomorrow. Not very helpful. So I talked options with my family.

And by the way, they were very supportive and they were very kind. We decided that we would finish eating and then go to the ticket office and tell them our plight and see if there was anything they could do to help us. We had like a little hope that maybe they would let us see a different show or something, or that they could maybe find a way to squeeze us into the back of this one, even if we couldn't all sit together, but we were prepared for the worst.

We were like, there's a high probability that they're going to be like, sorry, there's nothing we can do. Like you missed it. We can't do anything for you.

I was thinking my son, Tyler, when he was a toddler used to say, well, too bad to you. It's like, yeah, that's kind of what we thought they were going to say. Like, well, too bad to you.

The show's passed. We can't do anything. So we were all super disappointed.

And we're like, if we can't go to the show, we'll find something else fun to do together. Maybe we'll end up playing cards in the hotel. And that will be some sort of a bonding memory.

That's super disappointing. So we walked to the theater and they said one of us could go in and talk to someone at the box office. So I went and our conversation went something like this.

Oh, how are you doing today? I'm like, Oh, pretty terrible. Actually, I made a huge mistake and I feel really dumb about it. And I'm wondering if there's anything you can do to help.

And I explained our situation. We're here all the way from Denver. We bought tickets months ago for today.

I meant to get it for eight o'clock accidentally bought them for two, but I didn't actually realize that until we were sitting at dinner. So he asked for my name. He typed some things into the computer and he said, I can help you.

He said, I don't have any seats like the ones you had. These ones will be upstairs. And I'm like, no problem.

If they're not all together, it's fine. We just really, really want to be able to see this show. He printed out five tickets, handed them to me.

And he said, I hope you enjoy the show. I looked down and saw these were comp tickets, zero dollars. And I was overjoyed.

He had transferred our original tickets. He didn't charge us anything. And he'd gotten us five seats together.

I don't know how he did it. I walked back outside to my family and they were braced for terrible news. I held up the tickets and I said, we get to go.

And so we were celebrating and there was relief and excitement and gratitude. And we got to go. The show was amazing.

It totally blew our minds. The special effects were unbelievable. We absolutely loved it.

And I still don't know how it worked out because when we were going to our seats, the usher said, we're sold out tonight. So make sure you sit in the exact right seats. I have no idea how we got five seats together at the last minute.

It kind of felt like a miracle. So here's the concept I want to offer you today. When you feel regret about something you did or didn't do in the past, you have options.

One option is to tell your brain that the only solution is to go back in time and change what you did. It's amazing to me how much energy, a lot of people spend fixating on the past, wishing for it to be different. We believe somehow that this is useful, but I want to offer to you that it isn't at all.

Byron Katie says, you might as well teach a cat how to bark. You can try and try, and the cat will look up at you and say, meow. It's hopeless to try to change the past.

Byron Katie calls it arguing with reality. She says, when I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time, right? In other words, no matter how much you dwell on what you wish you had done differently, and no matter how bad you feel about past mistakes or decisions, you do not have the power to go back and change the past. If you want to feel powerless and frustrated and hopeless, then I recommend using as much energy as you can to dwell on the past and try to change it because it will never work.

The other option, and this is what I teach my clients, is to tell your brain that the solution is not a time machine. We don't need to change the past in order to feel better, which is good news because we can't. And it's not a good use of mental, emotional, and physical energy to try to build a time machine to go back into the past and change it.

That's only possible in movies or shows like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child or Back to the Future. In reality, we can't travel in time. Trying to build a time machine to change the past can sound a lot of different ways.

You can hear it in thoughts like, I should have been a better mother to my kids when they were little. If only I had been more careful, I could have prevented that terrible injury. If I hadn't made such a big mistake, there would be hope for me.

Do you hear how these thoughts assume that the solution is in the past? That the only way to feel better, to have a better life today, would be to somehow find a way to change something that already happened. Thoughts create feelings and these thoughts create feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness because we can't change the past. So if you want to feel empowered and capable and like the child of God that you are, that was made to act and not be acted upon, you've got to come back to the present.

Focus on the decisions you can make today. Because your power to change the future isn't in the past, it's here and now. You can't change yesterday, but you can create tomorrow right now with the decisions you make today.

So instead of trying to build a time machine, instead of using all of your energy trying to figure out a way to change the past, tell your brain to come back to the present. Accept the reality of what is. Notice the outcome that you wanted but didn't create and then keep reaching for it.

Move toward it. Make choices today right now to move toward creating the outcome you do want in the end. Sitting at Ted's Montana Grill in New York City, looking at my phone and seeing 2 p.m written on those tickets, I really believed for a minute that the only possible solution would be to go back in time and fix my mistake.

It felt really true in that moment, but as it turned out, it wasn't true at all. I messed up. I got the wrong tickets and missed the chance to see it at 2 p.m and yet that nice man at the box office allowed us, despite my mistake, to still come.

And what's more, with the way the special effects were, we actually liked being up a little higher where we could see everything that was happening and we realized that the mezzanine seats we ended up with that were right in the center of the third row up there may have been the best seats in the house. Even better than the ones we originally had, which we thought were the best and that we had expected and planned on. If there's something you feel hopeless about, I want to encourage you to shift your focus from the past back to the future.

Jeffrey R. Holland said this, however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you've made or talents you don't think you have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ's atonement shines. That's the end of his quote.

This is true for you. It's true for the people you love. The feeling of hopelessness is created by thinking thoughts that focus on the past.

Thoughts that tell you there's no path forward because of what you've done. Carol Smith says, hope is believing you have choices and that there's a path forward, even if it's not the one you expected to be on. God has promised that all things, all things will work together for our good and that I have not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

We can't even imagine the amazing future that awaits us. If you are beating yourself up about mistakes you have made in the past, remember the solution is not a time machine. You don't need to go back in time.

Come back to the future, back to the future that is possible for you as you use your agency to make choices today and embrace the path forward, even if it's not the one you expected to be on. With help from a very kind man working at a divine box office, your path forward might turn out to be even better than the one you had planned. Thanks so much for joining me today.