Regret and rumination are forces of deception and distraction.

I recently felt pangs of regret for a path not chosen years ago. I was with someone I loved but left them.

Amid the flood of yearning and helpless longing for something that cannot be, the mind steps in as a visionary craftsman, constructing vivid imaginary worlds in no time. It paints before my eyes beautiful scenes of a life with this person, of traveling together, of raising a family. It rushes to build castles in the sky but forgets to construct a ladder.

Awareness is the antidote—an injection of recognition to see that these visions are vain imaginings with no power to create change.

But there is a step beyond this antidote. Self-blame is often comorbid with regret. I catch my mind berating me for leaving the relationship, for not seeing how good things could have been. How could you do this to us? We could have had it all.

Even though things might have turned out very differently from these romantic visions of happily ever after, let's assume it would have been perfect.

Now we don't just have regret—we have self-blame. This calls for stronger medication. We need an ancillary medicine to accompany awareness.

We need self-compassion.

I remind myself that the man who made that choice is different than the man I am now. I made a choice based on the knowledge I had at the time. Perhaps I could have been happy with that romantic partner as the man I am now—someone with more maturity, more responsibility, more discernment for what I truly value. But I wasn't that man then. It was through the hardship of losing that person—alongside doing the work I needed to better myself—that I recognized what good was there. That younger me could never have known or appreciated that. Even if he stayed, he did not have the capacity to appreciate the fullness of goodness that he had.

Sometimes it feels trite or unsatisfactory, but the axiom holds: every mistake in life is an opportunity to learn. Sometimes we make expensive mistakes, and if we're lucky, the learning is worth the price we paid.

If you are struggling with regret and self-blame, I feel you. Here's my invitation: when you catch yourself feeling this way, ask yourself: "Would I have made the same choice, knowing what I know now?" "Could I have known that then?"

Know that ruminations—the cycles of reviewing everything that happened and what could have been different—are dark forces to distract and keep you stuck. Feel the feels, but also keep moving forward. Develop awareness and compassion for yourself as you move through this. These are the antidotes.

And one last thing—if you can't have compassion for yourself, ask a force greater to forgive you. Whether you call it God or the Universe, there is solace drawing on energies beyond our own individualism.

Whether it comes from yourself or from the divine, self-compassion is ultimately a spiritual practice.