Dr. Karl Pillemer

You need to actually begin to understand that you're not going to express perfection and have this kind of a self-compassion and self-forgiveness.

So I think a number one thing is definitely being aware of it.

I will give one piece of elder wisdom, I think, which is really critical about this.

It applies to other things.

But I would sum it up as you're criticizing yourself, worrying about things you might have done, kind of thinking about this pair of shoes you bought, is really taking the long view.

There is a certain logic to asking,

will I really care about this when I'm 80?

But this particular thing, I'm worrying about myself.

Taking that view as if you were one of the elders looking back on your life.

So people tend to torture themselves about, in the moment, about missed opportunities or mistakes.

But by taking the long view, will this really matter over the longest period of time?

I think that you can get a certain amount of peace with it.

So I would say those are

You know, kind of the essence of elder wisdom on that.

You know, the other thing about this kind of regret is one thing is to focus on what you learned from it rather than on how bad it was or whatever you did or failed about it.

So you can reframe it.

You can shift it to here's what I learned from it rather than here's how I messed things up.

Yeah, and here's where you get to a core of wisdom that is, in some ways, unique to older people.

So in some ways, that insight, to me, justified the project.

Because you can say, choose to be happy, and someone can very reasonably say back to you, well, that's just a platitude.