So I was thinking about regret and doing things differently if you had a second chance the other night. I was wondering, do you see a difference between regret and wanting to do things differently if you could go back and do it over?

I think sometimes there's a difference. Sometimes, for me at least, I want to go back and do things differently just to see what would have happened if I had. It's not that I dislike the way things turned out or anythings, it's more an insatiable curiosity than regret.

So are you saying that dislike for the way things turned out is the same as regret? What about if you wanted to do it over because you don't like the outcome or the choices made?

Isn't that the same thing? Regret to me has always been disliking the way you did things or the choices you made, coupled with the desire do things over.

Regret is to feel sorrow or remorse, right? So to me you can not like the way things turned out without regretting it. Like, if you take what you didn't like and use it as a learning experience you're not necessarily regretting it are you? Am I making sense? :pinch:

Well, regret to me is sorrow or remorse with the desire to change it if you could. Otherwise you'd just dislike something, not regret it. So I agree with you in that you can not like how things turned out on one hand without regretting it. You can dislike a choice you made but given the choice you wouldn't change it because you used it to learn something you might not have otherwise. Uh. If that makes sense. Idk, I think I'm making as much as sense as you :P

It makes sense to me. Though I love how no one else has commented. :P

Without reading all of the above, just your post, here's what I think. Sorry guys, I'll go back and read it, but i wanna talk too. :P I'm going to say this in demonstration mode... again... Regret: When you're living in an agony at the thought that what you did or did not do was a total mistake that has totally altered your life for the worse, mentally, spiritually, or physically. Example: I really regret telling that lie. It hurt people, and it's all my fault. Why would I do something like that? If I could go back, I'd never have done that. (When, in reality, maybe it only confused a few people.) Wanting to change something: Something that may or may not have to do with something you have done, and possibly something you were never in control of before, even. A wish to know what things were like in the "What if" factor. Example: What if I voted for McCain instead of obama? Gee, now I wish I HAD voted the other way. What would things be like if McCain was in charge? I wish he was. Maybe if I'd voted for him, it would have been him and not Obama. Here's a "my-life" example. I wish I had dated more in High School. I know, that sounds really weird. Basically what I mean by that is that I was in a bad relationship, during which a good friend asked me out... again and again. And I turned him down every time (for good reasons, but mostly because i wanted to stay in that relationship for no good reason at all). He's still a great friend, but I really miss him a lot since we graduated. Now, do I regret telling him no? Not at all. He was in a bad place in high school. He'd found his way into mild drug abuse and smoking, and those are big no-nos for me. I had good reasons, and I doubt my life would be much different right now if I'd said yes anyway. Plus, I know it wouldn't have lasted, I can promise you that. We both became better people off of our friendship, not relationships. Would I go back and change it if given the opportunity? Yes. I think it'd be interesting to see what would have come of it. I wish I had the opportunity to spend more time with him. And, unless we were in a relationship with each other, that wouldn't have happened. (I can't quite explain that, but it was our other relationships that were keeping us from spending time with each other. Time consumption, jealousy, different areas and backgrounds, etc. Yeah, we'd get maybe a couple hours of fun time in a week, but that's just not enough. Unless we ditched the others for each other, we'd never get to hang out.) So I don't regret it, but the "what if" factor has always been a question of mine.