"I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden clutch, He said to me, "you must not ask for so much." And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

-Leonard Cohen

Not all of us requires a violent life-threatening knock on the head to change our behavior. It only seems that way. Our environment is the most potent triggering mechanism in our lives, and not always for our benefit. We make plans, set goals, and stake our happiness on achieving these goals, but our environment constantly intervenes.

• The smell of bacon wafts up from the kitchen, and we forget about our doctor's advice about lowering our cholesterol
• Our colleagues work late every night, so we feel obliged to match their commitment, and miss one of our kid's baseball games
• Our phone chirps, and we glance at the flowing screen instead of looking into the eyes of the person we love.

This is how our environment triggers undesirable behavior. Because our environmental factors are so often outside of our control, we may think there is not much we can do about them, We feel like victims of circumstances. Puppets of fate. I don't accept that,

Fate is the hand of cards we've been dealt. Choice is how we play the hand.

The feeling of regret is implied every time we ask ourselves why we haven't become the person we want to be. We feel regret's sharp sting when we reflect on opportunities squandered, the choices deferred, the efforts not made, the talents never developed in our lives. Usually when it's too late to do much about it.

Regret is the emotion we experience when we assess our present circumstances and reconsider how we got here. We replay what we actually did against what we should have done -- and find ourselves wanting in some way. Regret can hurt. For such a penetrating and wounding emotion, Regret doesn't get much respect. We treat it as a benign factor, something to deny and rationalize away. We tell ourselves, "I've made stupid choices but they've made me who I am today. Lamenting the past is a waste of time. I learned my lesson. Let's move on.".

That's one way of looking at regret - if only as a form of self-protection from the pain of knowing we missed out. We're comforted by the fact that no one is immune to regret (we're not alone) and that time heals all wounds

The only thing worse than experiencing pain is not knowing if and when the pain will go away

I want to suggest a different attitude, namely Embracing Regret (although not too tightly or for too long). The pain that comes with regret should be mandatory, not something to be shooed away like an annoying pet. When we make bad choices and fail ourselves or hurt the people we love, we should feel pain. This pain can be motivating and in the best sense, triggering - a reminder that maybe we messed up but we can do better. It's one of the most powerful feeling guiding us to change.

Goldsmith, Marshall. Triggers. Profile Books Ltd, 2016.