Coping: “Brain-Cleaning Week” on Remorse and Regret

I have decided to dub this week National Brain Cleaning Week.

And along the way I decided that we could actually turn this into a “two-fer.”

A two-fer, if you haven’t figured it, is when you do one thing, but it serves two purposes. Which, in this case is separate and distinct from one another.

The dual purpose of this morning is simple: How to get rid of remote and regret. That’s one.

T’other is to show you how my “Recipe Method of Learning” works.

Peoplenomics readers will see it at once, as this “Find the recipes in Life and skip the filler” has been an integral part of my thinking-style since I set to work on my BA and MBA at age 37.

Why so late for school? Well, frankly, I’d been making far too much money up until then (six figures) so anything that got between me and payday was a problem I’d get around to later.

Eventually, I found a way to challenge my undergrad electives and that cut thousands and 16 months off the BA.

Since my MBA was not full of puffery (*chair filling material to give tenure out like candy) I was able to nail the Masters in 19 months.

How? The art of Distillation of Process. And this morning, we’re going to open up you mental distillery of spirit, a bit.

STEP ONE: Define Tasks

The primary mission this morning is brain-cleaning.

Subtask: Toss regret and remorse under the bus to free up processor time in your head.

People waste a significant portion of brainpower working on problems from last week, last year, or 11^th grade, and it’s a horrible thing to see.

As I put it in my Personal Policy Manual: Get all that nuisance crap that goes on in the background of your thinking from using up valuable processor clicks. Use brain for money and play.

Note to self: Decide whether to tell people that have gone down the same path as God (the Program in Chief if you insist on atheism) since we are busily creating our junion processors in our own image which presents an interesting “nested thought.” We’ll save this point for toast and coffee some other morning. So… back to point, then:

It is a fundamental Truth that the recipe to “rid ones self of remorse” and/or “ridding of regret” is out there on the web somewhere.

We have it on reasonable authority that there is little new under the Sun. We should be swimming in answers – and we are – and Google and Bing have made a business of it.

Sure, we could go read lots of books on point – and we could go way off into the weeds and get endless/useless degrees, too, but we’re smart enough around here to remember that the world [pays for practicum] and that generally [the world doesn’t pay much for theory]. There are exceptions (most of which are tenured or work at CERN, so let’s move on, shall we Skippy?)

Our {Task List} will look something like this:

1.Construct a search which will find processes to end regret and remorse.

2.Simplify and collate all of the process tasks into a single Master Process list. This is the “ingredients in the pantry.”

3.Sort the list and restate to avoid duplication. This is a really cool step, by the way, because this is where we see how various authors, teachers, philosos, and lawyers, and whoever, have sliced and diced their earlier process work for us. We just look for “Best of Class” and move on from there.

Since Step 3 was ingredients, this step is ingredient selection.

4.Then we compile into personally useful :code: (steps done by an human).

5. Then we :run the Code:

6.No code is error free (except that from the Program in Chief’s, at least until humans came along, but that’s a nit) but we can get “close enough.”

7.Take reasonable actions to resolve until regret and remorse are down in the noise floor where they belong. You want to be able to recall them (lessons of Life) but not so up-front that you dream about them and it occupies headspace uninvited.

8.End of lesson.

That’s all there is to it, step eight is a marker to remind us we have more coffee and the art of making money to get around to.

See how simple this is?

Here’s how it works in totally simplified form.

STEP TWO: Run Task List

We know what we’re going to do, so it’s Nike (just do it) time.

We can be through it in no time.

Remember our first task? Define our objective and look for existing recipes, right?

1.So we run the simple Google search “How to stop regret” and sure enough, recipes pop up all over the place.

See how easy the first part of the process is?

2.Our next process (from Part One) is to collate all of the lists.

You make a value judgment here. Depending on the importance of the output, you can spend more, or less, time on this part. If this is a major Life Changer, you might want to go 20 web sits deep (or more) in order to improve the statistical odds of including outlier steps that may be important.

3.However, since we’re lazy this morning, we will take two or three promising lists and compile those.

3 Ways to Stop Regretting Your Decisions – wikiHow and How to Overcome Serious Regrets: 14 Steps (with Pictures).

You will notice that both of these come from WikiHow so you could include other sites.

The article at 20 Ways to Let Go of Regrets – Tiny Buddha looks promising.

Remember to look for Site Article Titles that List Numbers.

We are process processors, yeah? Give me a list, not a book.

Your list might include the 3 steps from the first article, all 14 from the second, and all 20 from the third.

4. Edit so that you have a list with few (if any) duplicated steps.

5. You might end up with 12 steps or 10…remember, what you’re doing is becoming the Recipe Master. Take what you think will help and toss out all the fluff.

6. Now we “run the code” and see what happens.

If you are trying to get rid of all the regrets in your Life by lunch time, maybe the three item list will work.

If you have deep-seated regrets, you may wish to go look for additional steps since you may have deeper issues.

The nice thing about this approach is that when you have the recipe, even if you might want a professional coach to help you run it (a psychologist or psychiatrist) you will likely save a bundle of “chair time” since you already know what the issues and steps are.

Hint: Don’t necessarily tell hired help you know the playbooks, let them lead. It’s their dance you’ll be learning, having already stepped on your own feet and not being able to get it right without a “dance partner.” Or, talk to a loved one. Practice open.

7. Then review our work for major errors. Process face-time, phone calls, and so forth as they occur and you are comfortable.

What with me (and it’s a useful visual) it to imagine we are looking at a production line in a vegetable factory.We run the can sorting station for all these cans of vegetables that come through our lives.

Some cans are dealt with by throwing them out (I regularly remove people from my Life if we are not mutually benefitting). We don’t have to eat the “vegetable we don’t like.”

Other cans are veggies we like and keep even if the label is on a little crooked (forgive the can and move on). These are the people who are more good than bad, but we need to think about them, just the same.

Last, but not least, a surprising numbers of cans don’t have labels on them so you need to figure out what’s really inside them.

This includes People who need a phone call or face-time to sort things out. The unfinished business cans. Label is not on right.

In this step, you will find many cans aren’t just suspect, they’re actually filled with poison.

With work, you learn to look at these “bad cans” and laugh them into the trash heap because they only hurt themselves. Your jobs is to send them where they belong: The land fill for bad cans.

Oh, look, not even lunchtime yet.

The only point this morning is that I don’t have a lot of people I’m anxious to see headed for the landfill, but I hope when they get there, they’ll take the “down elevator.”

Well, with all this time left over, maybe I’ll sort a few more “cans of humans”I may want to run a few more of the “human vegetables” through the sorter.

I pay particular attention to the cans that did me wrong.

What these cans might not know about George is that he doesn’t get mad…even when wronged. I do, however get f*cking even.

And with no regrets and no remorse.

There… I feel positively great, don’t you?

Write when you get rich, or back from lunch.

George@ure.net