Meh, I don't ever think there's a reason to think over past events and debate the merits of choices internally.  That will just get you more into your mind and not able to respond to the present.  Whatever happened, happened and its one's choice to accept it and surrender to whom you are.  We are not our past choices, but the sad truth is vast majority of us live in our past conditionings because we can't accept that this or that which didn't turn out the way we liked.  I think we should all devote a period of our day to quiet reflection and watching our thoughts so that the stresses and tensions of our decisions don't accumlate and we end up truly trapped.  Beating ourselves up, however, won't get us anywhere. 

This sounds similar to my present philosophy on regret.

About a year ago, I made a Facebook post, stating that after that particular night, I could leave my three year stint in South Korea with no regrets. The reason I wrote it was actually fairly trivial: That night I had hung out with a female friend I had once been interested in, but hadn't seen in nearly a year because she'd gone to Australia. Naturally, I was happy to see her again, and we had a fun night out on the town. However, I ultimately came to the conclusion that while she was a cool gal, she wasn't "the one" for me.

More than that, I realized that though I had met/dated some cool girls in the country, I didn't feel like I was leaving any "open doors" behind. I think most young, single guys have felt this at some point; the "if I had only tried harder, I could have dated 'so and so'" feeling. I'd felt it in the past, but this time? Nada.

So anyway, when I got home, I wrote on my Facebook wall, "After tonight, I can leave Korea with no regrets."

I had meant it in a narrow sense, but obviously people reading it couldn't know that. A while later, a friend asked me, "Hey Henry, you're really leaving with no regrets?"

Hearing that made me think about what the words I wrote actually meant. And after giving it some thought, I told him that yes, I was leaving Korea with no regrets. Why? Because even if I made mistakes, and even if I didn't do all the things I planned to do, I was happy with the present. And if my past choices led to that result, then why should I have any regrets?

Since then, I've done my best to live with "no regrets," and I gotta say, so far so good. Do I think it's possible to truly live with zero regrets? Probably not, given how deeply the concept is woven into our cultural fabric; trying to rid myself of all regret would be like trying to rid myself of the English language - not possible. But simply being aware of the concept has really done wonders.

Life is much more complex than just a series of binary choices, and without a flux capacitor, we'll never truly know if decision A will be better than decision B. Maybe it's a little optimistic, but I feel that every decision we make is the right decision -- and here's the key -- at that exact moment. Otherwise why would we have made it? Sure, looking back it's easy to assess all of the factors that you now can fully understand, but at the time, you didn't have all of those factors to base your decisions on, you had to make a decision based on the information you did have. And that's where the learning process comes into play. 'Oh, so steam coming from a pot on a stove is actually an indicator of a heat that will burn my hand. Now I understand that.' Unless you're Leonard Shelby (Memento) and can't make memories, I don't think we can help but learn from all life experiences. And those lessons learned get recycled and factored into the next decision we're presented with. Hence the saying, hindsight is 20/20.

It's well documented that taking breaks from work can increase productivity. Do you think that sub-consciously your passion for Sett was factored into the decision to go to Peru as way to actually increase productivity and prevent burnout?