Breaking Free from Regret: Strategies for Overcoming Bad Habits and Reclaiming Your Life

Do you feel trapped by your bad habits and poor decisions? Are you ready to break the chains of regret and reclaim your life? In this eye-opening episode, I share my faith-based encouragement to help you develop strategies for overcoming negative patterns and making better life choices. Discover the power of mental exercises, strengthening your mindset, seeking support, and embracing growth to outlive your past mistakes.

Regret can be a heavy burden, but it's never too late to turn things around. Join me as we face our regrets head-on and seize opportunities to create a better future. Whether it's completing your education, reconnecting with loved ones, or learning from past experiences, now's the time to take charge and live a life without regret. Don't miss this chance to transform your life and leave your old habits behind for good.

Chapters

• 0:30 Breaking Bad Habits and Regrets
• 10:07 Overcoming Regrets

Transcript

C. Bond: 0:30

You're listening to See Beyond with C. Bond. For quite some time now, I have been thinking about how easy it is for us to fall back into bad habits, which leads us to make bad decisions and causes us to have regrets. This became clear to me when I was preparing to becoming board certified patient advocate. I remember reading a case study about an older man who was suffering with an illness, an illness that was treatable, but he was having a really hard time overcoming that illness because of some bad decisions he made when he was younger. He was dealing with regrets. It caused me to realize that there has to come a time when you must decide that, no matter how hard it is or how hard it gets, you're not going back. You're not going to go back to your old way of thinking, doing or reacting, because it's those old ways that cloud your vision, causes you to lose focus and become overwhelmed. And trust me when I tell you that I'm not using the word overwhelm lightly. I'm not. The reality is, when you are overwhelmed, it is easy to lose your focus, and when you lose your focus, your vision is compromised. You struggle to See Beyond Where You Are. So today I want to talk about not going back to a life of bad habits and bad decisions that will lead you to a life of regrets. Let's talk about it. Bad habits.

C. Bond: 2:19

How many times have you picked up a bad habit from someone and started doing that thing before you realized you were doing it And then became upset with yourself for developing that habit? Or have you ever developed a bad habit out of survival? While you were trying to survive life, you picked up a few bad habits that are interfering with your success now. Or maybe it's possible you got a bad habit or two from your family or friends. Now for question actually, I have two. How has that bad habit helped you? Or are you helping that bad habit live longer than it should? I think bad habits are like chokeholds They grab you around the neck and refuse to let you go. But to get out of that chokehold you have to train your mind, like a boxer trains his or her body. You must become strong and flexible, able to move at the slightest sign of regret, determined to figure a way out of the chokehold and have counter moves.

C. Bond: 3:38

I am not a therapist. I am a faith-based encourager and motivator. I want to inspire you to believe that you are strong enough to remove bad habits from around your neck. Being strong starts with you exercising Exercising your right to be free from bad habits, exercising your right to get help if or when you need it. That help can come from a therapist, family members, friends or whoever you choose and trust. You know it's like exercising When you are exercising by yourself. It is effective, if you are doing the exercises properly, but it's more fun to exercise with someone else. So while you're exercising, if it's by yourself or with someone else and you're becoming stronger, you can begin to remove that bad habit that is choking the creativity, the faith and all the joy out of you. What if you're not strong enough? you ask.

C. Bond: 4:48

Then, be flexible. Think about your favorite boxer or wrestler. How often do you see them just standing in one place trying to defeat their opponents, or standing still so that their opponents can be victorious over them? They are flexible, able to move their bodies so that it's harder for their opponents to inflict damage or put them in a wrestling hole that they cannot escape. You should be flexible when it pertains to bad habits If you are constantly moving and changing directions, not standing still or sitting in the same spot in your mind day after day, that bad habit will become loose by itself.

C. Bond: 5:32

Then it will be easier to remove. What was once a tight chokehold around your neck will become loose and eventually fall off. It's your choice and you have to make up your mind that you want to be free and pursue your freedom. It's deciding that you have had enough, that it's not helping you or that you just don't need that bad habit in your life and you get rid of it. That's what people who are determined do. You think about what it will take and you strategize. You try different defensive and offensive maneuvers to rid yourself of that chokehold that that bad habit has on you once and for all, because you realize the importance of making great decisions rather than bad or unwise decisions Bad decisions.

C. Bond: 6:31

If you are unsuccessful in removing bad habits from your life, bad decision making will follow. You start making decisions based on negativity, fear, emotions, temporary situations, other people's opinion of you, procrastination especially if it's already a bad habit and other non-essential, unimportant bad traits you have. But my job, from my very first podcast to now, is to inspire, encourage and motivate you to See Beyond Where You Are so that you can achieve, receive and do more in life. You know bad decisions follow you. Bad decisions, mistakes, errors, wrongdoing are all like trademarks. A trademark can be a word, phrase, symbol, design or a combination of things that identifies your goods and services from someone else's. That is why I said bad decisions are like a trademark. They identify you and your services so that others can see your mistakes. It identifies your brand, and I do not want that to continue.

C. Bond: 7:54

You can correct and outlive bad decisions by making better decisions. When you examine your life and realize how many great decisions you have already made, it will motivate you to continue. Therefore, when you see the person who lives to remind you "that you haven't always made good decisions, their words will literally lose power and vanish into nothing not vanish into thin air, as our ancestors used to say, but vanish into nothing, because your words and your actions will not give life to the negativity that someone else speaks concerning you. When you start making better decisions, there may be some evidence left that a bad habit and bad decision making was there, but with each day, that evidence will become weaker and weaker against you. As you get rid of bad habits and bad decision making, you make it possible to live a life without regrets.

C. Bond: 9:02

Speaking of regrets, at the beginning of this podcast I mentioned a case study about an older man who had made bad decisions and was living a life of regret. The case study went on to explain that it was one bad decision in particular that was causing him to regret his life. That emphasized to me the power that regret has. Whether you have a single regret or many regrets, it impacts your life. Regrets are opportunistic. They show up whenever there's an opportunity for you to be happy, and peace, or even when you're sad and upset. That's why I'm encouraging you to break bad habits that cause you to make bad decisions. I sincerely believe that you can live the life you were created to live. No doubt it takes work, but you are worth the work and the benefits that accompany your work.

C. Bond: 10:07

At this point in the podcast, I want to sincerely encourage you and challenge you to acknowledge any regrets you have. If you regret not finishing school, now is a great time to go back and finish. If you regret losing a friendship or any type of relationship, you have an opportunity to contact that person and try to rekindle that friendship or that relationship. Whatever regret or regrets you have, find a way to overcome that and make it a regret that you used to have. You are strong enough, flexible enough, determined enough and have more counter moves than you will ever know, and you will never know that you have all of that if you never use it. Now is your opportunity to use it. You've been listening to See Beyond Where You Are with C. C-Bond. Until next time, remember, even if you are just one day away from not going back to bad habits and bad decisions, you are still making progress.