Our fight against incremental regret
So as we enter into the next metaphorical chapter of our lives, it seemed like the right time to finally commit to writing this blog together. As a couple we have had many big life changes through the years (they will get their own throwback blog posts at some point), but this blog will soon begin with a post about our choices behind packing up our lives in London to travel South America for 6 months.
Firstly though, we will give a bit of context about us and this blog. We are both quite reflective and talk a lot about life, always wanting to make choices that feel right for us. Our biggest fear in life is having incremental regret, where we have made lots of little safe decisions, leading us to a less fulfilling life. The thing with this type of regret is it’s so subtle you don't even see it happening. So for us, we debate everything! Every choice is purposeful, never made from complacency, and most definitely, never made from fear. I think when people first hang out with us they think we fight a lot, but hopefully they soon realise it’s a healthy debate, a back and forth ending in a compromise and (almost) always laughter. Everything is always out on the table for us, communication is so important, we should never being afraid to tell each other where we are at.
Something we need to constantlly fight against is our tendency to opt out of deciding, we’ve realised not choosing is a choice in itself, we’ve chosen to settle for what we have. Avoiding decisions by procrastinating is something we are both regretfully very guilty of. Even in little things like not deciding whether to buy a drone before we left or not, basically meant we were deciding not to get one, because they are double the price in S.A., or thinking I will pay later for the Wimbledon tickets I won in a ballot, but then missing out because I missed the deadline. These are just two examples of small things we didn’t do, which left us frustrated with ourselves.
However, what we can say is so far, we have never missed out on big opportunities by procrastinating, or by making the wrong decisions based on the wrong reasons. We are proud of the fact that we tend to go all in on stuff if it feels right. Even if those big decisions look crazy to people on the outside, and even though we have a tendency to have a “wing it” vibe, people should know the winging it comes off the back of a big decision that took a lot of debating to make sure we were both 100% onboard. When you're a couple you have to both be all in for big life decisions to work, even if it’s you having enough faith in the other person to lead the way, but when you are in you are in!
For us we’ve talked about writing a blog for a long time, and it’s one of the things that was starting to slip into the incremental regret category, so paying for a domain was a way of forcing ourselves to commit to doing this. We know ourselves and procrastination is a killer for us, so if we don’t commit to starting this blog now while we are travelling and have space with our thoughts, then we will become complacent and never do it.
So, writing this blog is another conscious decision to fight against incremental regret, and to just flipping do it!! Regrets don't always come from big life altering decisions like quitting your job and travelling South America, some time it’s little things like not buying drones, not going to Wimbledon or not starting a blog. Whatever it is, join us in picking up arms in the fight against incremental regret, and lets all just start flipping doing stuff!
Philly & Keely