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    Stop sighing

    Synopsis

    How should you live now to avoid building new regrets? What do you have to changein your life? No sighing! Only action!

    ET Bureau

    Eighty-one-year-old Vasundhara Komkali regrets not ever having learnt to ride the bicycle. The wife of legendary musician Kumar Gandharva, who is a musician in her own right today, also rues the loss of a career on the Marathi stage. In reminiscence in Maharashtra Times, she says that her husband's genius overawed her so much that she never dared to talk about an independent musical career. In her later years, however, she did achieve her goal.

    "But I lost it in my prime," she says. "This is the ultimate truth, that life is forever taking strange turns and one never knows what one may lose or sacrifice." Yet, her example and that of her husband, who overcame the loss of a lung to reignite a meteoric musical career, bears eloquent testimony to the power of will over adversity. We need to view Pandita Komkali's 'regret', therefore, in the right spirit.

    "Regret has been given a bad name," writes noted existential psychotherapist Irvin D Yalom in Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death. "Although it usually connotes irredeemable sadness, it can be used in a constructive manner. In fact, of all the methods I use to help myself and others examine self-realisation, the idea of regret - both creating and avoiding it - is the most valuable."

    Use it to take actions that avoid its accumulation.Don't fret over the unlived past; that is never going to change. Look ahead to feel the odds of amassing more regrets or of shunning them.

    How should you live now to avoid building new regrets? What do you have to changein your life?

    No sighing! Only action!

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