The Easiest Way to Avoid Regret

“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance,

but everyone who is hasty comes only to want.”

— Proverbs 21:5 (NRSV)

There is a time for the things we put off,

A time to suddenly make haste,

Now’s the time to do it,

So regret is not to be faced.

Two forms of haste: 1) impatience because of laxity, and 2) addressing an issue with due haste. The proverb talks about the former; the poem, about the latter. Haste is paradoxical in this way.

Diligence has boldness and blessing about it. Yet, procrastination is the antecedent to regret. We have many opportunities to do what needs doing now. What choice is it to be then? Now is the time to do it.

Sometimes we have more than enough on our plates at any one time, and indecision is facilitated by being confounded. There are a plethora of excuses. The point is we will always find time to do the things that are important to us. But here is the catch: rarely do we get all our true priorities in their correct order. And that is the role of self-discipline.

The person who is self-disciplined will surely attract an abundance of wealth, and not necessarily by a material appellation. Their prosperity has come about because they have chosen to invest in their own proactive destiny.

Avoiding Most Regret Is Easier Than We Readily Think

Apart from the regret that comes through a lack of prudence – which is the other half of the Proverbial toolbox for self-mastery – we can note the impressive role of diligence to ward against regret.

If we have chosen to do everything we can and should do in life – and limited to a focus of God’s ordained will for our lives – we will get these things done.

Surely there will be things we would like to do that don’t get done, but everything that we need to do should be done with willingness and great resolve. If we discharge our tasks in such a way, we will, of a fashion, be giving glory to God. We will have also accepted the many and discrete calls that God has placed on our lives to be done.

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The easiest way to avoid regret is to do what can be done now in the management of our lives regarding the consequences that are already coming our way. Self-discipline and patience warrant blessing, yet laxity and haste are sure ways to a cruel end.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.