Why regret isn't necessarily a bad thing.

A common phrase that I dislike is when people say that they have nothing they regret in life.  While I believe that this is great to believe I doubt that it really happens.  There is one regret that I really do have.  When I was in high school I was very into white water kayaking, like obsessed with it.  I was fortunate enough to be able to save enough from my paper rout along with birthday and Christmas money to take a trip to Costa Rica to go white water kayaking.  This trip taught me a lot about life but that is a different story (always bring a photo copy of your passport when traveling overseas, it makes the embassy a lot easier when you lose your passport).

Back to the story I remember we were running the Sarapiqui River which consists of class 3 and class 4 rapids through the middle of 250' tall rainforest trees.  Unbelievable life experience.  For anyone who doesn't know, class three rapids are the type where if you have a solid roll and basic skills you can navigate your way down, to compare it to skiing it is a blue square.  Class 4 you can get hurt on but still aren't anything crazy.  Class 5 is as high as they go.  I was afraid of class 4 rapids because I was told when I was just starting out that they were too dangerous at the time.  By Costa Rica done class 5 by that point and my skill was there.  

What does this story have to do with regrets?  Well there was a class 4 rapid that was boarder line class 5 and I didn't run it, I walked around.  Because I was afraid of it, I didn't think that I could do it.  I will think about that run maybe once or twice a year and think DAMN i really wish that I had done that.  I think why I keep going back to this moment of my life is because I wimped out on something that didn't do because I was scared, yet with my skill at that point I could have done it.  yeah I could have flipped and smashed my face but in the grand scheme of things what do we do thats cool that doesn't involve a little risk.  I was afraid to fly with something that I could do.  

How this relates to me now is that I have been listening to the Biggerpockets podcast for 4 years now, I have purchased a home to live in (that scared me), my first rental (scared me again), second rental (scared me less but I do think about it).  Right now renovating a house scares me but I feel that I can do this.  If I want to grow I can't just keep buying small rentals that don't need much in the way of renovation.  I have never done it before and there are 100 things that could go wrong but I feel that I have the skills and knowledge to not only not lose money but to make money.  Just like high school me I am looking at something that I can I just need to sit my ass down in the boat, hit the eddy and brace when hitting the pillow as I cross from river left to river right.

A couple years ago I went to look at the run online and it turns out that the river has been damed up, the rapids are washed out.  No matter how much I want to I will never get to run that rapid.  This is a story of regret and being too afraid to fly.

Never again.