Watch Insight’s episode No Regrets — exploring how regret can be useful, and if a life of no regrets is possible — on Tuesday 8:30pm on SBS or on SBS On Demand
It was one thoughtless comment that sent Anjani Amriit down the career path she now regrets.
Speaking to her school’s career adviser as a teenager, Anjani said she wanted to go to university and was thinking of studying law or medicine.
“He literally laughed in my face and said: ‘You can’t be a lawyer, you’re a woman,'” Anjani told Insight.
“So I thought, well, I’ll show you.”
Coming from an immigrant family, Anjani was the first person in her family to go to university.
She says she thought a successful white-collar career would make her family proud, but studying and working in law took a toll.
“I hated every minute of it,” Anjani told Insight.
“Looking back, I regret wasting 16 years of my life … trying to prove something to society, to my family, I don’t know,” she said.
Studying left me with debt that I’ll never be able to pay back
Jessica Herbert shares Anjani’s regret over her career choices.
Her studies have left her with a hefty $83,000 HECS debt, with little hope of paying it off any time soon.
Jessica studied for a business degree, majoring in event management and marketing. She also started two master’s degrees in similar fields, but had to drop her studies to work to support herself.
Jessica completed a Bachelor of Business majoring in events and a semester of a master’s degree before she asked herself what she was doing. Source: Supplied
She was working in event management at music festivals, not earning enough to pay back her HECS fees.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the industry shut down.
Jessica said she doesn’t regret going to university, but she regrets not thinking deeply about the cost at the time.
When regret is useful
Professor Lionel Page, a behavioural economist, said regret can be a painful but useful emotion.
“Regret is thinking, after the fact, what you could have done differently. Or you could have done something that you didn’t do,” he explained.
“It helps us learn … it pushes us to think through what we did, not to repeat the mistakes.
“That allows us to progress through life, to make better decisions.”
Page said regrets can help us think more carefully the next time we make a decision, and consider the consequences more deeply.
Jessica now works in disability and community services, and said her past choices now influence her future decisions.
“Instead of saving up for a holiday, I’m saving up to pay off my HECS debt,” she said.
“But I think it has driven me to pursue more profitable career choices, so that I can get on top of those bills and live a more fruitful life.”
In her pursuit to live a life without regrets, Michelle became the first Australian woman to row the Atlantic solo, and the first to row the Pacific Ocean solo, unassisted and without stopping. Source: Supplied
When I started saying yes, everything changed
Michelle Lee said she lives a life of no regrets, but she does have one — not starting sooner.
After leaving a corporate career and her marriage, she decided to “start saying yes to opportunity”.
Those ‘yeses’ led Michelle to take up triathlons and mud runs, take solo holidays and walk the Kokoda Track.
The next adventure was to row solo, unassisted and without stopping across the Atlantic Ocean in 2018, before rowing across the Pacific Ocean in 2022.
“I just love adventure, I love getting out there and exiting the matrix,” she said.
“You just have to say yes.
“Your radar is then switched on, and you’ll start to see all those opportunities that are there in front of you.”
I used regret as motivation to change the course of my life
It took Anjani 16 years to leave the career she says she hated.
When she finally took the leap, she “took a plane and went to India to find myself, as you do”.
Anjani said it took years to “defrost the persona” she’d built as a lawyer and discover what she really wanted to do with her life.
She now works with other women to help them pursue the lives they want, rather than conforming to others’ expectations.
Anjani said her own regret has been a strong motivator.
“I think we’re not really living life if we’re saying we have no regrets,” she said.
“However, I feel like regret is a part of life we can really grow from … we can really check in with ourselves and ask ourselves those deeper questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Am I on the right path for me?
“Use it as a tool like a trampoline to bounce off, and into something that really brings us joy, brings us happiness, brings us a sense of fulfilment.”
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