Summary: Amanda and I talk about regret – operating over it and missing opportunities and how to connect with what we value. We talk about forgiveness and compassion for others, and how our own motivations can be buried and that leads us to blame others. Amanda supports mothers through her Daily Dance facebook page, and gives them permission to fail forward.

Vicki: Hello, Amanda. So glad to have you here with me today.

Amanda: Hi, Vicki. I'm excited to be here today.

Vicki: My guest today is Amanda D. She's that real estate mama and founder of The Daily Dance, a journey and exploration of motherhood transformation and failing forward. I love that. I want to talk about that a little bit. She is a first-time mom at 40, entrepreneur, realtor, podcaster, reinventor, village creator, and mom supporter. She's committed to creating connection, freedom, and the courage to fail. Welcome, Amanda.

Amanda: Hi, Vicki. Thanks.

Vicki: The courage to fail, I love that.

Amanda: That was something I have been asking a lot of people and had to ask myself once I became a mom, what's my vision or anybody else's vision of motherhood and what that is personally and what I wanted. The thing that kept coming up for me, and I heard it coming up for other people too, was passing on the courage to fail to their kids, and really it came out as, I want my kids to not be afraid to try things. I want them to be who they are, to explore.

It just kept coming to me as, it's having the courage to fail, going for the experience and trying and not getting hung up on whatever result comes up or--

Vicki: Right, or in our society, trying to cover up our mistakes, cover up a failing because what will people think? How would they view us? It's not okay. All of that. I love that, that challenges that right in the face of, let's just have the courage to fail and fall down, pick up the pieces and move on instead of act like, oh my God, that shouldn't have happened, or why did that happen?

Amanda: I was going to add to that. It's also something I've learned from watching my son and realized that our natural state is to do that. If you watch a little kid learning to walk, they don't get up and do it right the first time. They don't get up and do it right the first 100 times. Each time they get a little further and not once do you see little kids start to get down on themselves. They might get a little frustrated, but they just keep going until they get it.

We as adult onlookers, we just know and assume that they will and encourage them to keep going. Yet somehow, as we age, it gets lost, or it suddenly seems like something we as adults are no longer allowed to do.

Vicki: I love your reference to the tiny stages. Each time they get a little further because that's often in life, we focus on the big results and forget to pay attention to the lots of little things that we did to make that happen.

Our show today is episode 28, Are You Operating Over Regrets? We had a conversation last week where you mentioned that you don't really experience regret today. You've reclassified if you ever felt regret. The focus is - I've learned something from all my mistakes and all the places where I might have fell short or felt others fell short. Do you mean that you don't feel guilt, shame, remorse, or sorrow, but may have situations where you wish they would've turned out differently, or are you pretty much, nope, everything turned out the way it should have?

Amanda: I'm a human being. I most certainly have felt all of those things, guilt, shame, remorse, sorrow, especially in the moment. It's really hard to be regret-free in the moment or the moment right after something. What I mean by that is that I relate this idea of regret - for some reason, when I hear the word regret, I think what would I want to do over? Earlier in life, I think what came up for me was nothing. I just don't even want to go back there.

Whatever it was, there was this, you know what? At least where I am now, I got through it, it's done and, you know what? I'd rather leave it as is and move forward than try to go back and do something again, because how do I know that whatever it is I do the second time would really be better.

I've also, in this conversation that we've been having, realized that there was also this little bit of those moments are also opportunities for learning. Those things that I want to hang on to, regret, or continue to have negative feelings about, are really missed lessons.

Vicki: I like that thinking.

Amanda: When some of that stuff comes up, asking what can I learn or what did I learn? I've certainly had moments that I've really beat myself up over and got hung up on, and at some point, I just stopped to ask, what tiny change or just tiny little thing could I do so that it has a purpose, so that that thing serves a purpose? Whether it's making a different decision sometime, the next time, or just what can I pull from it? What can I learn from the experience? What was the opportunity that I got in that experience?

Vicki: It sounds like you're talking about taking a detached view, separating from the emotion maybe, and being neutral about what happened in order to look at it from the big picture, looking down maybe. Would that be how you are reflecting?

Amanda: Yes. Some of it is in hindsight. It's very rarely am I having this no regrets feeling in the moment that something is happening. It is actually stopping to take the time and ask, what happened there? Really even just asking what happened there. I find that when I hang onto things and I don't do that, the same thing or something very similar happens again. I think this is the universe continuing to give us what we need to grow until we open up and are willing look and say, what can I take from this? What purpose could it serve for me?

Vicki: One of the things that I've noticed in my life that you touched on a little bit was, not only what I could have done different, but what is it telling me about - that I keep reflecting back. Even if I don't necessarily have feelings of regret anymore or pain. For an example, I left a job that I had a really tight team. We really worked well together. It was all women, [laughs] and I loved that environment, and we were all supportive of each other. I went to another place to work where that wasn't there, and I kept reflecting back - but missing that team spirit.

Had I been a little more present and thought, why am I reflecting on this so much? I might have said, "Well, because team is missing." [laughs] What can I do to create that again? Because instead of waiting for it to happen outside me, what can I do to take responsibility, to create what I want? Do you have any times like that, that reflect on a value maybe? That value for me was team and respect and support.

Amanda: I think when I hear that, what automatically comes up in mind to me is my experience with romantic relationships. When I was in my early 20s, I was a part of a very unhealthy relationship. I was in it for about three years. At some point, I left, but I came out of it thinking - I had made this person my whole world - I didn't really understand who I was or what my place was without this person being at the center of it.

At that time, I internalized it as that-- There was a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for? Cheating. We'll just say cheating. There was a lot of cheating.

[laughter]

Vicki: Call it what it is.

Amanda: There was just something in that that I made up about myself for a long time that, I wasn't good enough for someone to be committed to. There was a little bit of that but there was also this bigger story from my past and how I watched my parents growing up that like, there was a lot of cheating there too. I also had this story that committed relationships didn't exist in the world. It wasn't real, it was something fake, it was storybook, something that happened on the Disney channel and not in real life.

When I internalized this, I spent a large portion of my life not participating in committed relationships. At this point, I'll say trying on different relationship types, the end result is that I was single or felt single and unconnected to a romantic partner for over a decade. Then at some point, I just finally was like - I had the story too that it was always other people weren't committing to me.

At some point, I finally-- there was this light bulb that went off that said, if you want people to make that commitment and be all in with you Amanda, you have to be willing to be that as well. For me, at that time, my first tiny step to that was simply admitting that I wanted it because I had convinced myself that I didn't even want this, that it was, I don't know, uncool, didn't matter. Just admitting that I wanted it and then that built into admitting that I deserved it.

Then there was practice because then I found I would get involved with the same type of person and know that like, oh, well, in my thought, in my head, I was saying that this is what I wanted. However, then I started looking at who I was choosing as a partner or to get involved with and I'm like, these are unavailable people.

I'm still choosing unavailable people but saying that I want something different. Eventually going, aha, if I want to experienc...