How to forgive yourself for a lost opportunity?

January 18, 2020 6:05 PM

Have you ever had an opportunity so big it overwhelmed you and you let it slip away? Were you able to figure out a way to forgive yourself? Please tell me how. My details within.

Several years ago I had an opportunity in my field to possibly work on a big creative property. A fairly well known thing that could've really boosted my career.

I say "possibly work on" because in my field when they don't know what direction to take something, they send out hundreds of feelers like, "Hey, if you have any ideas for this thing, let us know." If they like your idea, it goes up the chain and might lead to something, but it might not.

At the time, I was going through a rough patch (depression, anxiety) and told myself the idea I had was dumb, that it was a waste of time to spend weeks preparing it to only have it shot down, which is unfortunately a thing I've experienced many times, and I didn't know if I could take more rejection.

So I did nothing. It's not like I actively decided to not try for it, I just let time slip away and did nothing. It wasn't even like my career was going that great that I had the luxury of doing this, but I did it just the same.

Recently I saw what they did with the project, checked out my old notes, and... I think my idea was better? Maybe even a great idea?

Now I'm feeling terrible about this long-gone opportunity, livid at myself for not even trying, beating myself up about it at least once a week.

The weird thing is it's not like it was a sure thing-- they could've hated my idea and nothing would've come of it at all. Or the first person could've liked it but a string of people higher and higher on the chain could've hated it. So why am I acting like it was a sure thing?

And the dark thing I must admit is maybe when I feel it's a terrible idea beforehand and a great idea afterwards those could be just two sides of the same coin: which is self doubt and self torture at every step of the creative process. Maybe my brain was going to torture me with this no matter how good or bad the idea was, you know? Hell, maybe it was just a mediocre idea, which is the worst kind of idea you can have.

So have you ever let something like this go?

I'm guessing it would be easier to do if my career was going better, but it's not. And the anxiety and depression are still there, which have been treatment resistant so any suggestions just in that vein might replicate things I've already tried.

posted by bluecore to Health & Fitness (15 answers total)

Maybe you can reframe it not as a lost opportunity but one that you weren't able to accept at that time. You are probably right that at that time you could not take the risk of a rejection like that, so your brain protected you from it. If you were in a better place mentally, of course you would have pursued it. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt so that you can give yourself the benefit of the doubt.

Is this the kind of thing that you could clean up and turn into a spec project for your portfolio?
posted by bleep at 6:10 PM on January 18, 2020 [12 favorites]

Think of this experience as preparing you for something even bigger down the road. You went through this so that next time you have an opportunity to share an idea, you know for sure to take it.
posted by sallybrown at 6:36 PM on January 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I am not really an "everything happens for a reason" person but I am a "most successes require a LOT of missteps and failures first" kind of person. You were not ready for that opportunity - even if you'd beaten the tremendous odds and gotten the project, you weren't in a place to execute it.

I find the best way to take the sting out of the experience is to learn from it. Maybe consider the mental exercise of "if this happened tomorrow, what could I do in order to make a great pitch AND put together a great project plan and pull this thing off? What skills might I be improving right now for that next big chance?"
posted by Lyn Never at 6:49 PM on January 18, 2020 [13 favorites]

I passed up an offer to take my first salaried editor position when I was right out of college. I had this idea at the time that I was going to apply to grad school or something, so I declined the opportunity.

I spent the next year scraping by, cobbling together freelance and part-time gigs, including an especially dehumanizing stint scooping ice cream and a job at a bookstore. I soon got hired by another department in the store and worked there for most of that year. I met a lot of people who are still friends to this day. I met someone I ended up marrying, and while it didn't last, we were together for 12 years. I had a lot of experiences as a result that I otherwise wouldn't have had, and that I probably needed to become the person I am now.

And a year later, the job I had been offered came open again, when my precessor decided to go to law school. I applied, interviewed, and got the gig, then quickly worked my way up. Within a few years I had became managing editor, while still working some freelance gigs I'd established during that first year out of school.

Then 5 years ago, I was laid off, as so many in that field have been, though in my case I can pretty definitively say it was also retaliation for my taking a strongly anti-racist stance on national television and in an international publication. I regret nothing about that, because I had made the decision that I needed to answer to history, not the short-sighted whims of company management—moreover, within a week of being let go, I had applied for, interviewed for, and been offered a position at my current company, which has turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. Within a few years, I became the director of my practice area and have been fortunate to speak at industry-wide conferences.

So yeah, long story short, not only did I not truly miss the opportunity, passing it by the first time also gave me other vital opportunities and life experiences. That office and the relationship I began during that time both eventually turned toxic, but I learned a lot along the way that I've been able to put to use in my second career as well.

I never could have imagined the things that would happen to change my perspective in the meantime (see also: the timeline of my radicalization in my profile). Similarly, you probably can't even imagine yet what making that decision might have freed you up to do. Just keep going, and see what happens! And as others have noted, maybe you can use the idea you had somewhere else.
posted by limeonaire at 7:09 PM on January 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

P.S. I say all of this from the perspective of someone who has continually dealt with serious depression and anxiety throughout my schooling and my career, who even got put on academic probation in college due to the resulting incompletes. I overcame those limitations and managed to graduate with a good GPA and still get many jobs in the years since. Passing by this opportunity sounds like it was a well-reasoned decision, and I don't think it'll make or break you. But even if it was a failure in judgment, well, sometimes the circumstances we think are the worst are actually the best.
posted by limeonaire at 7:21 PM on January 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

I've been there.

I've reassured myself that if I had actually tried to pursue the opportunity, I wasn't ready for it, so I'd have botched it. I'd be more ready for it today; I'm strong enough to withstand the work that you would have to put into such an idea, and I"d be ready for the collaboration that such an enterprise would take. I wasn't ready with those skills back then, and not only would I have botched things, I'd have made people upset with me.

Another thing I reassure myself with: a college friend had as his motto that "we all get a thousand once-in-a-lifetime opportunities in our lives, and most of them will come around at least twice."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:28 PM on January 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I gave up three fully funded doctoral programs, all at Ivies or tier one schools in my field. Maybe I could have completed the first one? I wanted my dog and my cat and and my boyfriend and I was without mobility in a city with lots of subways and jagged sidewalks and TA commitments. My illness advanced in my late twenties to the point that I couldn't have had a working life anyway. It is so hard to get into those programs that I felt torn apart when I overshot my capacity to be in them. I still ache when I think about it. It's a vocation to me to be a researcher and has benefitted me in general in life.
posted by sweltering at 10:24 PM on January 18, 2020

This happened to me and I made a determination: the next time a window opens, jump through it. Like, you have no idea when the next opportunity will show up but damn it, I will take it even if I’m scared because who knows when the next window is.

So... don’t think it was your one and only opportunity, but do appreciate it when they do come around.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:47 PM on January 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have missed countless opportunities to be more successful in my life.
Or I've missed countless disasters.

My daughter would not exist if I hadn't have slipped onto my arse one day while cutting through a park to get to work.

The mud made me go home and change
Being late made me bump into a manager at the place I was working
They offered me a different job
I fell in love with the person who replaced me.
We had a baby.
Which has been the best thing that's ever happened in my life.

If I caught my fall instead of going splat in the mud I would have thought "that was lucky".
I probably would have felt like I was having a good day.
Oblivious to how hilariously wrong I was.
posted by fullerine at 2:40 AM on January 19, 2020 [11 favorites]

Oh! Hey, hey, hey - you have to watch this.

It's Liz Gilbert's TED talk on creativity. I think the story about Tom Waits in the middle of it will really speak to you. Likewise the one about Ruth Stone. They're both about the way that sometimes a Big Idea exists and just kind of roams the planet looking for the right person to make it happen in that moment. You weren't the right person in that moment, and it's not a personal failing of yours, because you also have a life to lead.

More widely, the talk is about the importance of looking after your mental health while grappling with creativity. Sometimes great things happen and sometimes they don't, but if we turn up to do what we're able (and, obviously, don't turn up for what we're not able to do), it's not our fault when it doesn't come together.

If you like it, she also has a book and podcast on similar themes, where by far the biggest message is "Be kind to yourself".

Aside from that approach, in a more generic and practical sense, this sounds like rumination, which can be a side-effect of depression, so looking into resources for those might help - eg. CBT to cut through the catastrophising and self-blame, mindfulness to practice turning your mind away from negative avenues of thought.
posted by penguin pie at 5:49 AM on January 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

(So sorry - just noticed your last line about treatment-resistant depression - I didn't see that when I wrote the above. Ignore that last paragraph if I'm retreading very old ground for you).
posted by penguin pie at 5:50 AM on January 19, 2020

Think of this as having dodged a bullet. It's like wishing you had stayed with that guy you went out with once or twice fifteen years ago who now has three lovely kids he is deeply involved in, is totally dishy and shows every sign of affluence. But at the time you turned down his offer of a date you had reasons. You just don't remember them clearly now.

If you had gone out with the guy again and married him you would now know that he has a horrible laugh, gets drunk and cries every Saturday night about how unappreciated he is, criticises everything you wear, your posture, your weight and your hair, never sees his kids or does any thing helpful for the family because he is always at the gym, demands that the family look picture perfect every time they are in public and often when they are not, and has put the household into a sickening level of consumer debt. You didn't know all that, but on some level you suspected it and thought naaah, when you saw his text.

That missed opportunity only looks good because you didn't go through being ridiculed for your idea by the toxic manager, had to put in so many hours of overtime that you ended up in hospital, spent days waiting for the information you needed only to take the blame when the part of the project you were assigned wasn't done on time, had a commute that left you with a nervous tic, and developed a repetitive strain injury. Oh, and that toxic manager is doing his best to trash your career now.

You only think the opportunity you missed was glorious. At the time a very realistic assessment of its possibilities and your own capabilities warned you not to move on it. You may have spent days think you should respond, but not doing it, and the reason you didn't do it was because it was beyond your capabilities for good and sound reasons. Maybe getting the job would have required you to work two jobs for awhile and you would have ended up losing both. Maybe applying would have meant getting rejected and damage to your self confidence. Maybe they rejected a dozen ideas better than the one they went with, and would have rejected your idea too because they were going to go with the chief investor's nephew's idea all along.

It only looks good from here. If it had really looked good at the time when you could see it more clearly you would have broken down a wall to go for it.

To work on your feelings of regret write yourself a story where you accept the original script, how it was not a good idea for you, and the reasons, and keep dwelling on those details, consciously redirecting yourself when ever you start to think "If only..." You were flat out not ready then, and you knew it, and sensibly acted on an accurate assessment of your capabilities. If you had written up a project proposal you would have written it up badly, and not expressed your idea clearly enough to be considered. If you could have written it up clearly you would have done so.

It's the thought, not the opportunity you think you lost, that is the problem. Watch for your triggers. When do you get lost in a reverie of regret? Is it when you think about money and get anxious? Is it when you are falling asleep and misery bubbles to the surface? Your regret is actually a type of intrusive thought. It often helps to figure out how often you are having these thoughts, and when, and contrast that to the many times you are not having these thoughts and when you don't and what you are doing when you don't, and use that as a means of reducing the amount of time you are thinking these things.

Sometimes we can redirect our regrets by planning how the next time such an opportunity comes along we will be ready, and taking the professional steps to be prepared. Not knowing your field I can't say what those steps would be, but one way to turn off those thoughts can be to look forward and lay the groundwork for future success - network, learn more, follow the field to see any future opportunities, practice some of the skills.

Sometimes we can redirect our thoughts by reducing the triggers. If you think about this lost opportunity whenever you see an ad for the product on TV stop watching the channel that has the ad. If you think about this whenever you go pee and are alone not preoccupied with your other work practice redirecting your thoughts by not letting them happened during those two minutes you are in the bathroom, if necessary by reciting the alphabet backwards. Little mechanical things like this are surprisingly effective if you can figure out what your triggers are. Reward yourself every time you have this regretful thought and observe that you are obsessing, so that you train your brain to go from the misery thought to mollified slightly because you get a strawberry or a round of Stardew Valley or a square of dark chocolate. The reward system will lessen the intensity of the misery thought as well as redirecting you towards something positive.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:38 AM on January 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

Success requires equal parts preparation, hard work, and luck.

Being born with Depression (or in my case Bipolar II) is just bad luck. I’ve missed some brilliant opportunities due to the distorted lens my brain sometimes applies, and next lifetime I hope to do it all very differently.

In the meantime though I play the hand I was dealt. I put in the preparation and the hard work and accept that any number of factors outside my control, including brain chemistry, may cause things to derail. There are some particular missed opportunities that still make my heart ache, but there’s little self-blame involved. I am who I am and I had little say in that.

I’d suggest you take a similar route and recognize that your anxiety and depression are unfortunate parts of who you are. Play the hand you were dealt and stop taking responsibility for things that basically came down to luck.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:11 AM on January 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

Self-Compassion. You were simply not in the right place for more rejection having been through enough in the past. Had you been in the right place you would have done it. There is no point kicking yourself over something that simply could never have happened. I want to say that again - it could never have happened. The anxiety comes from some belief somewhere that it could have and you need to shoot that down. For that to have been the case you would have had to have been a different person at that time but you were not. The person who wrote this question is not the person who was dealing with the issue at the time. There is nothing you could have done. Surrender to that.
posted by ihaveyourfoot at 1:07 PM on January 19, 2020

Previously, if you want to know that you have a lot of company.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:12 PM on January 19, 2020 [2 favorites]