Micro-Regrets Aren't Failures

“I wish I had texted back.”“I wish I had said no.”“I wish I had spoken up.”Most regrets aren’t dramatic. They’re tiny. The friend we meant to call back. The boundary we didn’t hold. The apology we keep meaning to make. The night we spent scrolling instead of resting. But those small “I wish I had…” moments can quietly pile up until we start turning them into much bigger stories about ourselves, like I never follow through. I’m a bad friend. I always get it wrong. In this episode of Right Here, hosts Christopher Mooney, LCSW and Kenyon Phillips, LMSW unpack what micro-regrets are, why regret is different from disappointment or shame, and how these seemingly small moments can point toward the things we actually value—connection, rest, honesty, courage, presence, and self-respect. The conversation also explores how to stop treating regret like a punishment and start using it as information by identifying what you actually regret, noticing the value underneath it, and deciding whether the next step is to repair, redirect, or release. You don’t have to redeem your whole past or endlessly replay everything you wish you’d done differently. Sometimes, one small regret can simply show you what you want to do differently next time.