This is narrowly tailored advice presented more broadly than to the context it's useful for. And it's not the best way forward in that case, either.
If someone needs a fire lit under their ass to get going, a sense of falling behind their expectations for themselves can be a perfectly useful motivating factor.
Of course it can become all-consuming if that's all they've got as a life planning system. It's a setup that will inevitably trigger the brain's way of telling them there is a contradiction between desires and perceived actions. Regret doesn't have to be stressful, but this guarantees it is.
Throwing it away for a self-evaluation system that nullifies regrets is jumping to another extreme. Best case scenario is lying to yourself long enough to let your actual value system catch up. Or maybe it'll make someone lazy and complacent in a way that they're content with and much later come to regret that too, or maybe it will lead to the clichéd cycle of a "fresh start" every few months.
Building and maintaining a system of motivation, discipline and self-evaluation that lets someone live their life while working towards their goals productively for decades requires good mental hygiene, a topic with suspiciously few quality resources.
If someone needs a fire lit under their ass to get going, a sense of falling behind their expectations for themselves can be a perfectly useful motivating factor.
Of course it can become all-consuming if that's all they've got as a life planning system. It's a setup that will inevitably trigger the brain's way of telling them there is a contradiction between desires and perceived actions. Regret doesn't have to be stressful, but this guarantees it is.
Throwing it away for a self-evaluation system that nullifies regrets is jumping to another extreme. Best case scenario is lying to yourself long enough to let your actual value system catch up. Or maybe it'll make someone lazy and complacent in a way that they're content with and much later come to regret that too, or maybe it will lead to the clichéd cycle of a "fresh start" every few months.
Building and maintaining a system of motivation, discipline and self-evaluation that lets someone live their life while working towards their goals productively for decades requires good mental hygiene, a topic with suspiciously few quality resources.