4 our of ten adults regret their life choices.
If you go to the linked article it is a clear example that many people are unhappy with their decisions or the result of them. Often we can't see ahead of us to know that what seems the proper choice is the worst thing for us in the long term. How can we know?
One thing that keeps coming back to me is that most decisions made for financial reasons seem to drive me toward compromises or directions that move against my true nature. It then reminds me that in competition in sports if you are a very competitive person and can't stand losing then you will be bound to get less joy out of your participation.
So a for instance is tennis where you can often on any public court find someone who never wants to just rally or practice but wants to keep score. That's all fine except that there are many times I just don't want the struggle or the sense of either domination, aggression, or helpless losing that can come with running up against someone playing better than you.
Often for me it is players that are thirty years my junior and somehow they think they've accomplished something if they can somehow pull off a win. Even on a practice court I ran up against a fellow teaching pro who had to prove himself superior in his serving. He started complaining about my luck when I sliced a few wide serves on the line out of his reach for clean aces. In one of his serves down the T I made a purposeful decision not to even move for it since my back was hurting bad and my arthritic hips wouldn't let me get it anyway. He actually thought that I hadn't even been able to react and then came to gloating. I knew that twenty plus years from now he'd either not be playing or facing the same decisions and if his ego let him understand it that I was simply choosing to not suffer and gain the most joy out of moments on the court.
As for regrets. You have to have options to have regrets. Do I regret that I never played professionally and instead took to teaching the sport? No, because I never really had the option since a long list of reasons come to mind including injuries, lack of real coaching, and zero financial options to take that path. I knew guys with the money backing them and even after many months over a course of years training at the best camps they would burn out and realize that it wasn't going to happen for them. Most ended up in totally unrelated jobs.
Make the best decisions you can at the time with the knowledge at hand and if possible don't make them strictly for financial reasons but for your true nature and you'll most likely be happier for it.
