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Dawn Duryea's avatar

The pendulum is starting to swing back - our pattern as a society seems to be to swing from one extreme to another. I also feel like I have experienced life in another era being in my 50's now. I feel like I have gained wisdom just from living. That also reminds me that we can gain wisdom by consulting with people who have lived different lives from ours. That's why we love stories. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us!

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Karl Dunn's avatar

For sure Dawn, my pleasure. I'm really enjoying this community we're making here.

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🇨🇦From Silence to Strength's avatar

So many great points! This one stood out most to me:

“Regrets are totally made-up. They presume the other thing you did would have worked out. It’s a total fantasy. Forget regret.”

As someone who has endured a lifetime of trauma, I often live in the past. This gives a great perspective!

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Karl Dunn's avatar

It’s helped me enormously too. I have the same tendency to look back. Getting better at it these days!

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Martha Ann Wright's avatar

Please thank Toby for me! That has helped immensely with some stuff I’m going through right now. I have a tendency to wallow in regret and guilt, so his wise words are going to have long term payoff for me.

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Karl Dunn's avatar

He’s a smart one my brother, I’ll pass your best on, Martha.

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Martha Ann Wright's avatar

Thank you also for thinking of the rest of us and sharing it!

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Brian Hurlburt's avatar

Yes, Carl, I think You’re right. I think our High Tech, is finally leading to appreciation for more High Touch. I’ve been writing on Medium for 6 Weeks and I have had 1,032 and 70 Followers. I only started here, on Substack about two weeks ago, and I have near 700 views, but just 9 Free Subscribers. My writing is vast and varied, but on Medium it’s primarily my Memories, Memoirs, Short Stories, and personalized Genealogy and Historical Fiction. It seems the more personal the touch the better the response.

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Karl Dunn's avatar

I think so too. People want to hear from humans here.

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Carlie Melody Mae's avatar

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed reading this. Thanks Karl.

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Karl Dunn's avatar

Thank you Carlie! I have a lot o fun writing them. It helps me figure out what I’m thinking and seeing in the world.

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Jennifer's avatar

I'm glad I found this substack. I really needed to read the part about regret. I'm going to hang on to that advice and remind myself of it whenever regret tries to rear its ugly head again.

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Karl Dunn's avatar

You’re welcome Jennifer. I remind myself of it all the time. My brother really changed me with that conversation.

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Steve Rice - The Creative Edge's avatar

This is a great take and echoes so much of what I've been feeling (and thinking over the past few years). I've been working for a couple of years to decouple myself from social media use. It's been a process of detoxifying and changing habits, but quality of life gets better and better.

I find myself spending more of my life walking trails, breathing fresh mountain air, actually looking at the sky and trees and rocks. I'm creating more--painting, writing, playing music. This seems like what life is for.

Your brother's insights on regret are 🔥🔥🔥! I've never quite heard it expressed that way...but it's true. Fits all of the situations we anticipate or regret--past or future. It doesn't exist (any more or yet). It's just not real! Such a cool reframing. Thanks for sharing.

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Kelly C.'s avatar

Your brother's advice is not only beautiful, it's healing. And I think it can be applied to many regrets in life: a goal subverted, a dream that dies before you're ready. A painful loss.

We tend to think of life as linear, or circular, but I think it's more like fractals and fractals are hard to follow but beautiful to behold in time. We hurt at the breaking but grow from it if we let ourselves.

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Kris Bayer's avatar

Great piece on so many levels! Regret, oh the chains that keep us tied to the past and dreaming of a future that was not. Wow, your brother's advice is so freeing. Thanks!!!

I so appreciate the young entrepreneurs who are doing good and the elders who hold the wisdom of experience and everyone else. Humans hold the power in their own hands and we should never use systems to force others to behave as someone else wishes!

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Susan Stillwell's avatar

Thank you for the excellent food for thought. I started following you in the last week or two, and am finding your work really speaks to my need to get back to “real” living. The tech needs to go back to its role as a tool. Tech is a terrible master, one I don’t want to follow.

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Karl Dunn's avatar

I am also de-teching myself. My no-tech Sundays are always the big wind down.

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liam's avatar

I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on 'de-teching' (I may steal that word if that's alright!), and I've been grappling with it myself over the past few years. Plus some brilliant wisdom from your brother, great read :)

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Karl Dunn's avatar

Thank you Liam, steal away! And check out this week’s. I had an expansion of the retreat idea from readers. Toby’s is now side of regret, and I learned the other where it’s a useful tool: https://karldunn.substack.com/p/opinions-were-not-as-right-as-we?r=3p3c9a

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Lacey Madison's avatar

In the immortal words of Jonathan Larson, "forget regret, or life is yours to miss...no day but today"

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Seven Jacobs's avatar

I love the point about regrets! I like to say "if when you made a decision you thought it was the wisest one, there's onpoint in regret."

This upgrade to seeing regrets as made up is even more powerful. The narrative is an illusion and whatever happened got us to where we are now, what we can pass on, etc.

It's all reframable

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Karl Dunn's avatar

Hey there Seven, I hope you read this week's too. After comments from readers, I've expanded my idea of what regret is and how else it can serve us.

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Julie's avatar

I love this.

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Karl Dunn's avatar

Cheers Julie!

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KAL's avatar
Mar 5Edited

Thank you for sharing your insightful and validating thoughts on technology. I recently built a place for people to vacation and learn how to balance the rhythms of nature with moderated doses of tech. It’s a gamble of a business endeavor…your post reaffirmed that it might just work. Thank you:)

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Karl Dunn's avatar

Nice one mate, sometimes you just have to take the leap. I saw one of my favorite directors called Tarsem speak about his feature film, The Fall. His entire plan to make this film made zero economic sense. But he did it anyway. And it flopped. But over 20 years because a cult classic. I keep a framed poster of it on my wall to remind me that you just have to follow your instinct sometimes.

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KAL's avatar

Great story!

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Karl Dunn's avatar

Thank you KAL!

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Beth's avatar

I’ve been off Meta platforms for 8 weeks and I’m feeling a remarkable improvement in my mental health. I was recently given a turntable with FM radio which I’m enjoying listening to. I’m spending more time outside, I’m completing projects so I know focus has improved.

We are pulling everything off the cloud saving files on an 8tb external hard drive.

Cancelled Apple Music subscription, cancelled tv, ( we do stream). I’m reading actual books more often, or listen thru the Libby app.

I’d love to revert back to 35 ml film and film processing again.

Gardening is a fundamental, healthy distraction that actually produces food for our household. I’m prepping for a build of a hoop house.

Lots to do when we put technology aside for a bit and create actual material content that sincerely serves you.

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Karl Dunn's avatar

Wow, you’ve really created a whole offline life. Sounds great. I just quit the streaming platforms too. I’d click around for an hour and find nothing. Also drifting back to books from Kindle. Feels good.

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