1. Choosing a job based on compensation alone

Remedy: Make a budget. If you don’t know how much money you need to live the lifestyle you feel comfortable with, you can’t accurately project whether switching jobs for a $10K pay bump is actually a good deal. Making a pros and cons list when comparing your current job with a new opportunity is also helpful. If the only advantage a job offers is a bigger pay check, you can weigh that against longer hours, a more onerous commute and increased reporting responsibilities. Keep in mind that research shows that increases in happiness based on earnings peak at about $75K. Incomes above this level don’t increase your feeling of well-being on a day-to-day basis. So, if you think a jump up to $85 or $90K will make you feel less morose when your alarm goes off, you might want to look at addressing some of the non-monetary factors in your life that are contributing to your dissatisfaction.

2. Staying too long in a job that you want to leave

Remedy: The tricky aspect of this regret is that it’s typically rooted in hindsight. Only after you’ve left the job and have moved on to something better, do you start beating yourself up for not making the leap sooner, even if it hadn’t been practical or possible. What you can do is to identify the factors that kept you in your former position as red flags to be aware of in the future and work to line up supports that will allow you to more quickly capitalize on other opportunities as they may present themselves. This could include reviewing and updating your resume with new accomplishments on a monthly or quarterly basis, keeping your LinkedIn account current, building up a contingency fund to allow you to feel less tethered to your current pay check and staying in the loop on industry news and gossip to be aware of where your skills and experience could be of value.

3. Not starting your own business

Remedy: While the idea of being your own boss is an attractive one, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Being responsible for your own success, creating a legacy for your family and improving the lives of clients and customers certainly sounds romantic, but what about the long hours, the lack of leisure time, the risk of financial failure, the fact that you’re the boss, entry-level employee, marketer, accountant and janitor all rolled into one? If you value job stability, prefer a singular focus over multi-tasking, aren’t particularly comfortable with risk and can’t imagine yourself hustling for new business on a daily basis, the entrepreneurial lifestyle isn’t for you.

4. Slacking at school

Remedy: This is another hindsight-based regret that you can’t cure without a time machine. The years, energy and dollars you spent on your degree are sunk costs. You can’t do anything about your past academic track record, but you can identify the areas in which you think you fell short in your college days and figure out how to augment those shortcomings in the present. For example, if you feel you didn’t do enough networking outside of the classroom, you might consider joining an alumni group or make a greater effort to participate in professional associations in your field. If you regret skipping your 8:00 AM managerial accounting class and mourn how useful those concepts would be to you now, check out the continuing ed options at your nearest community college.

5. Lacking confidence in your career intuition

Remedy: When we make a major decision such as accepting (or turning down) a job offer, we tend to exercise confirmation bias. If we think we made a good choice, we prioritize information that supports this view and if we fear we’ve made a mistake, we zero in on intel or impressions that reinforce this gut feeling. If you habitually doubt your competence when it comes to making career decisions, the issue is less about the subjective quality of your past choices and more about building confidence in your ability to guide your career in a satisfying direction and exert some degree of control over the outcomes of your choices. Addressing this could involve recalling the circumstances under which you made a particular choice and the priorities you held at the time and noting how they differ from the circumstances and priorities under which you’re evaluating those decisions. It could also involve working with a career coach to identify patterns in your decision-making and to help you bolster areas in which you’d like to increase your confidence – risk taking or negotiation, for example.