“I should have said …” can be very, very productive if it aimed at doing a similar job better in the future. It is the essence of BUGS’ experience.

A LESSON is one thing. REGRET is the absolute opposite.

Like all real BUGS lessons, this one, once stated, is simple, obvious, and almost impossible to discipline oneself to use in practice.

Regrets are very much like Wordism. There are a billion Only True Faiths and there are a billion Might Have Beens.

In our arguments, I know very well how it feels to have missed a line which might have made a big difference. You think, “Yes, not regretting it is a good theory, but who can just shove it aside and concentrate on the lesson and not the regret.”

I want to remind you, AGAIN, that the BASIS of BUGS is DISCIPLINE.

Discipline MEANS that you train yourself to do things automatically which, to say the least, do not come naturally.

I spent my best years wasting most of my mental energy on regret.

Regret is insane.

Here on Planet Earth you can no more change what you did thirty seconds ago than you can change the fate of the Ottoman Empire.

For your brain, learning to recognize and dismiss Regret is not only a tall order, it is higher than the Tower of Babel would have been.

On the other hand, your whole approach to debate has changed so completely becoming a BUGSER that you wouldn’t have imagined it a few years ago.

I was a drug recovery sponsor and, as SPLC pointed out, a drug abuser myself.

If you think “Learn, Don’t Regret” sounds trite to YOU, try to imagine how hard it was drumming this discipline into people who did what alkies and junkies had done!

Cripple half a family but stay clean and sober and learn to drive carefully.

It sounds inane but it is the ONLY key to sanity. The discipline you will need is huge, but it is quite doable. Take that from one who has dealt with so much worse.

Regret, from the word Go, is insane. Learning the lesson is what life is all about.