the regret cycle killing your brand ( before it starts)
Christian Ray Flores here, unusually glued to the news this week. Trying to break off the unhealthy obsessive checking to Iran and Venezuela stuff.
stuff you may have missed
12 Minute Guide to Crushing Imposter Syndrome.
the regret cycle killing your brand
You have a minimum of 2-3 great books in you.
Every week you’re visited by 2-3 brilliant ideas that would make a great speech, video, or article.
Every day you have 2-3 insights inspired by a conversation or a solved problem.
Most of these will never see the light of day, help your team, or enrich your audience because of the regret cycle we all engage in.
Here’s how it works: You create something, then immediately think “If I had just said it differently, positioned it better, waited for the perfect moment...” You spiral. Delete. Start over. Repeat.
This sort of self-torture is delicious to the mind because your brain thinks it’s problem-solving, but it actually freezes your creativity. You cannot be creative and in survival mode at the same time.
It’s like how one small irritation with your spouse at breakfast snowballs into an entire day of tension—except instead of damaging your relationship, you’re sabotaging your brand before anyone even sees it.
These tiny irritants become an overarching sense of discontent. Instead of reflection that produces insights, you’re stuck in rumination that produces nothing.
Your personal brand—the thing that could change your career, create opportunities, build wealth—stays buried because you’re replaying what you should have done instead of doing what’s next.
I can’t tell you how much genius I see every single day in casual conversations. It’s like untapped Venezuelan oil beneath struggling feet—massive value, zero extraction. (Yes, I’ve been glued to the news. Stay with me. You get the point.)
This week, try this:
1. Capture - When a great idea hits (conversation, shower, commute), voice memo it immediately. Don’t trust your memory.
2. Extract - Block 60-90 minutes this week. Take that voice memo and ask: “What’s the one insight here that would help someone right now?”
3. Publish - Write it. Record it. Share it. Imperfect and public beats perfect and hidden. Every. Single. Time.
Then repeat. Every week.
When I asked neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf (40 years researching the mind-brain connection) about this pattern, she revealed something that changed everything: Regret cycles aren’t character flaws—they’re neurological patterns you can rewire in 63 days. Which is incidentally why when I work with clients I invite them to commit to 9-12 weeks before we decide if we’ll continue.
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