Guilt versus Regret

I'm a big fan of guilt and a detester of regret. What is the difference between these two things? In my mind guilt is the feeling that you get when you know you should be doing something. Regret is the feeling that comes about when you wish you had done something differently.

Guilt is the major driving force in my doing things that are not immediately pleasurable or cannot be pictured as being pleasurable. Guilt is the immediate reason I pay bills or mow the lawn as I don't enjoy doing either, and don't expect to enjoy the result. Guilt comes about from me imagining the future and deciding that I will feel badly about a situation if I don't do something not quite as bad as the consequences of not doing it. For a long time I disliked the feeling of guilt, the nagging sensation, the squirming tension, but now I don't mind it. I now know that guilt is something akin to hunger, just a sensation that tells you that you need to do something. I am developing the ability to feel the cessation of guilt in the same manner as the cessation of hunger, a sort of moral satiety. Now, from time-to-time I feel a satisfaction in the process from guilt through action to relaxation. The path from boredom to guilt to action to contented relaxation is a nice cyclical story to participate in.

Regret is the enemy. It is a negative feeling about something that you cannot fix. I tend to feel regret most often when I have said something that was hurtful to others, as I am wont to do. It's not as though I am not already aware that there are things I should not say (even if they are true and honest) but I make many mistakes, and so I don't really learn from regret. Regret tends to happen in a recurring cringe of memory, repeatedly bashing away at my consciousness, from which I mentally recoil and go somewhere else. But how does one deliberately forget? Perhaps the method is to experience the memory but draw away from it the emotion that corresponds to it, to have a memory as one remembers facts rather than as having lived it.

I am having a good day.