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That’s because negative emotions are essential, too. They help us survive.
The purpose of this book is to reclaim regret as an indispensable emotion—and to show you how to use its many strengths to make better decisions, perform better at work and school, and bring greater meaning to your life.
project. In Part One—which comprises this chapter and the next three—I show why regret matters.
After I’ve reclaimed regret, I’ll move to divulging its contents. Part Two, “Regret Revealed,”
the seven chapters of Part Two examine what people truly regret.
Nearly all regrets fall into four core categories—foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets.
Part Three, “Regret Remade,” describes how to turn the negative emotion of regret into a positive instrument for improving your life.
“Opportunity breeds regret,” they wrote, and “education is open to continual modification throughout life.”[9]
Foundation regrets.
our failure to be responsible, conscientious, or prudent.
Without a measure of physical well-being and material security, other goals become difficult to imagine and even harder to pursue.
When such decisions eventually cause the platform of our lives to wobble, and our futures to not live up to our hopes, regret follows.
Boldness regrets.
over time we are much more likely to regret the chances we didn’t take than the chances we did.
What haunts us is the inaction itself.
Moral regrets.
we often face choices that tempt us to take the low road.
over time, these morally dubious decisions can gnaw at us.
When we behave poorly, or compromise our belief in our own goodness, regret can build and then persist.
Connection regrets.
Our actions give our lives direction. But other people give those lives purpose.
regrets stem from our failure to recognize and hono...
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Connection regrets arise any time we neglect the people who help establish our own sense of wholeness.
At some early moment, we face a series of decisions. One set represents the path of the ant. These choices require short-term sacrifice, but in the service of a long-term payoff. The other choices represent the path of the grasshopper.
Foundation regrets sound like this: If only I’d done the work.
Foundation regrets begin with an irresistible lure and end with an inexorable logic.
“temporal discounting.”[1] He overvalued the now—and undervalued (that is, discounted) the later.
To identify a foundation regret in yourself or in others, listen for the words “too
much”—whether they attach to consuming alcohol, playing video games, watching television, spending money, or any other activity whose immediate lure exceeds its lasting value.
Then listen for the words “too little”—whether they describe studying in school, setting aside cash, practicing a sport or musical instrument, or any other u...
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the slowly building force of all those poor decisions can arrive like a tornado—gradually and then suddenly.
Compounding. It’s a powerful concept, but one our grasshopper minds struggle to comprehend.
Our brains therefore play a double trick on us. They entice us into valuing the now too much and the later too little. Then they prevent us from understanding the nonlinear, compounding effects of our choice.
Foundation regrets are not just difficult to avoid. They are also difficult to undo.
weaknesses in one’s foundation take time to develop and recognize.
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.
Disappointments exist outside of your control.
Regrets, in contrast, are your fault.
One of the most prevalent cognitive biases—in some ways the über-bias—is called the “fundamental attribution error.”
we too often attribute the behavior to the person’s personality and disposition rather than to the person’s situation and context.[5]
We load too much explanatory freight onto the person and too little onto the situation.
a foundation attribution error. We attribute these failures, in ourselves and others, to personal choices when they’re often at least partly the result of circumstances we can’t control.[*]
Foundation regrets have both personal responsibility/fault attributions and contextual/environmental attribution
We must create the conditions at every level—society, community, and family—to improve individuals’ foundational choices.
Think ahead. Do the work. Start now. Help yourself and others to become the ant.
If foundation regrets arise from the failure to plan ahead, work hard, follow through, and build a stable platform for life, boldness regrets are their counterpart. They arise from the failure to take full advantage of that platform—to use it as a springboard into a richer life.
Play it safe or take a chance?
Boldness regrets sound like this: If only I’d taken that risk.
Regrets of boldness often begin with a voice that isn’t heard.
The pain of boldness regrets is the pain of “What if?”
people regret inactions more than actions—especially in the long term. “Regrettable failures to act . . . have a longer half-life than regrettable actions,”
