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Our actual self is the bundle of attributes that we currently possess. Our ideal self is the self we believe we could be—our
ought self is
the self we believe we should be—our duties, commitments, and ...
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What fuels our behavior and directs which goals we pursue, Higgins argued, are discrepancies ...
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when we don’t make these efforts, when a discrepancy persists between who we are and who we could or should be, unpleasant feelings flood the gap.
people regret their failures to live up to their ideal selves more than their failures to live up to their ought selves.
Discrepancies between our actual self and our ideal self leave us dejected.
We feel a greater sense of urgency about ought-related regrets, so we’re more likely to begin repair work—by
Failures to become our ideal selves are failures to pursue opportunities. Failures to become our ought selves are failures to fulfill obligations. All four of the core regrets involve opportunity, obligation, or both.
“Regrets of inaction last longer than regrets of action in part because they reflect greater perceived opportunity.”
opportunity as a driver of regret.
People who were not White had more regrets about education than White people, which is likely explained by the racial disparities in access to educational opportunities in the United States.
as people grew older, inaction regrets began to dominate.
age was by far the strongest predictor of regrets of inaction.
people seem to regret what they haven’t done.
That door remains open.
If the opportunity for action exists, and we can still act, then we are more likely to regret the inaction of not taking this opportunity. We regret what we have not done but can still do more frequently across different domains at different points in life.
We regret foregone opportunities more often than unfulfilled obligations.
A life of obligation and no opportunity is crimped. A life of opportunity and no obligation is hollow. A life that fuses opportunity and obligation is true.
If regrets make us human, how do we enlist them to make us better, more satisfied people?
The starting point is to revisit one of the key distinctions in the architecture of regret: the difference between regrets of action and regrets of inaction—between
For action regrets, your initial goal should be to change the immediate situation for the better.
We can undo many such regrets:
We can also respond to action regrets by using At Leasts to help us feel better about our circumstances.
both can help us realign now.
UN...
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Reversible or inconsequential decision regrets
people are much more likely to undo regrets of action than regrets of inaction.[1] We’re more apt to repair what we did than what we didn’t do.
As we saw in Chapters 8 and 9, action regrets typically arise from concrete incidents and elicit “hot” emotions that we respond to quickly. Inaction regrets, by contrast, are often more abstract and elicit less immediately intense emotions.
many inaction regrets are inherently diff...
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So, to address regrets of action, begin by asking yourself these questions:
can I make amends through an apology or some form of emotional or material restitution?
can I fix the mistake?
If the action regret can be undone, try to do that—even
AT LEAST IT
Irreversible or consequential regrets
one way to ease its sting is to switch from If Only to At Least.
Going to law school was a mistake—but at least I met my wife.
At Leasts don’t alter our behavior or boost our performance in the future, but they do he...
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At Leasts can turn regret into relief. On their own they don’t change our behavior, but they change how we feel about our behavior, which can be valuable.
best response—and the optimal response to most regrets, action and inaction alike—is to use the regret to improve the future.
we can remember that feeling is for thinking and that thinking is for doing.
disclose the regret, reframe the way we view it and ourselves, and extract a lesson from the experience to remake our subsequent decisions.
“provided both behavioral and neural evidence that self-disclosure is intrinsically rewarding.”[3]
The first step in reckoning with all regrets, whether regrets of action or inaction, is self-disclosure.
an enormous body of literature makes clear that disclosing our thoughts, feelings, and actions—by telling others or simply by writing about them—brings an array of physical, mental, and professional benefits.
The better approach is to relive and relieve. By divulging the regret, we reduce some of its burden, which can clear a path for making sense of it.
language, whether written or spoken, forces us to organize and integrate our thoughts. It converts blobby mental abstractions into concrete linguistic units. That’s a plus for negative emotions.[7]
Writing about regret or revealing a regret to another person moves the experience from the realm of emotion
into the realm of cognition.
One misgiving we have with self-disclosure, particularly if we’re revealing our previous failures to be prudent, trustworthy, or courageous, is that others will think poorly of us.
One major review of the literature concluded that “people who engage in intimate disclosures tend to be liked more than people who disclose at lower levels.”
merely writing about emotional difficulties, even solely for your own consumption, can be powerful. Among the benefits:
