The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

by Daniel H. Pink

The initial step in dealing with all forms of regret is to disclose the regret.

to begin to harness your regrets to improve in the future, try any of the following:

Write about your regret for fifteen minutes for three consecutive days.

Talk about your regret into a voice recorder for fifteen minutes for three consecutive days.

Tell someone else about the regret in person or by phone. Include sufficient detail about what happened, but establish a time limit (perhaps a half hour) to avoid the possibilities of repetition and brooding.

The most powerful and promising alternative—and the second step in the regret-reckoning process—was

Kristin Neff.

is called “self-com...

Self-compassion emerged in part from Neff’s recognition that when we stumble or fail, we treat ourselves more harshly than we would ever treat friends, family...

we’re better off extending ourselves the same warmth and understanding we’d offer another person.

It simply recognizes that “being imperfect, making mistakes, and encountering life difficulties is part of the shared human experience.”[15]

Self-compassion is also something that people can learn.[16]

Neff and others has found that self-compassion is associated with increased optimism, happiness, curiosity, and wisdom;[17] enhanced personal initiative and emotional intelligence;[18] greater mental toughness;[19] and deeper social connections.[20]

“Self-compassion appears to orient people to embrace their regret,” Zhang and Chen write, “and this willingness to remain in contact with their regret may afford people the opportunity to discover avenues for personal improvement.”[26]

it means moving past language like “I really screwed up,” which Cheryl told me several times, and instead recognizing how normal, universal, and human her regret is.

Self-compassion, by contrast, prompts people to confront their difficulties head-on and take responsibility for them,

the second step in transforming our regrets is to ask ourselves three questions:

If a friend or relative came to you with the same regret as yours, would you treat that person with kindness or contempt? If your answer is kindness, use that approach on yourself.

Is this type of regret something that other people might have endured, or are you the only person ever to have experienced it?

your stumble is part of our common humanity,

Does this regret represent an unpleasant moment in your life, or does it define your life?

it’s worth being aware of the regret but not overidentifying with it,

Talking about ourselves in the third person is one variety of what social psychologists call “self-distancing.”

A better, more effective, and longer-lasting approach is to move in the opposite direction—not to plunge in, but to zoom out and gaze upon our situation as a detached observer,

After self-disclosure relieves the burden of carrying a regret, and self-compassion reframes the regret as a human imperfection rather than an incapacitating flaw, self-distancing helps you analyze and strategize—to examine the regret dispassionately without shame or rancor and to extract from it a lesson that can guide your future behavior.

“People who self-distance focus less on recounting their experiences and more on reconstruing them in ways that provide insight and closure,”

recounting to the more distanced act of reconstruing regulates our emotions and redirects behavior.

We can create distance from our regrets in three ways.

First, we can distance through space.

as the “fly-on-the-wall t...

Rather than examine your regret from your own...

view the scene from the perspective of a neutral observer.

You may have noticed that you’re often better at solving other people’s problems than your own.

when people step back and assess their own situation the way they’d evaluate other people’s situations, they close this perceptual gap.

This sort of distancing can be physical as well as mental. Going to a different location to analyze the regret or even literally leaning back, rather than forward, in one’s chair can make challenges seem less difficult and reduce anxiety in addressing them.[36]

The second way to self-distance is through time.

For example, one study showed that prompting people to consider how they might feel about a negative situation

in ten years reduced their stress and enhanced their problem-solving capabilities compared to contemplating what the situation would be like in a week.[37]

Mentally visiting the future—and then examining the regret retro...

It can make the problem seem smaller, more temporary, and eas...

The third method of self-distancing, as Julius Caesar and Elmo teach us, is through language.

“subtle shifts in the language people

use to refer to themselves during introspection can influence their capacity to regulate how they think, ...

Similarly, deploying what some call the “universal you”—using “you” to mean people in general—can destigmatize negative experiences and help people pull meaning from them.[43]

to gain the benefits of self-distancing, try any of the following:

Imagine your best friend is confronting the same regret that you’re dealing with. What is the lesson that the regret teaches them? What would you tell them to do next? Be as specific as you can. Now follow your own advice.

Technique for decision making too...?

If your regret involves your business or career, try a technique from the late Intel CEO Andy Grove, who reportedly would ask himself, “If I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do?” [46]

Imagine it is ten years from now and you’re looking back with pride on how you responded to this regret. What did you do?

The second was what behavioral economists have come to call a “regret lottery.”

The default lottery entry created loss aversion or avoidance behavior

my hands because of my own stupidity, laziness, or lack of effort. And if I anticipate that sinking feeling,

Anticipating what we might accomplish or have in the future (what we have to lose) of we do not act today, and recognizing that the opportunity loss is our own fault