The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

by Daniel H. Pink

Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Regret is also valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn’t drag us down; it can lift us up.

Regret makes us human. Regret makes us better.

regrets fall into four core categories—foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets.

First, we compare.

The emotion becomes regret only when she does the work of boarding the time machine, negating the past, and contrasting her grim actual present with what might have been. Comparison lives at regret’s

Second, we assess blame. Regret is your own fault, not someone else’s.

Counterfactuals permit us to imagine what might have been.

With “downward counterfactuals,” we contemplate how an alternative could have been worse.

With upward counterfactuals, we imagine how things could have gone better.

80 percent of the counterfactuals people generate are If Onlys.

look at the research shows that regret, handled correctly, offers three broad benefits. It can sharpen our decision-making skills. It can elevate our performance on a range of tasks. And it can strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness.

We need the ability to regret our poor decisions—to feel bad about them—precisely so we can improve those decisions in the future.

This is one of the central findings on regret: it can deepen persistence, which almost always elevates performance.

“If you have a broken heart, it means you have done something big enough and important enough and valuable enough to have broken your heart.”

Foundation regrets. The first deep structure category cuts across nearly all the surface categories. Many of our education, finance, and health regrets are actually different outward expressions of the same core regret: our failure to be responsible, conscientious, or prudent.

Boldness regrets.

over time we are much more likely to regret the chances we didn’t take than the chances we did.

Moral regrets. Most of us want to be good people. Yet we often face choices that tempt us to take the low road. When we travel that path, we don’t always feel bad immediately.

Connection regrets.

Our actions give our lives direction. But other people give those lives purpose. A massive number of human regrets stem from our failure to recognize and honor this principle.

Foundation regrets arise from our failures of foresight and conscientiousness.

“temporal discounting.”[1] He overvalued the now—and undervalued (that is, discounted) the later.

what distinguishes regret from disappointment is personal responsibility.

“fundamental attribution error.” When people, especially Westerners, try to explain someone’s behavior, we too often attribute the behavior to the person’s personality and disposition rather than to the person’s situation and context.

people regret inactions more than actions—especially

A key reason for this discrepancy is that when we act, we know what happened next. We see the outcome and that can shrink regret’s half-life. But when we don’t act—when we don’t step off that metaphorical train—we can only speculate how events would have unfolded.

I could instead launch an Expedia-for-the-regretful site, which would include special travel packages for the legions of college graduates in the surveys who regretted not studying abroad.

reading this for Expedia book club. One question we always ask is "How can we apply thi to Expedia?" Well, here is one example straight from the author!

Sometimes the ultimate act of boldness involves the risk of using one’s voice in ways that might rattle others but that clear a new path for oneself.

beliefs about morality stand on five pillars:

Care/harm:

Fairness/cheating:

Loyalty/disloyalty:

Authority/subversion:

Purity/desecration:

“pluralistic ignorance.” We mistakenly assume that our beliefs differ vastly from everyone else’s—especially when those private thoughts seem at odds with broader public behavior.

boldness regrets—If only I’d taken that risk—are entirely about opportunities we didn’t seize.[3] Foundation regrets—If only I’d done the work—are also largely about opportunities (for education, health, financial well-being) that we didn’t pursue. Connection regrets—If only I’d reached out—are a mix. They involve opportunities for friendship we didn’t follow through on, as well as obligations to family members and others that we neglected. Moral regrets—If only I’d done the right thing—are about obligations we didn’t meet.

For action regrets, your initial goal should be to change the immediate situation for the better. That’s not always possible, but we have two ways to advance toward that goal. We can undo many such regrets: we can make amends, reverse our choices, or erase the consequences. Think of Jeff and his now fading tattoo. We can also respond to action regrets by using At Leasts to help us feel better about our circumstances.

the optimal response to most regrets, action and inaction alike—is to use the regret to improve the future.

STEP 1. SELF-DISCLOSURE: RELIVE AND RELIEVE

The first step in reckoning with all regrets, whether regrets of action or inaction, is self-disclosure.

Denying our regrets taxes our minds and bodies. Gripping them too tightly can tip us into harmful rumination. 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.

writing about negative experiences like regret, and even talking into a tape recorder about them, for fifteen minutes a day substantially increased people’s overall life satisfaction and improved their physical and mental well-being

Should we add this to the end of day from WHEN?

writing and talking about triumphs and good times drained some of their positivity.

Does this imply that Social Media is a downward spiral?

Writing about regret or revealing a regret to another person moves the experience from the realm of emotion into the realm of cognition.

For life’s happy moments, avoiding analysis and sense-making helps us maintain the wonder and delight of those moments. Dissecting terrific events can diminish their terrificness.

“people who engage in intimate disclosures tend to be liked more than people who disclose at lower levels.”

Write about your regret 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

STEP 2. SELF-COMPASSION: NORMALIZE AND NEUTRALIZE

Rather than belittling or berating ourselves during moments of frustration and failure, we’re better off extending ourselves the same warmth and understanding we’d offer another person. Self-compassion begins by replacing searing judgment with basic kindness.