More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
April 8 - April 30, 2022
Self-compassion is also something that people can learn.[16] And when they master it, the benefits are considerable.
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.
correlates with less depression, anxiety, stress, perfectionism, and shame
If a friend or relative came to you with the same regret as yours, would you treat that person with kindness or contempt?
Is this type of regret something that other people might have endured, or are you the only person ever to have experienced it?
Does this regret represent an unpleasant moment in your life, or does it define your life?
STEP 3. SELF-DISTANCING: ANALYZE AND STRATEGIZE
Some people find illeism annoying (although it doesn’t bother Daniel Pink).
Jeff likes what he did there!
Talking about ourselves in the third person is one variety of what social psychologists call “self-distancing.”
self-distancing strengthens thinking,[30] enhances problem-solving skills,[31] deepens wisdom,[32] and even reduces the elevated blood pressure that often accompanies stressful situations.
First, we can distance through space. The classic move is known, unsurprisingly, as the “fly-on-the-wall technique.”
you’re often better at solving other people’s problems than your own.
The second way to self-distance is through time.
When we simulate looking at the problem retrospectively, from the binoculars of tomorrow rather than the magnifying glass of today, we’re more likely to replace self-justification with self-improvement.
The third method of self-distancing, as Julius Caesar and Elmo teach us, is through language.
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?
Imagine that you are a neutral expert—a doctor of regret sciences—analyzing your regret in a clean, pristine examination room. What is your diagnosis? Explain in clinical terms what went wrong.
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
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?
Looking backward can move us forward, but only if we do it right. The sequence of self-disclosure, self-compassion, and self-distancing offers a simple yet systematic way to transform regret into a powerful force
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” Viktor Frankl, 1946
They exploit a cognitive quirk similar to “loss aversion.” In general, we find the pain of losing something greater than the pleasure of gaining the equivalent thing—so we go to extraordinary (and often irrational) lengths to avoid losses.
Anticipating our regrets slows our thinking. It applies our cerebral brakes, giving us time to gather additional information and to reflect before we decide what to do.
When we envision how awful we might feel in the future if we don’t act appropriately now, that negative emotion—which we simulate rather than experience—can improve our behavior.
“pre-mortems.” In this management technique, work teams mentally travel to the future before a project even begins to imagine a nightmare scenario where everything went wrong—say, the project came in over time or over budget or didn’t even get done. Then they use those insights to avoid the blunders before they occur.
Anticipating regret can sometimes steer us away from the best decision and toward the decision that most shields us from regret—as
The wobbly beam in Bezos’s Regret Minimization Framework is that constantly trying to anticipate and minimize our regrets can become a form of unhealthy maximizing. Applying this framework at all times and in all realms is a recipe for despair.
Regret Optimization Framework.
many circumstances, anticipating our regrets can lead to healthier behavior, smarter professional choices, and greater happiness. Yet when we anticipate our regrets, we frequently overestimate them, buying emotional insurance we don’t need and thereby distorting our decisions. And if we go too far—if we maximize on regret minimization—we can make our situation even worse. At the same time, people around the world consistently express the same four core regrets. These regrets endure. They reveal fundamental human needs. And together, they offer a path to the good life.
Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. Regret gives me hope.
