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April 6 - May 14, 2022
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 core.
Regret is your own fault, not someone else’s.
framing regret as a judgment of our underlying character—who we are—can be destructive. Framing it as an evaluation of a particular behavior in a particular situation—what we did—can be instructive.
Kintsugi (which translates to “golden joinery”) considers the breaks and the subsequent repairs part of the vessel’s history, fundamental elements of its being. The bowls aren’t beautiful despite the imperfections. They’re beautiful because of the imperfections. The cracks make them better. What’s true for ceramics can also be true for people.
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.
One of the most robust findings, in the academic research and my own, is that over time we are much more likely to regret the chances we didn’t take than the chances we did.
When we behave poorly, or compromise our belief in our own goodness, regret can build and then persist.
Connection regrets arise any time we neglect the people who help establish our own sense of wholeness.
Boldness regrets sound like this: If only I’d taken that risk.
personality psychologists—the scientists who began studying the subject a hundred years ago—have long concluded that most people are a bit of both. Introversion and extroversion are not binary personality types.
The pain of boldness regrets is the pain of “What if?” Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Medvec, and other researchers have repeatedly found that people regret inactions more than actions—especially in the long term. “Regrettable failures to act . . . have a longer half-life than regrettable actions,” Gilovich and Medvec wrote in one of their early studies.
The consequences of actions are specific, concrete, and limited. The consequences of inaction are general, abstract, and unbounded.
Moral regrets sound like this: If only I’d done the right thing.
when we consider what’s moral, we have an instantaneous, visceral, emotional response about right or wrong—and then we use reason to justify that intuition.[2] The rational mind isn’t a black-robed jurist rendering unbiased pronouncements, as I’d thought. It’s the press secretary for our intuitions. Its job is to defend the boss.
All deep structure regrets reveal a need and yield a lesson. With moral regrets, the need is goodness. The lesson, which we’ve heard in religious texts, philosophy tracts, and parental admonitions, is this: when in doubt, do the right thing.
Connection regrets sound like this: If only I’d reached out.
Closed door regrets distress us because we can’t do anything about them. Open door regrets bother us because we can, though it requires effort.
regrets about social relationships are felt more deeply than other types of regrets because they threaten our sense of belonging.
Closed door regrets vex us, because we can’t fix them. It’s over.
Rifts are more dramatic. But drifts are more common. Drifts can also be harder to mend. Rifts generate emotions like anger and jealousy, which are familiar and easier to identify and comprehend. Drifts involve emotions that are subtler and that can feel less legitimate. And first among these emotions, described by hundreds of people with connection regrets, is awkwardness.
We mistakenly assume that our beliefs differ vastly from everyone else’s—especially when those private thoughts seem at odds with broader public behavior.
What give our lives significance and satisfaction are meaningful relationships. But when those relationships come apart, whether by intent or inattention, what stands in the way of bringing them back together are feelings of awkwardness.
“You’re almost always better off to err on the side of showing up. And if it’s awkward, then it’s awkward and you’ll live. It’ll be fine. But if you don’t show up, it’s lost forever.”
The lesson of closed doors is to do better next time. The lesson of open doors is to do something now. If a relationship you care about has come undone, place the call. Make that visit. Say what you feel. Push past the awkwardness and reach out.
The deep structure of regret, summarized in the table below, provides an answer. THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF REGRET
The negative emotion of regret reveals the positive path for living.
Our actual self is the bundle of attributes that we currently possess. Our ideal self is the self we believe we could be—our hopes, wishes, and dreams. And our ought self is the self we believe we should be—our duties, commitments, and responsibilities.[1]
What fuels our behavior and directs which goals we pursue, Higgins argued, are discrepancies between these three selves. For instance, if my ideal self is someone who’s healthy and physically fit but my actual self is lethargic and overweight, that gap might motivate me to start exercising. If my ought self believes in caring for elderly relatives but my actual self hasn’t visited Grandma in six months, I might leave the office early and to Grandmother’s house I will go. However, when we don’t make these efforts, when a discrepancy persists between who we are and who we could or should be,
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people regret their failures to live up to their ideal selves more than their failures to live up to their ought selves. Regrets of “coulda” outnumbered regrets of “shoulda” by about three to one.
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.”
In the American Regret Project survey, twenty-year-olds had equal numbers of action and inaction regrets. But as people grew older, inaction regrets began to dominate. By age fifty, inaction regrets were twice as common as action regrets. Indeed, according to the data, age was by far the strongest predictor of regrets of inaction. When the universe of opportunities before them has dwindled (as it has with older folks), people seem to regret what they haven’t done.
men were more likely than women to have career regrets. About one in five men expressed regrets in this category, but only 12 percent of women. By contrast, women were more likely than men to have family regrets—24 percent of women versus 18 percent of men.
men, on average, may be more likely to value professional opportunities, and women, on average, may be more likely to value relationship opportunities.[*]
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.
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.
to address regrets of action, begin by asking yourself these questions: If I’ve harmed others, as is often the case with moral regrets and sometimes the case with connection regrets, can I make amends through an apology or some form of emotional or material restitution? If I’ve harmed myself, as is the case for many foundation regrets and some connection regrets, can I fix the mistake? For example, can I begin paying down debt or logging a few more hours at work? Can I reach out immediately to someone whose connection I severed? If the action regret can be undone, try to do that—even if a
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Finding a silver lining doesn’t negate the existence of a cloud. But it does offer another perspective on that cloud.
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.
with action regrets that are bringing you down, ask yourself: How could the decision I now regret have turned out worse? What is one silver lining in this regret? How would I complete the following sentence? “At least . . .”
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 in ways that merely thinking about those experiences did not. Yet the reverse was true for positive experiences: writing and talking about triumphs and good times drained some of their positivity.[6]
Writing about regret or revealing a regret to another person moves the experience from the realm of emotion into the realm of cognition. Instead of those unpleasant feelings fluttering around uncontrollably, language helps us capture them in our net, pin them down, and begin analyzing them.
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.[8]
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.
unless carefully managed and contained, self-criticism can become a form of inner-directed virtue signaling. It projects toughness and ambition, but often leads to rumination and hopelessness instead of productive action.[12]
But self-esteem brings downsides. Because it offers indiscriminate affirmation unconnected to genuine accomplishment, self-esteem can foster narcissism, diminish empathy, and stoke aggression.
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, or even strangers in the same predicament. That’s counterproductive, she has shown. 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. It doesn’t ignore our screwups or neglect our weaknesses. It simply recognizes that “being
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In a sense, self-compassion delivers the benefits of self-esteem without its drawbacks. It can insulate us from the debilitating consequences of self-criticism, while short-circuiting self-esteem’s need to feel good through vanity and comparison.
Self-compassion, by contrast, prompts people to confront their difficulties head-on and take responsibility for them, researchers have found. As Neff writes, “Far from being an excuse for self-indulgence, therefore, self-compassion pushes us forward—and for the right reasons.”[28]
