The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

by Daniel H. Pink

simply recognizes that “being imperfect, making mistakes, and encountering life difficulties is part of the shared human experience.”[15] By normalizing negative experiences, we neutralize them. Self-compassion encourages us to take the middle road in handling negative emotions—not suppressing them, but not exaggerating or overidentifying with them either.

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

One place to begin is Kristin Neff’s website (https://self-compassion.org), where you can measure your own levels of self-compassion. Her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself is also excellent.

If you haven’t done so already, submit your regret to the World Regret Survey (www.worldregretsurvey.com). Putting your regret in writing can defang it—and can offer the distance to evaluate it and plan from it. You can also read other people’s regrets, which provides perspective on our shared humanity and can help strengthen your regret-reckoning muscles. As you read regrets from across the globe, ask yourself: What kind of regret is this? What advice would you give the writer for using her regret as a positive force?

Yet the obit didn’t tell a story of technical genius and entrepreneurial pluck. It described a contaminated soul with a shameful legacy—a greedy and amoral man who became fabulously wealthy by selling people tools for obliterating each other.

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. A 2016 meta-analysis of eighty-one studies involving 45,618 participants found that “anticipated regret was associated with a broad array of health behaviors.”

Anticipating regret can sometimes steer us away from the best decision and toward the decision that most shields us from regret—as you’ll discover again when you return to the office.

Regret aversion can often lead to decision aversion, many studies have shown.[28] If

Anticipated regret—AR—can often make us better. But as your eventful day demonstrates, before you take this medicine, read the label. Warning: AR may cause decision paralysis, risk aversion, first instinct fallacies, and lower test scores. As a universal drug, anticipated regret has a few dangerous side effects. But that’s not its only problem.

Our goal should not be to always minimize regret. Our goal should be to optimize it. By combining the science of anticipated regret with the new deep structure of regret, we can refine our mental model. Call it the Regret Optimization Framework.

In 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.

The Regret Optimization Framework holds that we should devote time and effort to anticipate the four core regrets: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. But anticipating regrets outside these four categories is usually not worthwhile.