The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

by Daniel H. Pink

One study of CEOs found that encouraging business leaders to reflect on their regrets exerted a “positive influence on their future decisions.”[7]

When you feel the spear of regret, you have three possible responses. You can conclude that feeling is for ignoring—and bury or minimize it. That leads to delusion. You can conclude that feeling is for feeling—and wallow in it. That leads to despair. Or you can conclude that feeling is for thinking—and address it. What does this regret tell you? What instructions does it offer for making better decisions?

Boldness regrets. A stable platform for our lives is necessary, but not sufficient. 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.

economists call “temporal discounting.”[1] He overvalued the now—and undervalued (that is, discounted) the later. When this bias grips our thinking, we often make regrettable decisions.

Just as foundation regrets can be defined with a well-worn fable, one response to them is contained in a hoary Chinese proverb: The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.

Seth Margolis and Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, have found that asking people simply to act like an extrovert for one week appreciably increased their well-being.[2]

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.

Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. . . . Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.[7]

One remarkable (non)finding in the World Regret Survey involved parents. Hundreds of people described regrets about marrying the wrong spouse or choosing a disappointing partner, but fewer than twenty respondents out of more than sixteen thousand regretted having children.

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.

For example, psychologists like Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, have conducted studies that suggest people should process negative and positive experiences in different ways. In this research, 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.

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

One misgiving we have with self-disclosure, particularly if we’re revealing our previous failures to be prudent, trustworthy, or courageous, is that others will think poorly of us. But that is much less of a concern than we realize. One can go too far, of course. Oversharing intimate details about yourself can make others uneasy. But the evidence shows that self-disclosure builds affinity much more often than it triggers judgment. One major review of the literature concluded that “people who engage in intimate disclosures tend to be liked more than people who disclose at lower levels.”

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. So, under the Regret Optimization Framework, when deciding a course of action, begin by asking whether you are dealing with one of the four core regrets. If not, satisfice. For example, if you’re buying lawn furniture or a(nother) microwave oven, that decision is unlikely to involve any fundamental, enduring human need. Make a choice and move on. You’ll be fine.

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR REGRETS: A RECAP For an Action Regret Undo it. Apologize, make amends, or try to repair the damage. At Least It. Find the silver lining: think about how the situation could have turned out worse and appreciate that it didn’t. For Any Regret (Action or Inaction) Self-disclosure. Relive and relieve the regret by telling others about it—admission clears the air—or by writing about it privately. Self-compassion. Normalize and neutralize the regret by treating yourself the way you’d treat a friend. Self-distancing. Analyze and strategize about the lessons you’ve learned from the regret by zooming out in time, in space, or through language. To Use Anticipated Regrets in Your Decision Making: Satisfice on most decisions. If you are not dealing with one of the four core regrets, make a choice, don’t second-guess yourself, and move on. Maximize on the most crucial decisions. If you are dealing with one of the four core regrets, project yourself to a specific point in the future and ask yourself which choice will most help you build a solid foundation, take a sensible risk, do the right thing, or connect with others.