Studying the visceral feeling of regret • The speaker discusses a visceral description of regret from the book and explains why they chose to examine it. • They experienced regret themselves and found that many people wanted to talk about it as well. • The perception of regret differed from how it actually affected people emotionally.
Speaker 2
So I guess I’ll start, Dan, by talking about how much I loved this very visceral description of regret that you share in your book. You call it the stomach-turning feeling that the present would be better and the future is brighter if only you had it chosen so poorly, decided so wrongly, or acted so stupidly in the Past. Of all the feelings to study, why did you choose this one to examine in particular?
Speaker 1
Because my stomach was churning my hands because I had that emotion and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. And at some level, I was at a point in my life where, to my surprise, I had mileage on me. I had a room to look back. And like many people who look backward, I looked back. I looked backward and I see, ugh, if only I had been kinder, if only I had taken more risks, if only I had worked harder, if only I had done that rather than that. And my stomach was churning in a way that made me want to talk about it. And when I very tenderly began mentioning it to other people, I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about regret and that our perception of this emotion and what it meant to people Was very different from how it lived in people’s hearts and heads.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I love that. You probably identified there was something counterintuitive we might discover if you were to go down that path.The Power of Counterfactual Thinking: Exploring the Upward and Downward Varieties • Humans have a bias towards imagining how things could have gone better, leading to frequent regret. • Counterfactual thinking includes upward and downward counterfactuals. • Upward counterfactuals make us feel worse but can help us do better, while downward counterfactuals minimize the sting but don’t help us do better. • Our brains are more inclined towards upward counterfactual thinking that makes us feel worse because it leads to progress and efficiency.
Speaker 2
You know, it’s interesting, Dan, because when we engage in mental time travel and counterfactual thinking, we don’t have to imagine how things could have gone better, right? We could instead imagine how things could have gone far worse. But what’s interesting is that we as humans have a very strong bias towards the former, which helps explain why we so often regret things. And you capture this point really nicely when you talk about framing a thought in terms of at least versus if only. Yes.
Speaker 1
So when we think about counterfactual thinking, there are two different varieties of it. One is an upward counterfactual. So you imagine how things could have been better if only I had become an accountant rather than an engineer. Everything in my life would be fantastic, right? So you imagine a better scenario. Upward counterfactuals, if only, make us feel worse, but they can help us do better. But there’s another kind of counterfactual, a downward counterfactual, where you imagine how things could have become worse. And so you say, oh, I shouldn’t have married Edward, but at least I have these two great kids. You find the silver lining in that. What that does is that minimizes the sting. It makes you feel better, but it doesn’t help you necessarily do better. And I think what’s curious is that we’re much more inclined to do the counterfactual thinking that makes us feel worse. Our brains are built for progress and efficiency, and they know that those upward counterfactuals, those if onlys, while they hurt, they’re going to make us better if we do it right.The Benefits of Listening to and Using Regret as a Positive Catalyst for Moving Forward • Ignoring regrets can lead to getting captured by them. • Listening to and confronting regrets can provide useful information. • Dealing with regrets properly can lead to benefits such as better negotiation skills and deeper sense of meaning in life. • Inviting regret may seem counterintuitive, but it can clarify values and help with improvement.
Speaker 1
And the key is that we have to engage with it in the right way. I think too often we’re kind of conditioned to ignore regrets. Oh, it’s negative. Don’t even think about it. Just move on. Look forward. Don’t look back. That’s a bad idea. If we’re not equipped to deal with it properly, we get captured by our regrets. We wallow in them. We ruminate on them. What we should be doing is listening to our regrets, confronting them, using them as signals, as data, as information. And when we do that, there are many, many benefits. For instance, there’s research and social psychology showing that it can help make us better negotiators. You do a negotiation. You think about what you regret in that negotiation. You often do better in the next one. It can help us become better problem solvers. Better strategists. There’s even evidence that it can actually help us deepen sense of meaning in our lives. And so when we treat this emotion properly, and that’s a big if, we can use it as an engine for moving forward.
Speaker 2
Yeah, regrets really serving as a catalyst here, right? For actually driving meaningful action.
Speaker 1
Sure. And I think what’s puzzling here is took to people is that a solution in some cases is to invite this negative emotion, not to bat it away, not to ignore it, but in some sense to invite it. And that seems a little counterintuitive because you’re inviting something that feels bad. And the thing about regret is that regret can clarify what we value and instruct us on how to do better. And people like that, but it comes with discomfort.The Power of Regret in Problem Solving and Sense of Meaning There’s a lot of research in experimental psychology where you give people puzzles, especially anagrams. They often do better in the next round because they felt bad. That bad feeling is a signal to the brain saying, huh, maybe I should do things differently. It can also help clarify what we actually value in our lives.
Speaker 1
There’s a lot of research in experimental psychology where you give people puzzles, especially anagrams. And what it shows in general is that you put people into a problem solving situation. They solve the problem. And then you ask them to reflect on what they regret doing or not doing in that problem solving exercise. Again, you’re inviting this negative emotion. They often do better in the next round because they felt bad. That bad feeling is a signal to the brain saying, huh, maybe I should do things differently. That’s a form of instruction. And so if you think about those puzzle solvers, if they actually subscribe to the No Regrets philosophy, they said, oh, I screwed up this anagram. I did it slowly. I didn’t get the right answer. But no regrets. I’m always positive. I never look backward. They’re not going to get any better at performance on a whole array of problem solving skills.
Speaker 2
And how can regret deepen our sense of meaning?
Speaker 1
Well, I mean, what it does in many cases is that when we think about counterfactually, at some level, we sometimes will appreciate what we have, which deepens our sense of meaning. But it can also help clarify what we actually value in our lives. So there’s one person I wrote about who regretted not spending time with her grandparents. Every winter, the grandparents would come and visit her. And she hated it as a kid. She thought they were intruding.How to Avoid Self-Torture and Lead a Happier Life • Evaluate behavior rather than making broader assessments of a person. • Mistakes are moments in life, not the full measure of life. • Making universal negative attributions about our entire lives based on a moment can lead to unhappiness. • Negative emotions are a normal part of life and should be dealt with effectively.
Speaker 1
That is one of the secrets to process and regret effectively. But I also think it’s one of the secrets to leading a life where you’re not torturing yourself. We say that if I made a mistake, I’m a bad person rather than I did a stupid thing. And you’re always better off evaluating the behavior rather than making some kind of broader assessment of the person. So there’s a temporal aspect of it as well. You have to understand that any mistake that you make, any screw up, any regret, any blunder is a moment in your life, not the full measure of your life. We’re willing to make universal attributions about our entire lives based on a moment, always a negative moment. And essentially, in the collect, the other 99.999% of our lives in our evaluation. Don’t do that. That’s a recipe for unhappiness. And when you explain this to people, they get it. And if you coach them, they can stop doing that. The problem is that I think it’s a bigger problem. I don’t think we’ve done a very good job equipping people with how to deal with negative emotions. I think at some level, we’ve sold them a bill of goods about the need to be positive all the time. And what we should be doing is saying, yeah, have lots of positive emotions. Positive emotions are great. They make life fantastic, but you’re going to have some negative emotions.Evangelical positivity culture conditions people to never lament the past — there is only the future. Yet this same framework provides a hope of personal meaning and fulfillment that paradoxically justifies reflecting on regret. The tension: a tradition that forbids looking backward also promises that looking backward reveals what you truly value.The Common Root of Regret According to Research What matters is not the domain of life, it’s something else going on just beneath the surface. I was shocked by how many people who went to college, especially in America, regret not studying abroad. And then there were lots of people all over the world who had a regret that basically went like this: “I wanted to ask them out on a date” But for every one of those, there are dozens and dozens and dozens who have the opposite regret.
Speaker 1
What I found is that when you listen to what people are saying, what matters is not the domain of life. It’s something else going on just beneath the surface. And the easiest way to make that clear is with an example. I was shocked by how many people who went to college, especially in America, regret not studying abroad. It blew my mind. And the reason they didn’t study abroad is that, oh, I don’t know. It’s kind of risky. I’m not sure I want to do that. I was surprised by how salient that regret was. And then there were lots of people all over the world who had a regret that basically went like this. Six years ago, there was someone who I really liked, I wanted to ask them out on a date, but I was too chicken to do that. And I’ve regretted it ever since. Okay, that’s a romance regret. So we got an education regret. We got a romance regret. Then I have lots of people all over the place who say, oh, I always wanted to start a business rather than staying in this dead end job, but I didn’t have the guts to do that. And now I regret it. That’s a career regret.
Speaker 4
But to my mind, those are all the same regret.
Speaker 1
They’re in different domains of life, but they share a common root. And at the common root is this, you’re at a juncture in your life. You can play it safe or you can take the chance. And most people regret not taking the chance, not all the time. They’re people who took the chance and regret it because things went south on them. But for every one of those, there are dozens and dozens and dozens who have the opposite regret. So that’s one of the four core regrets, boldness regrets, if only I’d taken the chance.
Speaker 2
And let’s take into boldness of it because this one’s really interesting.The value of regrets in life • Regrets are a powerful signal of what people care most about in life. • People’s regrets reveal what they value the most. • Remembering a decision or indecision that still bothers you is a strong signal of what you should pay attention to in the future.
Speaker 2
I like that there’s a signaling here, which is, you know, these categories that you’ve talked about because we tend to regret them. What that teaches us is that those are the things we care most about in life. Yeah.
Speaker 1
And I think that for me, a personal puzzle I was trying to resolve was, you know, reading through all these regrets every day here in my office, why was I not more bummed out? I got these people opening up their hearts and telling me the mistakes that they made and how terrible they feel about it. Why did they not bring me down? And I finally over time realized that when people tell you what they regret the most, they’re telling you what they value the most. So it is, as you say, this very powerful signal. If you think about all the decisions that any of us made today or yesterday or this week or last week, I don’t remember half of, I don’t remember most of them. But if you remember a decision or an indecision from a year ago or five years ago or 10 years ago and it bugs you still, you’re going to pay attention to that, man. That’s a very strong signal. That is, that is an air horn screaming in your psyche, telling you pay attention to me. It’s telling me something and what it’s telling us is this is a signal about what you value and it’s a signal about how to do better in the future.
Speaker 2
So let’s see, Dan, I’m listening to this episode and I’m thinking to myself, okay,Turning Regret into Productivity - Strategies and Insights • A strong signal indicates a need to pay attention to something valuable and to improve in the future. • Treating oneself with kindness and recognizing that regrets are part of the human condition can help turn them into something productive. • There may be benefit in disclosing regrets to others.
Speaker 1
That’s a very strong signal. That is, that is an air horn screaming in your psyche, telling you pay attention to me. It’s telling me something and what it’s telling us is this is a signal about what you value and it’s a signal about how to do better in the future.
Speaker 2
So let’s see, Dan, I’m listening to this episode and I’m thinking to myself, okay, Dan’s convinced me I need to engage with my regret more proactively and also in this productive way. What are some strategies that you could give me, the listener, for taking a regret and actually turning it into something productive?
Speaker 1
When you have a regret, treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Recognize that your regrets are part of the human condition. That’s a big part of it too. We have this kind of pluralistic ignorance where we think, oh my God, I’m the only person who regrets bullying. I’m the only person who regrets being too timid in my choices. When in fact, I got a database of nearly 22,000 people with your exact same regret. Another thing that we should do, I think there’s a very strong argument to make for disclosing our regrets.The Flaws in the ‘No Regrets’ Philosophy • The idea of regretting decisions is often based on the belief that end-of-life values are more accurate or prescriptive, which may not necessarily be true. • Personal values can change and evolve over time, making it difficult to predict what one may regret. • Deathbed regrets may not accurately reflect a person’s true values. • Looking ahead to a more immediate timeframe, like 10 years, may be a more useful approach to decision-making.
Speaker 2
Aren’t you going to regret B instead? And that calculus can really influence our present day decisions. And I want to challenge this thinking a bit because it seems to be grounded in the idea that the values we express at the end of our lives somehow represent a truer or more accurate expression Of either what we care about or what we ought to care about, right? It’s prescriptive. And this way of thinking implies that there is just one constant true set of things that we ought to care about. And another way to think about it a different framing is that we are people whose values naturally change and evolve over time. And if you take that view, then there’s no obvious reason why we should privilege the values of future Maya over present day Maya.
Speaker 1
Absolutely. And so this is one reason why and there’s a reason that I say 10 years and not deathbed. I am very skeptical of deathbed regrets. I’m skeptical of the accuracy of the reporting of them because it’s purely anecdotal. The numbers are not very vast. And also I don’t think that what we’re thinking in a moment of fog when we’re about to perish from the earth is necessarily the clearest and highest expression of what we value exactly As you say.
Speaker 2
Well, look, I’m already super happy if we’re just constraining the timeframe with which we view the future. So I’m on board with like 10 years from now, Maya.Value of Regret and its Transience • The speaker emphasizes the importance of constraining the timeframe when considering the future. • The speaker argues against giving too much weight to regrets expressed on one’s deathbed. • Regret is a transient feeling and should not be elevated to an overly important category. • Empirical evidence suggests that the significance of regret may be overstated.
Speaker 2
Well, look, I’m already super happy if we’re just constraining the timeframe with which we view the future. So I’m on board with like 10 years from now, Maya. The deathbed stuff just drives me nuts because like you said, in our final moments, there’s a lot of factors that are weighing into what we say we regret what we think we should be saying About what we regret in order to maybe pass by people who live on planet earth. I don’t know. There’s just lots of things.
Speaker 1
That’s a very good point. That’s one that I hadn’t thought about is that there could be a kind of performative side of it. There could be a kind of, oh my God, I got to get my last argument in here before the final decider decides whether I go up or down.
Speaker 2
I apologize or make right with so and so. Right. But I just think it’s important in general as much as we can value regret to remember it is also just a feeling. Regret is a feeling that can be transient and can pass. And it’s not always something we, I say this only Dan because regret often gets this trump card. It’s like we’re making a decision. We’re trying to weigh costs and benefits. I don’t really want a kid right now, but I think I might regret not having a kid later and the minute our society hears the word regret, it’s like, oh my God, then go do the thing. So I just want to make sure we’re not elevating it to too important a category because like a lot of other negative emotions, it is just a feeling.
Speaker 1
I think that’s a fair point. And the other thing empirically is that there’s a decent amount of evidence showing thatRegrets and Kindness: Reflecting on Missed Opportunities • Regrets about kindness were regrets of inaction, not action. • Realizing that others also have regrets about kindness can provide reassurance. • Processing regret involves finding a balanced perspective. • Regret can clarify one’s values.
Speaker 1
I felt pretty bad about certain regrets that I had with regard to kindness. And I never talked about them, but I had them. I harbored these regrets about kindness. Now it’s a moral regret, although it’s a peculiar kind of moral regret because my moral regrets about kindness were regrets of inaction, not action. So they’re not regrets about bullying people, but they’re regrets about being in situations where people were not being treated well, where people were being left out or being made Fun of or being excluded. And I didn’t participate in that, but I saw it and I knew it was wrong and I didn’t do anything. I have to say, that has bugged me so much for so long to the point where I kind of sublimated it. I said, okay, I don’t want to deal with this. And one of the things about reading through all these regrets is that I started seeing that regret among other people. And I’ve started in a weird way that made me feel better. It’s like, oh my God, I’m not the only person who did this. And the other thing that it did is that if you listen to that, okay, so it’s just a good example of how you process regret. So I could feel that kindness regret and I could say, no regrets, it’s in the past. I’m going to look forward. I don’t want to be negative. That’s a bad idea. I could also say, oh my God, earlier in my life, I wasn’t as kind as I could be. I am just an wretched, awful, worthless individual. I am this the worst. That’s a bad idea too. What I could do instead is like, wow, 25 years later, this is bugging me. This is something I need to pay attention to. And what it’s teaching me is it’s clarifying what I value in ways that I didn’t realize.
