Speaker 1: So this thing is ubiquitous, but it's unpleasant. So why
Speaker 1: do we have it? Because it's useful, because it's functional,
Speaker 1: you know, because our cognitive machinery is pre programmed for
Speaker 1: a regret. Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast Today.
Speaker 1: We welcome Dan Pink on the podcast. Dan is the
Speaker 1: New York Times best selling author of books such as Drive,
Speaker 1: a Whole New Mind, and To Sell as Human. Dan's
Speaker 1: books have won multiple awards, have been translated into forty
Speaker 1: two languages, and sold millions of copies around the world.
Speaker 1: His articles and essays have also appeared in The New
Speaker 1: York Times, Hard Business Review, of The Atlantic, Slate, and
Speaker 1: other publications. His most recent book, which is the topic
Speaker 1: of our conversation today, is called The Power of Regrets.
Speaker 1: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. I really liked this
Speaker 1: episode because I never really thought about regret as something
Speaker 1: you could have and harness in your life today to
Speaker 1: help it reflect on how you want to live tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You know, we often hear a lot about deathbed regrets,
Speaker 1: and you know, what do you regret when you're on
Speaker 1: that one moment, the last moment, the last breath, and
Speaker 1: you'll be like, oh, and their whole life flashes before
Speaker 1: your eyes. But why wait? Why wait? Until then? Dan
Speaker 1: shows through a lot of quantitative as well as qualitative
Speaker 1: research that he conducted, that regret can be very powerful.
Speaker 1: It can lead us to have a much happier life,
Speaker 1: It can have a more meaning, and it allows to
Speaker 1: overcome traumas and change our personalities in really powerful ways.
Speaker 1: I'd say, like most importantly, a big takeaway I took
Speaker 1: with Dan is that regret also allows us to realize
Speaker 1: there's a great common humanity that we have with other people,
Speaker 1: and other humans are fellow humans, so many of us
Speaker 1: seem to have similar regrets, and I think that's really
Speaker 1: telling us something really deep and profound about human nature.
Speaker 1: So I really enjoyed this episode. I hope you do too.
Speaker 1: So without further ado that i'd bring you, Dan Pink
Speaker 1: really didn't enjoy read speed reading your book? Nice? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really It was really flowed really well and
Speaker 1: met me think a lot about my own life and
Speaker 1: some of my biggest regrets and encourage me to reach
Speaker 1: out to some people. What inspired you to write this book?
Speaker 1: What inspired me to write? You know? It was really
Speaker 1: like you, I had my own I had regrets and
Speaker 1: I was trying to make sense to them. I was
Speaker 1: also at a point in my life that was kind
Speaker 1: of weird. I'm, I think, a different point of my
Speaker 1: life than you are in that, you know, I got
Speaker 1: to this point of my life where I suddenly had
Speaker 1: mileage on me, which is kind of a shock. You know.
Speaker 1: I look back and it's like, wait a second. I've
Speaker 1: been you know, for instance, like doing what I'm doing now,
Speaker 1: I've been writing BUTK for twenty years. I'm like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: what how did that happen? But I also have plenty
Speaker 1: of room to look ahead, and so I think inevitably
Speaker 1: when people look back, they think about what did I
Speaker 1: do wrong? What didn't I do? And so you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're a scientist. You know that all research is
Speaker 1: me search, So that's what this was. Yeah, but what's
Speaker 1: kind of cool is you know you'd cover so many
Speaker 1: broad range of topics, so you kind of go from
Speaker 1: me search topic to me search topic. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't and the same. I mean, so you've probably learned
Speaker 1: a lot about yourself over the past twenty years. What
Speaker 1: are some of the biggest things that you've learned about
Speaker 1: yourself through through writing? Through the process of writing and
Speaker 1: researching books. I'm not that special. That my experience as
Speaker 1: a human being on this planet is pretty consistent with
Speaker 1: the experience of other human beings on this planet. That
Speaker 1: what I hope for myself and aspire for the people
Speaker 1: I love is very similar to what other people hope
Speaker 1: for themselves and aspire to the people they love. That
Speaker 1: were part of a I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get woo woo on you, but we're that we're part
Speaker 1: of a kind of a shared human condition and that
Speaker 1: you know, at a certain level, we are profoundly, deeply alike. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I'm no stranger to woo woo, So
Speaker 1: that's okay. At the science I say, there's you know,
Speaker 1: I say, there is often wisdom in the wu wu. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I really like what you just said. From as a
Speaker 1: humanistic psychologist, of course, that's my that's my jam, and
Speaker 1: I thought that came through very clearly in your findings. Now,
Speaker 1: you did two major studies that we did, a qualitative
Speaker 1: and a quantitative study exactly the one that you put
Speaker 1: out your own call. We even had like seventeen thousand participant,
Speaker 1: which is a great number for science. It seemed like
Speaker 1: one of the quality that's the qualitative one. Qualitative one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I mean it's still seventy thousand still is incredible
Speaker 1: for and at this point it's still it's still up Scott.
Speaker 1: We're over twenty thousand, now twenty thousd we have We've
Speaker 1: collect the twenty thousand regrets from people in one hundred
Speaker 1: and nine countries. Wow, what was the most surprising regret
Speaker 1: you saw? I think at a at a micro level,
Speaker 1: all right, the most surprised What surprised me was the
Speaker 1: volume of regrets about bullying at a very micro level,
Speaker 1: in terms of the specific, granular, individuated regret. We probably
Speaker 1: had hundreds of regrets where people regretted bullying people when
Speaker 1: they were younger. I think that's the biggest micro surprise.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest macro surprise was, again going back
Speaker 1: to what I said earlier, was the universality of these
Speaker 1: regrets to the point where if I had shown you
Speaker 1: the QUALTC database and blocked, you know, block the fields
Speaker 1: for gender which I asked, age, which I asked, location
Speaker 1: which I asked, and just showed you the regret itself,
Speaker 1: I think you might have a hard time predicting is
Speaker 1: this somebody from North America or elsewhere? Is this person
Speaker 1: twenty five? Or is this person forty five? Or is
Speaker 1: this person sixty five? Is this a man? Is as
Speaker 1: a woman? I think you'd have a hard time determining that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: As an individual differences researcher, I was curious if you
Speaker 1: what other kind of variables you look because those are
Speaker 1: some superficial demographic variables. Well though I guess the age
Speaker 1: is not that superficial. It matters quite profoundly. But you
Speaker 1: know things like did you look at political orientation? Did
Speaker 1: you look at a personality? Big five? You know, the
Speaker 1: good questions. This is where we can dip our toes
Speaker 1: into the wheeze just a little bit. So on the
Speaker 1: qualitative one. Remember the qualitative one is a giant collection tool.
Speaker 1: It's not a random sample, and so I can't make
Speaker 1: any valid claims about demographic differences based on that, even
Speaker 1: though I have a ginormous sample, right I can make
Speaker 1: I can say I have my own interpretations of what
Speaker 1: these or at least of what the first fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: regrets that I read. I can have my own interpretations
Speaker 1: of what those as a qualitative research or of what
Speaker 1: those fifteen thousand regrets say. But I can't make any
Speaker 1: definitive claims about differences on these other dimensions right now.
Speaker 1: In the quantitative one that I did, which was a
Speaker 1: which is only of the United States, but was a
Speaker 1: very good sample, we had, we over We did a
Speaker 1: massive sample there. We had four four hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: nine participants. We over sampled so that we could have
Speaker 1: enough people from in various demographic categories so we could
Speaker 1: wait the sample and see whether there were differences. Now here,
Speaker 1: I can make some safe claims in the American sample,
Speaker 1: and both on the demographic stuff and on some of
Speaker 1: these other things. So with that as a prelude, let
Speaker 1: me tell you what some of the things that I found.
Speaker 1: Age matters. You're totally right. What we saw in the
Speaker 1: quantitative stuff is that age. There weren't that many demographic differences,
Speaker 1: but age was the big one. And in particular, what
Speaker 1: we saw was that when people are young, they have
Speaker 1: roughly equal numbers of regrets of action and inaction. Okay,
Speaker 1: so regrets about what we did what I did, and
Speaker 1: regrets about what I didn't do. But as we age,
Speaker 1: the inaction regrets takeover. It's like two to one in
Speaker 1: action over action by the time we get to our forties.
Speaker 1: So that was a I think that was the biggest,
Speaker 1: biggest demographic differences. The other demographic differences were relatively modest.
Speaker 1: They really were the differences between men and women. There
Speaker 1: were some differences, and that men had more career regrets,
Speaker 1: women had more family regrets, but not by a huge margin.
Speaker 1: There were I want to get to the other the
Speaker 1: non demographic stuff here in a moment, in terms of race,
Speaker 1: very few African Americans had more education regrets than than
Speaker 1: than than white Americans did by you know, significant statistically
Speaker 1: significant margin, but not anything breathtaking. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: I think we can interpret that as perhaps supported opportunity
Speaker 1: more than anything else. I think one interesting one when
Speaker 1: we look at education level was that people with higher
Speaker 1: levels of formal education that is, college degrees and advanced
Speaker 1: degrees ended up having more career regrets than people with
Speaker 1: lower levels of formal education. Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the bronze medalist is happier than the silver medallist
Speaker 1: kind of well a little bit, but a little bit,
Speaker 1: but but I think that's part of what it is.
Speaker 1: I think what it is is that I see I
Speaker 1: had to see. I looked at your face. You know,
Speaker 1: your your millions of listeners don't know, but I can
Speaker 1: see you here. And when I told you that you
Speaker 1: had a surprise look on your face, I did, right.
Speaker 1: I read enough Paul Ackman that I can identify surprise
Speaker 1: as an emotion on another human being space. All right,
Speaker 1: So so you were surprised by that, as was I.
Speaker 1: But then it made sense, and for the sort of
Speaker 1: the reasons that you're suggesting, which is that if you
Speaker 1: have more education, formal education, you have more career opportunities
Speaker 1: and therefore more foregone career opportunities, so you can have
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's the safest explanation there.
Speaker 1: So again, not many demographic difference, So forgive me now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to come back to the other thing here,
Speaker 1: which is some of these other differences on beliefs. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's take the Big Five. I didn't assess people
Speaker 1: on the Big five. I did have on one other
Speaker 1: Big five, I did have them self identify as introverts
Speaker 1: or extroverts. Perilous, I know, but take that for what
Speaker 1: it is, all right, So I kind of dig I
Speaker 1: kind of self identification. We're just gonna try it. We're
Speaker 1: just going to try it. So all right, So, so
Speaker 1: you consider yourself more of an introvert or more of
Speaker 1: an extrovert, all right, and so and and and I
Speaker 1: looked at that zero correlation with anything none, zero zilch.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable to me. All right, even with like bullying. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't go into the level of I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't get into I didn't get into the level of
Speaker 1: whether people still cool it or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but in terms of like the domains, like are introverts
Speaker 1: more likely to have romance regrets? No? Are introverts more
Speaker 1: likely to have education of No, It's like there's no
Speaker 1: zero zilch. Frustrating. Now, that in itself is an interesting finding.
Speaker 1: I know you're on a roll, but I just wanted
Speaker 1: to pause you for one, because that's sometimes in science,
Speaker 1: you know, like you can it's important to publish not
Speaker 1: null findings. And to me, that's an interesting null finding. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you you know, even within so within the world domean
Speaker 1: as well, you didn't find any differences. It's just over
Speaker 1: I mean, no, I did. How about boldness regrets? Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing though you might be onto something there
Speaker 1: because in the quantitative thing, what I what I what
Speaker 1: I did is I ask people to it lists the
Speaker 1: regret and then put it into a into the true
Speaker 1: traditional categories of domains career, family, romance, da da da dah.
Speaker 1: All right. It was only when I do the qualitative
Speaker 1: that I said, crap, these existing categories don't capture everything.
Speaker 1: Once you actually read through fifteen thousand of these, you
Speaker 1: realize that those those traditional categories aren't the full story,
Speaker 1: that there's another story going on here. So I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to look at I could go back, and I
Speaker 1: could I could do another piece of research where I
Speaker 1: identify where I have like a huge sample. I can
Speaker 1: wait the sample so I can make demographic claims and
Speaker 1: then I can organize them as boldness, moral, da da
Speaker 1: da dah. But I haven't done that yet. I haven't
Speaker 1: done that. So on introversion extraversion note difference. One thing
Speaker 1: I was extremely interested in was belief in God, and
Speaker 1: so I gave people in the quantitative side of it,
Speaker 1: I gave people that which are these best describes your beliefs?
Speaker 1: Which are the best describes you? I believe in God.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in God. I'm not sure if I
Speaker 1: believe in God. Okay, so pretty I think pretty well? Question? Yeah,
Speaker 1: zero correlation with anything, none, zero, zilch. Part of it
Speaker 1: is because so many people believe in God, the ceiling
Speaker 1: effect and so so so there weren't you know. I
Speaker 1: give you one more that I thought was interesting, which
Speaker 1: is I also asked people questions about free will and
Speaker 1: about fatalism, right, so that's really about their beliefs and
Speaker 1: so on. One of them, I said, do you I
Speaker 1: don't remember the exact words, do you typically believe that people?
Speaker 1: Do you believe that in general people have free will?
Speaker 1: That is, they have control over what they did? Did
Speaker 1: a bit of it about okay? Something like eighty percent
Speaker 1: said yes, okay? And I said, do you in elsewhere? Right?
Speaker 1: So it wasn't they weren't paired together elsewhere? I said,
Speaker 1: do you think in general everything in life happens for
Speaker 1: a reason? Eighty percent of people said yes. So what
Speaker 1: you had is you had the vast majority, not even close,
Speaker 1: believing both that they had free will and that everything
Speaker 1: happens for a reason, which I think itself is interesting.
Speaker 1: My gosh, did you pull Sam Harrison that overwhelming. The number.
Speaker 1: The percentage of people who believed in neither free will
Speaker 1: nor that everything happens for a reason was like one percent. Okay,
Speaker 1: so those are those people are like just complete nihilists,
Speaker 1: all right, But then you would think that the logical
Speaker 1: thing would be, Oh, I believe in free will, I
Speaker 1: don't think that everything happens for a reason, or I
Speaker 1: think everything happens for a reason. Therefore that obviates free will.
Speaker 1: But those are very small categories too. The vast majority
Speaker 1: of people believe in both. What do you think that
Speaker 1: says about humans? Like? What do you think that? What
Speaker 1: do you think is going on there underneath the surface.
Speaker 1: I think it says that, well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it says a lot of things. One of them I
Speaker 1: think it says is that when we try to understand behavior,
Speaker 1: we are sometimes too mechanical in our understanding of it.
Speaker 1: We don't, you know, So if we look at something
Speaker 1: like if I say to somebody, maybe not you, because
Speaker 1: you're too sophisticated here. But if I say, if I
Speaker 1: say to somebody, our human beings generally generous or selfish,
Speaker 1: what's the answer to me? The answer to that question
Speaker 1: is obvious, Yes, right, we're both generous and selfish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're both true, even though they seem to be contradictory,
Speaker 1: they're both. They're it's shirting your's cat man, the cat
Speaker 1: is the cat dead or alive? Yes, and so and
Speaker 1: so that's so I think that's part of it. The
Speaker 1: other part of it is that at an individual level
Speaker 1: is that that might be what our lives are is
Speaker 1: sorting that out, sorting out where we have control and
Speaker 1: where we don't, you know, every day, that's at the
Speaker 1: core of a lot of our decisions, I think, Scott.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just you know, like I just like before,
Speaker 1: I can't win to do this because it's the afternoon.
Speaker 1: It's like not my ideal time. I actually went out
Speaker 1: for a walk because I wanted to be like awake
Speaker 1: and alert for this interview, right, I appreciate that. So,
Speaker 1: but no, I'm dead serious about that. And so when
Speaker 1: I think about that walk, it's a beautiful day here
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC as well. And so when I think
Speaker 1: about that walk, there were some things that I have
Speaker 1: control over and some things that I don't. I have
Speaker 1: control over what route I took. I didn't have control
Speaker 1: over whether at certain point a branch might have fallen
Speaker 1: on me. I didn't have any you know, And so
Speaker 1: it's like even that like modest, quotidian, unexceptional walk that
Speaker 1: I just do, my wife and I just took, there
Speaker 1: were areas where I had control and areas where I
Speaker 1: didn't have control. And I think that part of our
Speaker 1: lives are about figuring that out. Where do we have
Speaker 1: sovereignty and where do we not? Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a very good point. My head keeps going back to
Speaker 1: something you mentioned earlier with this, the whole idea I
Speaker 1: brought up the bronze medalist is happier in the silver Medalist.
Speaker 1: There's something here that I want to unpack a little
Speaker 1: bit that your findings show about human nature. There really
Speaker 1: is this kind of like I could have been, so
Speaker 1: could have been somebody there, like what could have been?
Speaker 1: Seems to be a real important thread running through all
Speaker 1: this and the more sort of potential path ways in
Speaker 1: the sort of the physics multiple world's universe. You can
Speaker 1: see for yourself. It seems to me, like you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Dan, I like to get to, like,
Speaker 1: what is the thread that runs through all of your findings.
Speaker 1: What's the most zoomed out thing here. And you know,
Speaker 1: it just always strikes me when I look at like
Speaker 1: the data on happiness. You know, the researchers were shocked
Speaker 1: to find that the people living in the slums of
Speaker 1: Calcutta rated higher in life satisfaction than the average American,
Speaker 1: you know. And there's something to being able to have
Speaker 1: a limited number of things that give you meaning and
Speaker 1: knowing that lots of other options are cut out than
Speaker 1: having lots of potential pathways you could have taken. I'm
Speaker 1: making any sense, Yeah, yes, But I think they're two
Speaker 1: different things, all right. I think they're talking about two
Speaker 1: different things. One of them is to one of them
Speaker 1: is to is to have fewer bases of comparison. But
Speaker 1: the other one is to have fewer things that you
Speaker 1: care about. And I think those are I think those
Speaker 1: are different things. Okay, So if I have so, like,
Speaker 1: I actually think having fewer things to care about is
Speaker 1: probably universal. That ultimately what gives us meaning and satisfaction
Speaker 1: in our lives, and you know, there's better than anybody
Speaker 1: is a very small number of things, all right, A
Speaker 1: very small note. It's a very small number of things.
Speaker 1: And I think that's probably true here in the leafy
Speaker 1: the leafy neighborhood of the Dish of Columbia where I live,
Speaker 1: as well as in the the streets of the slums
Speaker 1: of Okada. So that's so, I think that's one thing.
Speaker 1: The second thing, though, is are the basis of comparison,
Speaker 1: all Right? We all we know that comparison can be corrosive.
Speaker 1: And so with someone like you know, in my privileged situation,
Speaker 1: I think about, Okay, I think about my kids. My
Speaker 1: kids have who are you know? I got a kid
Speaker 1: who's a high a college freshman. Mhm, he has a
Speaker 1: lot of pathways, all right. A nineteen year old in
Speaker 1: that slum has fewer pathways, right that My My my
Speaker 1: nineteen year old has been fortunately has been to several
Speaker 1: countries and places around the world. That nineteen year old
Speaker 1: from from Kolkatta probably has never been out of that
Speaker 1: metropolitan area. And so my guy can say, oh, man,
Speaker 1: should I live in Tokyo, that'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Should I live in Mexico City, or that'd be kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Should I live in Saint Louis? Should I
Speaker 1: from not Saint Louis? But should I live in you know, Sheboygan?
Speaker 1: Should I live in wherever you know, and so so
Speaker 1: he has more to he has more to he has
Speaker 1: more to compare, and when you have more to compare,
Speaker 1: you have more to forego. Good. This is a really
Speaker 1: good nuanced by the way, and I really clearly see
Speaker 1: here your point that you make in your book that
Speaker 1: what's really important is to reduce our regrets about the
Speaker 1: four foundational things you talk exactly, foundation, boldness, moral, connection,
Speaker 1: and to minimize worrying so much about the exactly we know,
Speaker 1: even in the field of positichology research, are outside of
Speaker 1: the ProView what really gives us meaning in life. I
Speaker 1: think that's what I can really get it at here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that one takeaway from this is that one
Speaker 1: of the most important things in life is what you
Speaker 1: choose to ignore. So important what you choose not to
Speaker 1: give a shit about. I think that that is one
Speaker 1: of the most important decisions that we make. So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm actually working on something right now, Scott,
Speaker 1: which is a commencement address, And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm talking about here is attention. All right,
Speaker 1: we are what we pay attention to. We become what
Speaker 1: we pay attention to. But at the core of attention,
Speaker 1: the ability to attention to the ability to pay attention
Speaker 1: depends on our ability to ignore. You can't pay attention
Speaker 1: unless you can also ignore. And knowing what to ignore
Speaker 1: is really important, and regret teaches us what to ignore.
Speaker 1: And it's most stuff. But yet there are a certain
Speaker 1: purview of things that we would we regret if we
Speaker 1: didn't take the action at least try. You know, I
Speaker 1: keep my head. It keeps going back when you were
Speaker 1: talking about these examples to me, and all the times
Speaker 1: that I beat myself up that I didn't approach the
Speaker 1: cue girl, you know, or the like the person, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, the the woman in the corner of
Speaker 1: the dance called them like wow, that person is so beautiful.
Speaker 1: And then I beat myself up at the end of
Speaker 1: the night, you know, when I was in my twenties,
Speaker 1: you know, in that kind of scene, but you know,
Speaker 1: just being like, darn it, I'm such an idiot. Why
Speaker 1: didn't I just go? And all the times I did
Speaker 1: summon the courage to go and approach the person, and
Speaker 1: even if I very rarely do you get rejected as
Speaker 1: profoundly as you think in your head, you're going it's
Speaker 1: just like, well, the worst case scenario, they say I
Speaker 1: have a boyfriend or I'm not interested. You know, you're
Speaker 1: still like, I still feel good about myself at the
Speaker 1: end of the night. Absolutely, it's not like I'm beating
Speaker 1: myself up over that I got rejected. I actually almost
Speaker 1: enjoy it, Like it's like, oooh, well, at least I
Speaker 1: did it. At least I know what could have been.
Speaker 1: But there I go back to the essential thing in
Speaker 1: there is that what could have been. It's the potentiality.
Speaker 1: It's almost like, at least at least I know, you know,
Speaker 1: that wasn't meant for me, or that was Sometimes it
Speaker 1: works out and I'm like, wow, that was meant for me,
Speaker 1: But at least I know. It's like the uncertainty there,
Speaker 1: I think is what's killing us if we didn't go
Speaker 1: for part of it. Okay, I think that's part of it.
Speaker 1: I think part of it is uncertainty. But to channel
Speaker 1: our mutual friend Annie Duke here a minute, I think
Speaker 1: that I found that people were to use her language.
Speaker 1: I found that her the people were slightly less were
Speaker 1: less outcomists than I expected. That that what bug them
Speaker 1: about about that, that is because I have some OK,
Speaker 1: let's go to your let's go to the the the
Speaker 1: SBK on the dating market regret here. All right, so
Speaker 1: we've got so first of all, you're not that special.
Speaker 1: We've got hundreds of people, hundreds of regrets in the
Speaker 1: database that basically say X years ago, there was a
Speaker 1: man slash woman I really liked. I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: him her out, but I chickened out, and now I
Speaker 1: regret it. But when so, I did follow up interviews
Speaker 1: with about one hundred and ninety or so of the
Speaker 1: people who submitted these regrets. And when you talk to
Speaker 1: people with those kinds of regrets, they don't conjure images
Speaker 1: of they don't conjure stories of, oh my god, if
Speaker 1: I had talked to her, I would be have four
Speaker 1: kids and living in a nice They don't do that.
Speaker 1: They don't even take it that far. What bugs them
Speaker 1: is that they had a moment in their life where
Speaker 1: they could have stepped up and they didn't. That's what
Speaker 1: bugs them. That's part. I think the uncertainty of not
Speaker 1: knowing is a big part of it. I agree with
Speaker 1: you about that, but I also think it's the fact
Speaker 1: that they didn't step up at that moment sticks with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that therefore the boldness regret does blur into the others.
Speaker 1: These four can't be neatly separated in some sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, they're complete orthogonal sort of way, and
Speaker 1: you would never make the claim they are. But you
Speaker 1: can see how the boldness one, Yeah, that's a thread
Speaker 1: even running into the can misconnections one, right, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think what you're getting at here is
Speaker 1: that there is something that goes even more deeply to
Speaker 1: the overall architecture of regret, which is the difference between
Speaker 1: action and inaction. Well, maybe that's right. I think, I
Speaker 1: really think that's it I had. I mean again, I
Speaker 1: can talk to you about this because other people won't care.
Speaker 1: But like I had when I when I had outlined
Speaker 1: this book and you know, when I had my my
Speaker 1: research files and whatnot, I had, I was going to
Speaker 1: do a whole chapter on essentially what I call the
Speaker 1: rules of regret, or it's going to unpack like the
Speaker 1: five or six or whatever rules there were of regret.
Speaker 1: And as I did a lot of reading and a
Speaker 1: lot of research on this, it finally dawned on me
Speaker 1: literally after about a year. As I'm trying to like
Speaker 1: tease out these. It all came down to action in
Speaker 1: an action so interesting that that that was the that
Speaker 1: was the big distinction here. And so when you look
Speaker 1: at these four categories of regret, and so for your listeners,
Speaker 1: let me quickly tell you what they are there. These
Speaker 1: are basically what I call the deep structure of regret.
Speaker 1: These are regrets not about the domain of life, but
Speaker 1: about something deeper going on. One is foundation regrets, if
Speaker 1: only I'd done the work. These are regrets about not
Speaker 1: saving enough money, spending too much money, not taking care
Speaker 1: of your health, not working hard enough in school, things
Speaker 1: that give your make your foundation wobbly. Second, boldness regrets
Speaker 1: if only I'd taken the chance, not asking somebody out
Speaker 1: on a date, not starting a business, not speaking up,
Speaker 1: not going on an adventure. Third, more regrets if only
Speaker 1: I'd done the right thing, bullying merrily, infidelity and whatnot.
Speaker 1: And finally, connection regrets if only I'd reached out, which
Speaker 1: are about the full spectrum of relationships in our lives,
Speaker 1: not only romantic relationship. This is important, all relationships that
Speaker 1: sometimes some traps inevitably drift apart and we don't do
Speaker 1: anything about it. So the biggest category was connection regrets.
Speaker 1: The second biggest category was boldness regrets, but almost everything
Speaker 1: in there, not every The vast majority of regrets in
Speaker 1: there are regrets of inaction, yes, whereas the moral the
Speaker 1: moral regrets typically tend not exclusively because I have a
Speaker 1: moral regret about inaction, but the moral regrets tend to
Speaker 1: be about action overwhelmingly. Yes. And in the moral DOMAINI
Speaker 1: also found a lot of them are universal things that
Speaker 1: a lot of people can agree on, like bulling as
Speaker 1: bad for instance. Yes, either their domain specific morality people
Speaker 1: don't you need flavor like. But what I found interesting
Speaker 1: about your finding is there are certain set of things
Speaker 1: that we people are not quibbling about really in their regrets.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, like I regret doing that. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But but but we know this from moral foundations theory
Speaker 1: that there's some moral things that everybody that people agree with,
Speaker 1: you know, don't harm other people, don't treat other people.
Speaker 1: But there are other stuff where I had regrets that
Speaker 1: were a little bit you know, for inst I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example of this. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at things like sanctity, degradation, purity authority, those kinds of things,
Speaker 1: there's a mixed yea, every day doesn't agree, you know.
Speaker 1: So I have people who I have. I mean, I
Speaker 1: had this incident when I was talking about this a
Speaker 1: couple months ago where I was offering some of these
Speaker 1: moral regrets, and I offered up a moral regret that
Speaker 1: several people had that I write about a little bit
Speaker 1: in the book, which is Americans who regret not serving
Speaker 1: in the military. And they regret not serving in the military,
Speaker 1: not because they missed out on the adventure, but because
Speaker 1: they felt that as a citizen, as a patriot, they
Speaker 1: had a duty to serve in the military and they
Speaker 1: didn't fulfill that duty. And then so I'm in an
Speaker 1: audience and it's like somebody in the audience, who is
Speaker 1: probably a political liberal, says, well, that's not a moral regret,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you don't get to decide that, you know,
Speaker 1: like you get to decide your own moral regrets, but
Speaker 1: you don't get to decide other people's moral regrets. Because,
Speaker 1: as we know from moral foundations theory, morality is vast.
Speaker 1: There's some things we agree on, but some things that
Speaker 1: we don't. Yeah, and I'm just thinking about how these blend,
Speaker 1: Like one can have a bravery regret that also is
Speaker 1: a moral regret. Like they both they take both categories
Speaker 1: at once. I think that's yeah, I think that's possible. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and even just going a little bit deeper than
Speaker 1: an action versus in action another theme I'm hearing, And
Speaker 1: just tell me if this is right or wrong with
Speaker 1: with bravery, a lot of it comes down to as well.
Speaker 1: It seems like authenticity. People don't like when they're like,
Speaker 1: I acted a certain way, but that wasn't the real me,
Speaker 1: you know, or I could have acted a way that
Speaker 1: would have been more in line with what they're thinking
Speaker 1: is the real me. But the research, the psychological research
Speaker 1: on that shows that with the people have an authenticity
Speaker 1: bias in that they put only the most moral things
Speaker 1: in their life within the category of the real me,
Speaker 1: and they and all the all the things that are bad.
Speaker 1: They're like, I've loved this the authenticity bias in my
Speaker 1: book Transfer. Yeah. So I'm just trying to link that
Speaker 1: to your findings a little bit. You know, it does
Speaker 1: feel like people really beat themselves up over when they
Speaker 1: weren't like their best self, if that makes sense, or
Speaker 1: their aspirational self aspiration that good. Maybe it's maybe it's
Speaker 1: their beat. I don't know, you could be right. They
Speaker 1: beat themselves up when they when they are Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: aspirational cells rather than there they view them they're true
Speaker 1: their true selves. Yeah, like right, because you know that
Speaker 1: last night I got drunk and I did those things
Speaker 1: that wasn't the real me, you know, like it's like, well,
Speaker 1: but it was part of the real you it was.
Speaker 1: You know, I've are you know, I've argued that all
Speaker 1: these things are us, you know, they're just what do
Speaker 1: we own and what do we not own? Is us
Speaker 1: take responsibility? So this is really really cool you've done here,
Speaker 1: and it actually goes back in the academic literature. You know,
Speaker 1: I discovered this paper from nineteen ninety four called the
Speaker 1: Functional Basis of Counterfactual Thinking. Oh yeah, by Neil Neil
Speaker 1: rosa yea paper and yeah it's foundational. But in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways that's so much in wine with this
Speaker 1: thesis you have that there. It can actually be a
Speaker 1: powerful thing because they found in that study that thinking
Speaker 1: about how scenario might have gone better can actually improve
Speaker 1: your future outcomes. And you're you're making this case that well,
Speaker 1: look thinking about regret if you integrate it in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way if you reflect on it in a healthy
Speaker 1: way as opposed to a ruminative way on how intrusive way,
Speaker 1: and psychologists also make that distinction between intrusive rumination and
Speaker 1: productive rumination or reflection. You say, look, regret can be
Speaker 1: very good for our lives, right, there's no question about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're exactly right that regret done right is functional.
Speaker 1: The problem is a lot of problems, but part of
Speaker 1: it is that no one ever teaches us how to
Speaker 1: do it right. And so what happens is that that
Speaker 1: we're sold to build goods in some ways, that we
Speaker 1: should never have regrets, that we should never look back,
Speaker 1: or that we should always look always look forward. That's bullshit, right,
Speaker 1: But it's also not good to ruminate, as you say,
Speaker 1: to ruminate, to wallow on our regret. What we should
Speaker 1: be doing is we should be we should be we
Speaker 1: should be confronting them. But there's no question, there's no
Speaker 1: question that regrets are functional, because well, I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: there is a question, but I mean, the odds are
Speaker 1: certainly in the favor of regret being functional because it
Speaker 1: exists in our brains after tens of thousands of years
Speaker 1: of evolution, so you know, what's the point. The point
Speaker 1: is like, so it's this thing that's aversive. It's an
Speaker 1: aversive feeling, and yet it's ubiquitous. It's arguably one of
Speaker 1: the most common emotions. So this thing is ubiquitous, but
Speaker 1: it's unpleasant. So why do we have it? Because it's useful,
Speaker 1: because it's functional, you know, because our cognitive machinery is
Speaker 1: pre programmed for a regret if and we can use
Speaker 1: it if we treat it right. And I think that
Speaker 1: we have a I think we have a challenge in
Speaker 1: this country, especially with we don't equip people to deal
Speaker 1: with negative emotions. We think that sometimes sort of inculcate
Speaker 1: people in the belief that negative emotions are a sign
Speaker 1: of weakness, that negative emotions are an aberration, when in fact,
Speaker 1: negative emotions are part of life, and if we treat
Speaker 1: them right, they're actually a useful part of life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I see some of this as analogous to the work
Speaker 1: I've been doing in the field of post traumatic growth,
Speaker 1: and it's actually the topic of the book I have
Speaker 1: coming out this year. It's called Choo's Growth. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that it's not the event itself that that
Speaker 1: leads to good or bad outcomes. It's how you've processed
Speaker 1: the event. It's how you've cognitively figured out sort of
Speaker 1: what is the meaning of it moving forward. It's not
Speaker 1: saying that you would have preferred not having the traumatic
Speaker 1: that you prefer having the traumatic event. You prefer that
Speaker 1: you lost a child, or you prefer that you got
Speaker 1: into the automobile accent over not right, because of course
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. Of course you would that given it happened,
Speaker 1: And same thing in your domain regrets. Given the regret happen,
Speaker 1: you can't go You can't go in the time machine
Speaker 1: and change it. What is the most productive way moving
Speaker 1: How can you use it as fodder for a life
Speaker 1: of growth. So I just see it as analogous to that, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think it's a really really important point about that,
Speaker 1: that that negative experiences, let's forget about negative emotions, but
Speaker 1: their negative experiences are not inherently debilitating. They're not they're
Speaker 1: inherently challenging. But whether they're debilitating or not depends, at
Speaker 1: least in part on how we respond to that challenge. Now,
Speaker 1: some of it, just to be fair, some of when
Speaker 1: we when we're talking about about about trauma, some of it.
Speaker 1: Some of our response to trauma is dictated in part
Speaker 1: by organic biological, biochemical features. There's no question about that,
Speaker 1: and so you know, and and so, and some of
Speaker 1: it actually tips into the realm of illness that needs,
Speaker 1: you know, a medical problem that needs to be treated.
Speaker 1: But not all negative experiences and negative emotions need to
Speaker 1: be medicalized. This is something that you see on I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're professor. This is something that I see from
Speaker 1: a distance on college campuses, where it feels like it's
Speaker 1: like the solution to every unpleasantness on a college campus
Speaker 1: is we need more counselors. And everybody, you know, we
Speaker 1: need to everybody has to have a counselor. And I
Speaker 1: and that, and that worries me because it worries me
Speaker 1: because I think that some people desperately do need counselors,
Speaker 1: some people do desperately need medical help, but not everybody. Yes,
Speaker 1: and when everybody is getting that medical help, it undermines
Speaker 1: the people who actually do need the medical help. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I've noticed that pattern of everyone needs a counselor. But
Speaker 1: I've also noticed how everyone, every student needs their own accommodation.
Speaker 1: That's another thing they've noticed their own unique special accommodation
Speaker 1: that none of the other students need or require, when
Speaker 1: in fact, the more you look into it deeply, you're like, actually,
Speaker 1: I think every student this class could probably benefit from
Speaker 1: that accommodation. Of course, there are certain and we're talking
Speaker 1: we're not talking about the extremes. Of course, there are
Speaker 1: certain very specific learning disabilities and disorders that we want
Speaker 1: to give them as much help as possible, But there
Speaker 1: is I think what you're pointing to is this knee
Speaker 1: jerk reaction in all cases to immediately alleviate the uncomfortable needs.
Speaker 1: Try it right, exactly, immediately go in the mode of we, oh,
Speaker 1: we've got to make sure this child's perfectly happy in
Speaker 1: every way, as opposed to well teaching them you can be.
Speaker 1: You can be with pain, You can be to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, you know you can you can be with
Speaker 1: an even use not just be, but you can utilize
Speaker 1: some of this for good. Yeah, that your life is
Speaker 1: going to be filled with ups and downs and set
Speaker 1: back and mistakes and traumas I hope not too many
Speaker 1: in the realm of trauma, but it's going to be
Speaker 1: filled with negative emotions and unpleasantness and discomfort and trying
Speaker 1: to insulate yourself or having mom and dad try to
Speaker 1: insulate you from that is a fool's game. It's actually
Speaker 1: detrimental to growth. What we need to do is we
Speaker 1: need to help We need to normalize. And that's what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do in this book, Scott, is normalize
Speaker 1: regret because it's normal, you know, and so and so.
Speaker 1: We need to We need to, you know, normalize these
Speaker 1: negative emotions, but and equip people with ways to deal
Speaker 1: with them. Not surprisedly, we're not doing either with those.
Speaker 1: What we're doing is is it we're we're implying, at
Speaker 1: least or sometimes stating outright, that these negative emotions are
Speaker 1: somehow exceptional. There's something weird going on. It's totally out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary. You should never have to experience this
Speaker 1: negative emotion. And then what we're going to do is
Speaker 1: were you from the outside, are going to fix it
Speaker 1: for you rather than have you demonstrate the self efficacy
Speaker 1: and the moxie to address it yourself. Yeah. I totally
Speaker 1: get your project here, and I think it's a very
Speaker 1: worthy project. I'm glad you did it. I'm actually thinking
Speaker 1: about titling this episode Normalizing Regret I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's yeah. Yeah, I love it to be a good
Speaker 1: title for this podcast episode. Yeah you say, and I'm
Speaker 1: cool to you. Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a
Speaker 1: deviation from the steady paths of happiness. It is healthy
Speaker 1: and universal, an integral part of being human. Regret is
Speaker 1: also valuable clarify and instructs done right. It needn't drag
Speaker 1: us down, it can lift us up. You know, you
Speaker 1: have on the one end people that you constantly they
Speaker 1: want to be happy all the time, and constantly if
Speaker 1: they're sad, they want to be happy. We also have
Speaker 1: those who are the kind of people like I live
Speaker 1: my life with no regrets. You have the people that
Speaker 1: are like, you know, I got nothing wrong with me,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the other end of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: And you're saying that's not good. Ah, there's not good
Speaker 1: to say, you say. The only people I believe this
Speaker 1: is a quote you said, the only people say I
Speaker 1: have no regrets are people who either have an image
Speaker 1: for a mind or a grave disorder. Yeah. Well, the
Speaker 1: only people who don't have regrets truly. I mean, given
Speaker 1: the ubiquity of this emotion are five year olds. They're
Speaker 1: categories of people who truly don't have regrets five year olds,
Speaker 1: why their brains haven't developed. It takes a fair amount
Speaker 1: of dexterity cognitively to experience regret because you're moving through
Speaker 1: time and you're counterfactioning. You know who else doesn't have regrets.
Speaker 1: Certain kinds of neurodegenerative disorder, certain kinds of Parkinson's, it
Speaker 1: gets a for anny of it gets aph any patients
Speaker 1: often can't experiencing regret, and kinds of Parkinson's disease, certain
Speaker 1: kinds of lesions in the orbit of front of cortex.
Speaker 1: Interfear with that, all right, So people would brain disorders
Speaker 1: and sociopaths. Everybody else has regrets. I got these people
Speaker 1: in the book, as you know, who have these tattoos
Speaker 1: that say no regrets. They believe this credo so deeply
Speaker 1: they enshrine it on their bodies. And that's nonsense, because
Speaker 1: you might as well get a tattoo that says no learning,
Speaker 1: no growth, no product. Do you want to walk around
Speaker 1: up with a tattoo that says no learning? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's essentially what you're doing. Have you come across some
Speaker 1: has regretted having that tattoo? No Regrets. I have someone
Speaker 1: in the book who had a no Regrets tattoo and
Speaker 1: got it removed. There you, Jeff Bosley, you know I
Speaker 1: love that. I love that. Yeah, yeah, now you personally,
Speaker 1: I heard in some interview that you said that you
Speaker 1: one of your bigger regrets in life is not being
Speaker 1: more bold. What are you working toward? You have? When
Speaker 1: eyebrow went up, I said, that is that true? Did
Speaker 1: I hear you right saying that? And then sort of
Speaker 1: what what are you working on in your life right now?
Speaker 1: To kind of how's it productively identifying the great? Has
Speaker 1: it productively helped you moving forward? Well? I mean I
Speaker 1: think it's because they're Yeah, I guess my real answer
Speaker 1: is I don't know, and I'm trying to figure that
Speaker 1: out right now, and this book has been a catalyst
Speaker 1: for my figuring that out. So that's my that's my
Speaker 1: honest answer. I think more brought My equally honest but
Speaker 1: less fully realized answer is that you know when you
Speaker 1: get to be So I'm in my mid fifties and
Speaker 1: I have a sense of my mortality in a way
Speaker 1: that I didn't when I was in my mid thirties.
Speaker 1: That changes the way I look about things. I look
Speaker 1: at the you know, I you know, I worked in
Speaker 1: politics for a while before doing this, and lately I've
Speaker 1: seen all of these people who I knew from when
Speaker 1: I worked in politics, who were the bosses at the time,
Speaker 1: Big Fazzio, Mattlan Albright. They're dead. They passed away, and
Speaker 1: it seems like just a blink of an eye. And
Speaker 1: at the time that they were the bosses, they were
Speaker 1: probably about my age right now, And I'm thinking, holy moly,
Speaker 1: that sure went fast. Are these next years going to
Speaker 1: go as fast? And when am I going to step
Speaker 1: up and really make the highest and best contribution that
Speaker 1: I can make as a person? And that requires I
Speaker 1: think more discomfort than I have in my life right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, even that is a really important realization, as
Speaker 1: I would tell you my clients, you know, like that's great,
Speaker 1: like even if you don't have to find detour, you know,
Speaker 1: find contours fully set out, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: you know that about yourself, because weren't you at a
Speaker 1: you were at like a college commencement address of your
Speaker 1: daughters or something when you had this realization as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well that's that's when I really started thinking about it.
Speaker 1: That's when I sort of had a sort of a
Speaker 1: moment where I was just the passage of time was
Speaker 1: really just crystallized for me because I couldn't believe that
Speaker 1: this person who was just born was in its cap
Speaker 1: and gown. It was just I mean, a lot of
Speaker 1: parents have that. It's like, again, I'm not that special,
Speaker 1: but that's one of that that was really like. That
Speaker 1: was in twenty nineteen when our elder daughter graduated from college,
Speaker 1: and that was really a that was a catalyst for
Speaker 1: me in pursuing this topic of regret. But I do
Speaker 1: think that we don't talk enough about our mortality, and
Speaker 1: it's because we're freaked out by it, but we still
Speaker 1: know it. And I've always thought that at some level
Speaker 1: it's the back beat to our lives. It's not like
Speaker 1: the the full melody. It's not the lyrics we're singing
Speaker 1: all the time. I don't think it should be, but
Speaker 1: at some point it's the back beat that we all
Speaker 1: know we're going to die. And I think that's I
Speaker 1: think that's what gives rise to a lot of these
Speaker 1: bullness regrets and knowing that I'm going to die is
Speaker 1: and probably sooner rather than it than I, and I
Speaker 1: imagine makes me wonder when am I going to actually
Speaker 1: step up and be bull Absolutely. Something that dawns on
Speaker 1: me about your your project is you you heard a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about deathbed regrets and all the talk.
Speaker 1: You're not waiting for that. You know. What I like
Speaker 1: about your book is like, what actions can you take
Speaker 1: today based on some regrets you may have had the
Speaker 1: past to live a better life moving forward? And I
Speaker 1: like your project better. That have to say, I'm very
Speaker 1: scar like I'm not a fan of deathbed regrets for
Speaker 1: a couple of reason. Number one, show your work like
Speaker 1: I feel like it's it's completely cherry picked and like
Speaker 1: like something somebody whispers a few things to someone who
Speaker 1: happens to be there at the time, and then it's
Speaker 1: concocted into a bigger theory. The second is is that
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure that that is the moment
Speaker 1: of our highest lucidity, Okay. And then third is like
Speaker 1: and then third, it's too late. If you're thinking about
Speaker 1: your regrets when you you know, moments before you're drawing
Speaker 1: your last breath, it's it's useless. You've squandered it, You've
Speaker 1: wasted this powerful emotion. I couldn't agree more. I'm so
Speaker 1: happy you wrote this book. Again. I'm reiterating this because
Speaker 1: it's like, why wait to your deathbed regret to reflect
Speaker 1: on that? You know, like thirteen year olds could be
Speaker 1: reflecting on what regrets they had up to their point
Speaker 1: their life. That to make that, I mean, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no age when you're like, okay, now you should
Speaker 1: start thinking about your regrets. And I love that. For
Speaker 1: the remaining time we have today, can I ask you
Speaker 1: some Twitter questions? Because I put up Did you see
Speaker 1: I put out a call on Twitter? Do you I
Speaker 1: did not? I? Okay, I did not, no problem, but
Speaker 1: it got a lot. I'm sure that the Twitter questions
Speaker 1: are student and challenging. Lay it on me. Cool, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just ask in real time. There were so
Speaker 1: many questions. I didn't have time to process them all
Speaker 1: ahead of time. Okay, So one is okay, you can
Speaker 1: regret and be grateful for something at the same time.
Speaker 1: Would be interested in his take on that? Sure? I agree?
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, here's the thing. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's actually a very in slightful point, so
Speaker 1: so so A couple of things. Let's say somebody regrets
Speaker 1: taking a job that they don't like. Right, So one
Speaker 1: way too, Oh my god, I totally wasted two years
Speaker 1: of my life in that job. It was it brought
Speaker 1: me down. It was terrible, all right. I regret taking
Speaker 1: that job. So one way to take some of the
Speaker 1: sting out of it is to do a downward counterfactual
Speaker 1: and say, and at least it, you know, but you
Speaker 1: say it, but at least I met my my best
Speaker 1: my close friend Ed, all right, so you could. So
Speaker 1: so here's the thing, so you can you can regret
Speaker 1: that and be glad that in your that Ed is
Speaker 1: in your life right now. And maybe you might maybe
Speaker 1: you knew like Ed so much. Maybe you met your
Speaker 1: spouse at this crappy job, all right, and so you might.
Speaker 1: So somebody made you a bargain and says you can
Speaker 1: go back and not take this job, but you won't
Speaker 1: meet your spouse. You might say, no, no, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: I'll take the hit on the job so I can
Speaker 1: get back. But the thing is is, like you can
Speaker 1: those two things, those two things are you know, those
Speaker 1: two things to me are compatible. You can be satisfied
Speaker 1: with your life and grateful for your life on where
Speaker 1: it is today as I am, but also look back
Speaker 1: on your life and say, oh I regret that I
Speaker 1: regret that things are totally compatible. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: that ellaboration. Interesting topic, I'd say, having been too docile
Speaker 1: to my inner critics. Two questions, if I may, why
Speaker 1: do some people tend to experience remorse rather than regret
Speaker 1: and vice versa? And is there any link between sensitivity
Speaker 1: to regret and neuroticism? Okay, so on the second one,
Speaker 1: sensitivity to regret and neuroticism, I don't know. My hunch right,
Speaker 1: My hunch, and it's just a hunch, is that there
Speaker 1: probably is a link between neuroticism and the propensity to
Speaker 1: ruminate and to wallow. That's a hunch, but I have
Speaker 1: no idea. I'm on the on the difference between on
Speaker 1: remorse and regret. I mean, I look at remorse as
Speaker 1: essentially guilt, and to me, guilt is one flavor of regret.
Speaker 1: It's at least moral regret. Like I don't like like
Speaker 1: like If I like, I got people who I got
Speaker 1: people who didn't who wish they had studied abroad. They
Speaker 1: were chicken to go overseas, and they wish they had
Speaker 1: they had studied abroad. You know, they're thirty five years old,
Speaker 1: and so if only had studied abroad, all right, they
Speaker 1: don't have any guilt about that, they don't have any
Speaker 1: remorse about that. But if they bullied somebody, they have
Speaker 1: remorse about that. So, for me, remorse is a category
Speaker 1: of regret, the moral regrets. Wow, I need to think
Speaker 1: about that more. That's really interesting. My regret not fighting
Speaker 1: harder when I was sued by a copyright troll. My question,
Speaker 1: how does Dan recommend we let go or reframe old
Speaker 1: regrets so we keep moving forward? Okay, so I'm all
Speaker 1: for fighting copyright trolls, having been in my own copyright battles,
Speaker 1: having to how to engage a very talented copyright lawyer
Speaker 1: several times to deal with these weasels. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: got so, I got so thrown. What was the question again?
Speaker 1: So how do we how do we let go? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How do we reframe old regrets so we keep moving forward?
Speaker 1: I think well, aspect is interesting there. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean what you want to do is you want to
Speaker 1: you know, again, regret reguards agency. It is your fault okay,
Speaker 1: and so it's not disappointment. Disappointment is just external circumstances.
Speaker 1: So if it is your fault, the most important first step,
Speaker 1: to my mind is treating yourself is actually enlisting self compassion,
Speaker 1: that is, treating yourself with kindness rather than contempt. So
Speaker 1: a lot of times when we make mistakes, we lacerate ourselves.
Speaker 1: We talk to ourselves in ways that are cruel and
Speaker 1: brutal and vicious, in ways that we would never talk
Speaker 1: to another human being. So we shouldn't talk to ourselves
Speaker 1: that way. So treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt.
Speaker 1: Recognize that your mistakes are part of the human condition,
Speaker 1: that you're not that Again, I keep coming back to
Speaker 1: this point, you're not that special. And also that any
Speaker 1: mistake you make, and this I think a big issue
Speaker 1: that people have is any mistake you make is a
Speaker 1: moment in your life. It's not the full measure of
Speaker 1: your life. I think a lot of times people will
Speaker 1: take something that represents this tiny little patch of their
Speaker 1: whole life and say, this embodies my entire life. It
Speaker 1: fully describes who I am. And that's nonsense. I think
Speaker 1: that's the first step in letting go is self compassion,
Speaker 1: kindness rather than contempt, recognizing that these mistakes are part
Speaker 1: of the human condition, and also recognizing that they're a
Speaker 1: moment in your life, not the full measure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that answers Alexis Reid's question is how do we
Speaker 1: as humans release shame or guilt around regret for a
Speaker 1: decision behavior action? Yeah, that's really Yeah, Well, shame is
Speaker 1: Shame is interesting because because shame is you know, shame,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, shame is I mean, guilt is
Speaker 1: I did a bad thing. Shame is I'm a bad person,
Speaker 1: and so you know, and so you want to do
Speaker 1: is you want to you want to go after the behavior,
Speaker 1: not the essence? You know, you want to you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think that any single behavior embodies the full
Speaker 1: quality of who we are, for the same reasons you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Scott. I mean, where people say, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: my authentic self is good and just, but I happen
Speaker 1: to have bullied somebody. But that's not the real me,
Speaker 1: you know, So they would frame it in their head
Speaker 1: as I'm regretful that it wasn't the real me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a I thought this was an interesting question. Is
Speaker 1: being consistently in the public eye a hindrance to expressing
Speaker 1: experiencing regret as much as others. I wonder if someone
Speaker 1: with celebrity admitting to their mistakes will make them feel
Speaker 1: they'd be perceived as irredeemable for their actions as a
Speaker 1: fallow up. Do people experience less regret if they don't
Speaker 1: feel well received by others and expressing it. I wonder
Speaker 1: if someone, if some cognitive dissonance we experience, puts up
Speaker 1: walls for reflecting in future experiences. Think like any villain
Speaker 1: in a Marvel movie. Hope these both make sense. Do
Speaker 1: you want to pick up the ball in any of that?
Speaker 1: The first one? The first one makes sense, I think
Speaker 1: there is. I think there's a fair point that sometimes
Speaker 1: people in the public eye, particularly in politics, I think
Speaker 1: more than anything else, but maybe in a maybe in
Speaker 1: the broader public realm, you know, they might be like,
Speaker 1: if I'm running for office and I admit some kind
Speaker 1: of regret, I mean, it's possible that my opponents will
Speaker 1: just completely collaborate for it, and I might be better
Speaker 1: off tactically not breathing a word of it. I might
Speaker 1: be better off tactically as a politician. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I'd be better off as a human being, So there
Speaker 1: might be, there might be, there might be something to
Speaker 1: do that. On the other hand, you know, we know
Speaker 1: that in certain circumstances, not all, not in certain circumstances
Speaker 1: at all, Revealing our vulnerabilities, you know, builds affinity. So
Speaker 1: it's so, it's so, it's it's it's it's striking out.
Speaker 1: But I can see in that certain kinds of celebrities
Speaker 1: would not want to do that, particularly in the political realm. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well one person. This is just not a question, but
Speaker 1: I think it's worth it's nice positive things. John Roberts
Speaker 1: for us, no regrets, just acceptance of my past and
Speaker 1: present imperfections. At each given moment, we're the best versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves given the environment and headspace we're in. We
Speaker 1: should do our best to learn from the past for
Speaker 1: a future well being, not dwell on it, dwell on
Speaker 1: it in the present. Seems like that's so in line
Speaker 1: with the message. Yeah, kind of like amen. The other
Speaker 1: thing about it is that John is John is evaluating
Speaker 1: the decision that he made. He's not evaluating John, He's
Speaker 1: evaluating the decision. And I think that's really important, super important.
Speaker 1: I'll end here with a really cheeky question, trivial or
Speaker 1: false asks Daniel's pink, but Steve and his pinker ask
Speaker 1: him how much he likes that joke. I admire the
Speaker 1: effort behind that joke. So I'll give you a I
Speaker 1: give you professor Pink, will give you an incomplete. I
Speaker 1: think it's a promising line of inquiry, but it needs
Speaker 1: to be it needs to be better executed, Daniel. When
Speaker 1: you ask a question on Twitter, you never know what
Speaker 1: you're going to get, and I, you know, I try
Speaker 1: to give a little diversity of the kind of questions
Speaker 1: people ask. Again, I want to just end this in
Speaker 1: here by saying once again that I'm so glad you
Speaker 1: wrote this book. I think it really that's the heart
Speaker 1: of common humanity we all share. You really illustrate that,
Speaker 1: and maybe even just knowing that information can help us
Speaker 1: all have greater connections with each other and reduce our
Speaker 1: regret that we didn't have those connections just by having
Speaker 1: that common humanity awareness, you know what I mean? Here's hoping. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Dan, Thanks Scott, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard. I encourage you to join in the discussion
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Speaker 1: for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.