Speaker 1: Is holding onto the past, and nobody says, at the
Speaker 1: end of your life, what I really am happy I
Speaker 1: did all my life is hold on to my regrets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome doctor Robert L.
Speaker 2: Lehey to the show. Doctor Leehe is the director of
Speaker 2: the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy NYC and clinical Professor
Speaker 2: of Psychology and Psychiatry at wild Cornell University Medical School.
Speaker 2: Doctor Leehee serves on a number of scientific committees for
Speaker 2: international conferences on cognitive behavioral therapy and is a frequent
Speaker 2: keynote speaker throughout the world. He has authored twenty seven
Speaker 2: books about CBT, depression, worry, anxiety, and emotion regulation, which
Speaker 2: have been translated in twenty languages. His latest book is
Speaker 2: called If Only Finding Freedom from Regrets. In this episode,
Speaker 2: I talked to doctor Leehey about finding freedom from regret.
Speaker 2: Regret is an un pleasant emotion that can motivate us
Speaker 2: to learn and grow, but there are times when it
Speaker 2: can keep us frozen in place. According to doctor Alihi,
Speaker 2: this is why it's important to make a distinction between
Speaker 2: productive and unproductive rumination. He shares the cognitive biases we
Speaker 2: have about loss and opportunity, as well as strategies on
Speaker 2: how to let go of regret when it no longer
Speaker 2: serves us. I really enjoyed chatting with Robert. He and
Speaker 2: I go way back, actually, and he's been on the
Speaker 2: podcast before, and his work has really influenced me even
Speaker 2: before I met him, and really deeply helped me overcome
Speaker 2: a lot of anxiety I was experiencing many years ago.
Speaker 2: So I find his work really impactful. And I found
Speaker 2: this discussion, which is an extension of his prior work
Speaker 2: to the realm of regret, really quite profound, and it
Speaker 2: had a really deep existential psychology flavor, which you all
Speaker 2: know I like. So I think you'll really enjoy this
Speaker 2: podcast as well, and I hope you find it useful
Speaker 2: for your own life and finding a life without living
Speaker 2: it with regret. So, without further ado, I bring you
Speaker 2: doctor Robert Lee. Hey, Robert, thanks so much for being
Speaker 2: on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Scott, thanks for having me on again. It's great to
Speaker 1: see you.
Speaker 2: Great to see you too. Wow, lots changed in the
Speaker 2: world last time we talked. But do you have this
Speaker 2: new book called if Only Dot dot Dot Finding Freedom
Speaker 2: from Regrets? Why do you decide to write this book, like,
Speaker 2: when did the idea come to you?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting Scott and me. I see
Speaker 1: patients every week, and many of the patients I've seen
Speaker 1: over the many years of practice express regret about things
Speaker 1: they did or did not do, or they anticipate if
Speaker 1: they make a change, they're going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of regrets. And so from a cognitive behavioral point of view,
Speaker 1: I was curious that didn't seem to be very much
Speaker 1: in the literature. So I decided to do a deep diving.
Speaker 1: I like writing books that are going to make me
Speaker 1: learn about things that I think are relevant to everyday life.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of where I came from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you right, Regret is an emotion that comes with
Speaker 2: living a full life. Yeah, you wrote that deep into
Speaker 2: your book. You wrote that sentence. Wow, I mean that's
Speaker 2: a powerful sentence. Why is that, I mean, why is
Speaker 2: that so important from living a full well?
Speaker 1: Because a full life includes mistakes and regrets are could
Speaker 1: be mistakes that we made or anticipate making. We're not
Speaker 1: going to be batting a thousand things are not going
Speaker 1: to turn out to be exactly what we want. In
Speaker 1: my view, no one's going to get exactly what they
Speaker 1: want of their terms in life. And so we have
Speaker 1: we have regrets because we make decisions to either make
Speaker 1: a change or not make a change, and then we're
Speaker 1: not always pleased with the outcome. And so it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, some some people say, oh, I don't have
Speaker 1: any regrets because I figure I made the decision myself.
Speaker 1: That's the very nature of regret. You made the decision.
Speaker 1: And if you don't have any regrets, how are you
Speaker 1: going to learn from your experience? You know, I view
Speaker 1: I view regrets as part of the trial and error
Speaker 1: learning of everyday life which we all go through.
Speaker 2: Well, your book is very unique because you bring this
Speaker 2: condition perspective to it and you bring it your life.
Speaker 2: You've had a lot of personal experience and practice on this.
Speaker 2: You also come from a background on helping people with anxiety.
Speaker 2: As I told you in your last podcast, your book
Speaker 2: on anxiety really helped me a lot in my life.
Speaker 2: A long time ago, when I was studying Cambridge University,
Speaker 2: I was seeing a therapist there. We're working through the book.
Speaker 2: Your work on anxiety has been very important and I
Speaker 2: see seeds, not seeds of it, I see threads of
Speaker 2: it in this book, you've applied some of those cognitive
Speaker 2: behavioral therapy ways of thinking into the realm of regrets.
Speaker 2: So that's unique.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of the regret literature is, you know,
Speaker 1: surveys about what people regret or you know, do we
Speaker 1: regret taking action to make a change or not taking action?
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of research in the cognitive literature
Speaker 1: and behavioral economics on regret, but in the clinical literature
Speaker 1: there's very little. And if you regret, when you think
Speaker 1: about regret as part of living a full life, you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at from an evolutionary point of view,
Speaker 1: you have to ask why any emotion evolved. I mean,
Speaker 1: why is jealousy a pretty universal emotion, or envy or
Speaker 1: resentment or the desire for revenge and regret is a
Speaker 1: universal emotion. It's like you're not going to find any
Speaker 1: culture that regret is not part of the experience. It's
Speaker 1: the second most commonly mentioned emotion, love being the first.
Speaker 1: So you have this ubiquitous emotion that people get hijacked by,
Speaker 1: and then you know, you need to understand what the
Speaker 1: logic is of regret, that there's a reason why people regret.
Speaker 1: They in fact, in one survey. They actually found that
Speaker 1: regret of the unpleasant emotions was rated the most valuable
Speaker 1: because people felt like, I can learn from it, I
Speaker 1: can make myself a better person. It's a way of
Speaker 1: being responsible. So it's kind of like it's you know,
Speaker 1: to say that I never regret, I'm kind of well,
Speaker 1: don't you learn from experience or don't you ever apologize
Speaker 1: to people for things that you've said? So it's part
Speaker 1: of I think, the wide range of sometimes unpleasant emotions
Speaker 1: that make sense and maybe adaptive if used in the
Speaker 1: right way. But then some people get hijacked by the
Speaker 1: regret and they just ruminate and become self critical and
Speaker 1: become frozen in their paths.
Speaker 2: And frozen in their past.
Speaker 1: In their path yeah right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying and yes, and frozen in
Speaker 2: their past, well.
Speaker 1: Frozen in their past. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: They can't seem to stop feeling like a loser for
Speaker 2: what they did twenty years ago, and it's still part
Speaker 2: of their self scheme as a loser. Now. I don't
Speaker 2: know who I'm thinking of there. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 2: where that example came from, but yes, speaking for a friend, this.
Speaker 1: Friend of ours really has a lot of problems, you know, so.
Speaker 2: Some of what you're talking about actually dovetails nicely with
Speaker 2: the emerging field of post traumatic growth. Have you thought
Speaker 2: about that connection as well well, now that.
Speaker 1: You mentioned it. I mean, you can really see that,
Speaker 1: like like if you take the pandemic, you take the
Speaker 1: pandemic the last two and a half years and maybe
Speaker 1: the next year and a half or so that a
Speaker 1: lot of us had to go through incredible, incredible adaptation.
Speaker 1: So many people went through losses. Over a million people
Speaker 1: in the United States have died, but there's also growth
Speaker 1: that a lot of us could experience from that, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of prioritizing what's important. You know, is it important
Speaker 1: to have, you know, expensive clothes, or drive an expensive car,
Speaker 1: or climb the corporate ladder, or you know, press people,
Speaker 1: or is it important to stay alive and to appreciate
Speaker 1: kind of simple things in life and be flexible. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I find with with with
Speaker 1: regret is that is that regret is often tied to
Speaker 1: these inflexible expectations about what my life must be. If
Speaker 1: you were flexible about the outcome of your decisions, and
Speaker 1: you you can look at outcomes in terms of what
Speaker 1: I call relative preferences, like you would you know, you
Speaker 1: would like one hundred percent, but you're willing to accept
Speaker 1: ninety percent seventy percent, You're going to be able to
Speaker 1: have a lot more satisfaction in life. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that we see with decision making and regret
Speaker 1: is that some people are what's called maximizers. They they
Speaker 1: want the absolute best. I have to have absolute best.
Speaker 1: That's me is that you, Scott, the absolute best?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I always want the best clothing and fashion.
Speaker 2: I'm joking.
Speaker 1: Look at me, Look at We got to do some
Speaker 1: stand up comedy, Scott, I do.
Speaker 2: Do you know what?
Speaker 1: I've got to see it? Put it on TikTok.
Speaker 2: That will never be I do.
Speaker 1: We have to do a shame exercise with you. But
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting is that these maximizers, this is
Speaker 1: the concept that Herbert Simon came up about sixty seventy
Speaker 1: years ago and got the Nobel Prize and economics, you know,
Speaker 1: the maximizer is looking for the absolute best. And the
Speaker 1: maximizer thinks, if I really try to get all the
Speaker 1: information and can do all the comparisons and demand the best,
Speaker 1: I won't have regrets. I'll be satisfied. And what the
Speaker 1: research shows is that the maximizers take longer to make decisions,
Speaker 1: and they're less satisfied with the outcome. And they're even
Speaker 1: less satisfied with the outcome even if the outcome is
Speaker 1: objectively better than an outcome that somebody who's a satisfier
Speaker 1: might might have chosen. So it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: trying for the best leads often to more dissatisfaction and
Speaker 1: more regret and more procrastination.
Speaker 2: Boy, I'm so glad you mentioned and Herb Simon gave
Speaker 2: him credit because a lot of people talk about that,
Speaker 2: that wonderful framework maximizing for satisficing. Don't give Herb Simon
Speaker 2: that credit? Well, Jeopardy trivia. I was Herb Simon's last
Speaker 2: research assistant.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, before he does amazing. That's incredible.
Speaker 2: Instance was my first, one of my first big mentors
Speaker 2: in the field of psychology. And yeah, just a wonderful
Speaker 2: person and researcher. Yeah, okay, So does anticipating regret lead
Speaker 2: to you to action or inaction?
Speaker 1: So people often think about regret about decisions I made
Speaker 1: in the past and the outcomes in the past, but
Speaker 1: anticipating regret is a big part of of you know,
Speaker 1: regret theory. Actually, uh, it's that like people often will
Speaker 1: view making a change in terms of a loss frame.
Speaker 1: Like for example, somebody thinking about breaking up in a relationship,
Speaker 1: getting a divorce, or whatever it would be, they may
Speaker 1: often think about what I'm losing, which of course is
Speaker 1: always true. There are always trade offs right between staying
Speaker 1: and leaving. So people anticipating regretting their decision, there's kind
Speaker 1: of an inhibition of making a change because it's often
Speaker 1: viewed as a loss frame. And what we know from
Speaker 1: the research, and there's a lot of cross cultural research
Speaker 1: that people have done on this, that people anticipate making
Speaker 1: a change will lead to more regret in the short term,
Speaker 1: there is more regret that a person experience is making
Speaker 1: a change in the short term. In the long term,
Speaker 1: as people look back on their lives, people are more
Speaker 1: likely to regret what they did not do. They did
Speaker 1: not make the change, they did not pursue the other job,
Speaker 1: they do not break off the relationship or whatever. They
Speaker 1: regret what they did not do. And this is true
Speaker 1: in all cultures so that have been studied. So it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting asymmetry, you know, because because we often
Speaker 1: we like we often think that if I make that change,
Speaker 1: I'll get stuck, and I think, I think this is
Speaker 1: where a lot of the interesting work and emotional theory
Speaker 1: that you're familiar with the affect of forecasting work that
Speaker 1: you know, people predicting their emotion like if I do this,
Speaker 1: like Dan Gilbert's work, if I do this, I'll I'll
Speaker 1: have regrets, and what they with Gilbert and Wilson and
Speaker 1: others have found that, you know, people anticipate far more
Speaker 1: regrets than they actually have. But we also tend to
Speaker 1: over predict how extreme our emotion will be, how happy
Speaker 1: will be, how unhappy will be. So if we get
Speaker 1: that new house, we're going to be really really happy forever,
Speaker 1: like a durability illusion. I'll be happy forever. If I
Speaker 1: move to Santa Monica, California, you know I'll be I'll
Speaker 1: be unhappy forever if I lose money in the market,
Speaker 1: or if I go through this breakup. And so when
Speaker 1: people make a decision really anticipate regret, they're often over
Speaker 1: predicting their emotions and they often over predict the impact,
Speaker 1: how serious and how durable, how extreme that emotion is
Speaker 1: going to be. And they don't consider the different ways
Speaker 1: that I can cope. So when I'm talking to somebody
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, divorcing, you know, he talks about
Speaker 1: missing his children, which is understandable and kind of a
Speaker 1: good value, but doesn't give as much value to the
Speaker 1: idea of having fever conflicts with his partner and having
Speaker 1: new opportunities moving forward. So, you know, and you can
Speaker 1: imagine that if somebody stays and unhappy relationship for ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years, they're beginning to build up a savings account
Speaker 1: of more regrets. So we often have to think about
Speaker 1: we have to think about ways that we can cope
Speaker 1: with making change, And I think this is where the
Speaker 1: work on resilience comes in. We often underestimate how resilient
Speaker 1: we are. You know, the work of George Bonano at Colombia.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and George's work indicates remarkably that it's like
Speaker 1: eighty eighty five percent of people going through what we
Speaker 1: might consider a major negative life event a year after
Speaker 1: or back to their pre event psychological will being so
Speaker 1: regret about anticipating regret. We often underestimate our resilience, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like a hedonic treadmill. We
Speaker 1: generally will eventually get used to what we have, whether
Speaker 1: it's good or bad.
Speaker 2: It is like the hedonic treadmill. And it's also seems
Speaker 2: to really to Daniel Gilbert's work on affective forecast.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing that I think in
Speaker 1: the clinical area of scott is so important to incorporate.
Speaker 1: You know, how we think about emotions, how we think
Speaker 1: about our emotions in the future, and because we often
Speaker 1: get anchored to an emotion and we look at the
Speaker 1: future through the lens of our current emotion. So one
Speaker 1: thing that I've been interested in for years is how
Speaker 1: depressed people make decisions, because it's like a depressive paradox.
Speaker 1: You would think, why would you continue criticizing yourself because
Speaker 1: that's not rewarding, or why would you continue avoiding things
Speaker 1: because you're not getting rewards. So it seemed like a paradox.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seem like the opposite of the law
Speaker 1: of effect. But what depressive avoidance is about is avoiding
Speaker 1: further loss. And it's kind of like, if you've gone
Speaker 1: from eighty percent positive to twenty percent positive, you're going
Speaker 1: to be hesitant to take the risk and make a
Speaker 1: change because if you lose that twenty positive that you
Speaker 1: have left, you're going to think that life is not
Speaker 1: worth living. So there's kind of a depressive you know.
Speaker 1: You know, depressed people are more prone to regret. They
Speaker 1: criticize themselves actually part of the bag depression inventory. They
Speaker 1: criticize themselves to anticipate more regret. They don't think that
Speaker 1: they can handle difficulties, they don't think that they're going
Speaker 1: to enjoy positives, and they think that they're going to
Speaker 1: suffer their losses more than enjoy their gains. So there's
Speaker 1: a logic to depressive avoidance and passivity.
Speaker 2: Has the research shown the causal direction there, which is
Speaker 2: the chicken, which is.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, that's something. It's more correlation. I've done some
Speaker 1: research on that over the years, and I know Darubius
Speaker 1: and other people have done some research on it. But
Speaker 1: it's it's an interesting thing because in therapy we're always
Speaker 1: trying to get patients to make decisions, right, You kind
Speaker 1: of wonder, why would this person who's depressed not want
Speaker 1: to make a change. You know, people are anxious, are
Speaker 1: afraid of surprise, they're afraid of delta, you know, they're
Speaker 1: afraid of Oh, don't get my hopes up too much,
Speaker 1: because then things don't work out, I'll be really traumatized
Speaker 1: by the surprise. And that's what they would regret.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting that so much of this really does
Speaker 2: pivot around the maximizing or satisfying distinction, Like the whole
Speaker 2: book kind of pivots around that. Because if you lower,
Speaker 2: if you don't really expect anything good out of your life,
Speaker 2: and everything that happens is even a little bit good,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, that's nice.
Speaker 1: One of the things that that I discussed in the
Speaker 1: book is what I call, you know, existential perfectionism. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've seen this both in LA and in New York.
Speaker 1: You know, we're kind of like the ground zero for
Speaker 1: existential perfectionism. Like my life has to be just great,
Speaker 1: my job has to be fulfilling all the time. Where
Speaker 1: I live, and my appearance and my partner and all that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of existing so like the Holy Grail myth,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, chasing after one of your guests
Speaker 1: recently talked about toxic positivity, which I love that concept,
Speaker 1: And you can see this existential perfectionism as part of regret. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, my partner is not perfect my job is
Speaker 1: not perfect. I'm not perfect and all that. What I
Speaker 1: would love you to do is to go out and
Speaker 1: survey people you know well and find out which of
Speaker 1: them have perfect lives. And even if you want to
Speaker 1: go out and ask Bill Gates, is his life perfect?
Speaker 1: You know, going through a divorce and dealing with his
Speaker 1: kids and you know, so we kind of idealized celebrities
Speaker 1: and things on social media. You know. I had a
Speaker 1: patient a number of years ago who divorced guy about
Speaker 1: in his late fifties, and he was thinking, he was
Speaker 1: thinking about the woman he was dating, you know, their
Speaker 1: positive and negatives. He said, what's the key to a
Speaker 1: good relationship? And I said, you know, I used to
Speaker 1: do a lot of windsurfing, and I was down in
Speaker 1: Saint John and the Virgin Islands. I wanted to learn
Speaker 1: a by the windsurfing heavy waves and heavy heavy wind
Speaker 1: So I went to the other side of the island,
Speaker 1: Coral Bay, and this this guy, Mike, who is the
Speaker 1: windsurf hot dog on the island. So I said, Mike,
Speaker 1: what's the key to windsurfing and strong winds and heavy waves.
Speaker 1: He said, Bob, it's rock and roll and commit to
Speaker 1: the action. And I thought, and I said to this guy,
Speaker 1: I said, that's the key to a good relationship, rock
Speaker 1: and roll and commit to an action. So they put
Speaker 1: on the screensaver or a picture of a guy windsurfing
Speaker 1: and heavy winds. But it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: you say, when you get married, you know, happily ever after,
Speaker 1: it should be for ups and downs ever after.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, so it seems like a lot
Speaker 2: of people are looking for the free lunch. They're looking
Speaker 2: for the no tradeoff option. Are you saying that people
Speaker 2: should should stop that sur.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for the free lunch, you're going to starve.
Speaker 2: Get a little sassy over there, Sassy Robert.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all about you know, the free launch myth.
Speaker 1: It's all about trade offs. You know. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like like you know, kuk Guard said, if you get married,
Speaker 1: you regret it. If you don't marry, you regret it.
Speaker 1: I was talking with a patient number of years ago,
Speaker 1: a really good guy had sounded like a good relationship
Speaker 1: with this woman he knew for several years. They said,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can get married because I
Speaker 1: you know, I have some ambivalence. And he equated ambivalence
Speaker 1: with I can't make a decision if I'm ambivalent. And
Speaker 1: of course the word decision in Latin actually means to
Speaker 1: cut away from something. So if you're making decision, by definition,
Speaker 1: you had ambivalence at the moment you made the decision.
Speaker 1: So decisions are all about decisions are all about trade offs.
Speaker 1: You know that looking for the perfect partner, he could
Speaker 1: spend an next thirty years, you know, and if he
Speaker 1: found somebody who thought was really good, he could then say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there's somebody better. This kind of receding reference point,
Speaker 1: like these guys you know have an the fourth or
Speaker 1: fifth marriages or whatever, as opposed to thinking about the
Speaker 1: trade offs, the pros and cons. And I said, the
Speaker 1: reason that you're ambivalent is that you know each other.
Speaker 1: We often think about Romeo and Juliet as, oh, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of way you should feel if you make
Speaker 1: a lifelong commitment. Romeo and Julia is about a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old and a fifteen year old who see each
Speaker 1: other from the distance at a party with opposing families
Speaker 1: and fall in love based on absolutely nothing, and then
Speaker 1: within four or five days, several people were killed, including
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet, and some people during shakespeare time actually
Speaker 1: thought the point that he was trying to make was
Speaker 1: to make fun of this idealized romantic confatuation. Why not
Speaker 1: wait six months and get to know each other before
Speaker 1: you end up killing yourself. So it's the idea that
Speaker 1: there's a free lunch, there's no trade offs, the holy grail,
Speaker 1: the receding reference point, there's always somebody better. Now, there
Speaker 1: are like five or six billion people in the world.
Speaker 1: What's the likelihood that you have found the absolute best
Speaker 1: person in the world? Right? Zero?
Speaker 2: Thanks for all of your great romanticism today, Robert, I.
Speaker 1: Am a romantic.
Speaker 2: But what's the chances that your wife is really the
Speaker 2: best person for you? Probably zero?
Speaker 1: Now she is the best person for me. But there's
Speaker 1: the opportunity cost of searching. Right, So if people look
Speaker 1: for the next best option, there's a cost of searching,
Speaker 1: and you don't have the commitment. You spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time chasing down dead ends.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's what my friend tells me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: as it happens in the data. Yeah again the friend.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but there's positives there as well, like freedom
Speaker 2: and no commitment.
Speaker 1: Trade offs of being single yeah, there.
Speaker 2: Could be trade offs there. I really like this phrase
Speaker 2: action inertia. Is this a psychological principle that the longer
Speaker 2: you wait, the longer you want to wait for something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of the habit of not doing something, And
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when you practice a bad habit.
Speaker 1: I mean. One of the advantages of the avoidance this
Speaker 1: is the oj Mawer approach, an old Yale professor of
Speaker 1: psychology about you know, two factor learning that you think
Speaker 1: about making a change, but you, oh, no, that's going
Speaker 1: to be unpleasant. You avoid what you do. Your anxiety
Speaker 1: goes down when you avoid, and so you basically reinforce avoidance.
Speaker 1: So the inertia becomes the habit, and the inertia became
Speaker 1: I mean. One of the examples of this is the
Speaker 1: sunk cost effect, which I discussed in the book, which
Speaker 1: is that everybody knows what this is. You buy a
Speaker 1: jacket or a dress or whatever, and you take it,
Speaker 1: pay a lot of money, and take it home. Try it.
Speaker 1: I say, oh no, I'm not going to not meve today.
Speaker 1: That's not for me. I'll do it some other time.
Speaker 1: You put it in your closet and you have it
Speaker 1: in your closet for five years and then your partner says,
Speaker 1: why don't you get rid of that? And you haven't
Speaker 1: worn it five years. Oh no, I can't get rid
Speaker 1: of it. I paid good money for it. What you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're holding on to something because you had
Speaker 1: a prior investment in it. And you see people doing
Speaker 1: this with careers, with relationships with their you know, PCs
Speaker 1: or whatever it would be. I can't make a change
Speaker 1: because I put all this time in it. And I
Speaker 1: think part of it is the enaction inertia that you've
Speaker 1: kind of gotten used to staying. You have a loss frame.
Speaker 1: You think that change is going to be a loss.
Speaker 1: You have a fear of wasting. I mean one example
Speaker 1: I think of, like if I had one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: bill and I said, you know, Scott, I'd like burning
Speaker 1: money in front of people, and so I'm going to
Speaker 1: burn this one hundred dollars bill. I'll bet you would
Speaker 1: be You would probably think I'm a little crazy, and
Speaker 1: you'd be correct, but you might be a little bit
Speaker 1: angry with me. We don't like the idea of people
Speaker 1: burning money. You're not going to be worse off, and
Speaker 1: no one else would be worse off. But there's this
Speaker 1: kind of intrinsic fear of wasting that people have. And
Speaker 1: so if I get rid of something, if I put
Speaker 1: five years in a relationship or five years in a
Speaker 1: job or career or whatever or course of study and think,
Speaker 1: oh I wasted it. So it's very hard to walk
Speaker 1: away from a prior commitment.
Speaker 2: Well, what is the hindsight bias and how does that
Speaker 2: relate to this, because that's different than the sunk costs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. The hindsight bias is like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like people discussing the baseball or football game on that
Speaker 1: was on Sunday. They discussed it on Monday and they
Speaker 1: knew everything was going to happen the way it was.
Speaker 1: Or you know, people like Bob Schuler at Yale got
Speaker 1: the Nobil price and economics looked at the hindsight bias.
Speaker 1: Almost everybody was saying after the market crashed in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, oh yeah, I knew it was so
Speaker 1: I got out right. Everybody got out of the market.
Speaker 1: Now they didn't. They lost trillions of dollars. So hindsight
Speaker 1: bias is that we reconstruct our knowledge about yesterday from
Speaker 1: what we know now and of course I'm really great
Speaker 1: at predicting what I had for dinner last night, right,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to be good at predicting what
Speaker 1: the weather is going to be like next week. So
Speaker 1: hindsight bias is part of regret, is that, oh, I
Speaker 1: should have known that my partner was going to be
Speaker 1: an alcoholic, or I should have known that that investment
Speaker 1: would have failed. When you made the decision in the past,
Speaker 1: you made a decision based under conditions of uncertainty, with
Speaker 1: the information that was available, trying to make the best outcome.
Speaker 1: And there were other people made that decision.
Speaker 2: Well, that may be ent to the whole free will issue.
Speaker 2: The decision had already been made for you, going on
Speaker 2: way back to the big bang. You know, I try
Speaker 2: to link your work to lots of other areas of research,
Speaker 2: as you've seen today. Another one is I've wondered if
Speaker 2: you've thought about looking at to Kristin Neff's self compassion
Speaker 2: work at all, because what advice do you have for
Speaker 2: people who, let's say they did something genuinely terrible yeah,
Speaker 2: when they're younger, how can they still see themselves as
Speaker 2: a positive self concept in the present when they keep
Speaker 2: ruminating over the past. Can they is there hopefully? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know Paul Gilbert, who who originated compassion focused
Speaker 1: therapy as an old friend of mine, and you know
Speaker 1: the the idea of compassion bring up compassion in the book,
Speaker 1: you know, directing get toward ourselves or directing get toward
Speaker 1: other people. But I would have even expanded the compassion
Speaker 1: into the idea of self forgiveness and humility. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a concept that I find I found very useful
Speaker 1: with myself and with patients I work with, which I
Speaker 1: would call, you know, adaptive humility. Adaptive humility is that
Speaker 1: I'm just a human being. I'm no better than other people.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make mistakes. I can learn from things I
Speaker 1: need to forgive others if I'm going to forgive myself
Speaker 1: all of this. You know some research on humility that
Speaker 1: shows that people who have this adaptive humility, I don't
Speaker 1: mean people who have low self esteem or don't asserta
Speaker 1: themselves and people have this adaptive humility kind of a
Speaker 1: humanizing universal compassion. These people have better marriages and better friendships.
Speaker 1: And it stays the reason I mean, if you're like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a fallen angel just like my partner or my friend,
Speaker 1: and I can direct compassion towards myself. And compassion doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I get a free ride. Forgiveness doesn't mean I
Speaker 1: get a free ride. It means that, Okay, I realized
Speaker 1: I said something that was unfair or mean spirited or
Speaker 1: just plain long. But I want to become a better person,
Speaker 1: and this is an opportunity for me to learn from that.
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity for me to correct myself rather than
Speaker 1: criticize myself. The world's not going to be a better
Speaker 1: place if I hate myself, but it could be a
Speaker 1: better place if I practice compassion towards myself and others.
Speaker 1: Thinking about forgiveness as a strength that you have in life,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know. I'll give you an
Speaker 1: example of my own life. We were staying at a
Speaker 1: hotel recently, and the internet was not working. Was expensive place,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of irritated, and I was talking
Speaker 1: with the woman downstairs in charge. In my view, I
Speaker 1: was very rude to her. I mean not terribly, but
Speaker 1: I was. I was rude. And I came back to
Speaker 1: the room and I was talking with my wife and
Speaker 1: I was justifying myself, you know, well, you know, paying
Speaker 1: a lot of money. And then I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: if I were watching myself, I would have thought that
Speaker 1: guy's acting like a jerk. And I said, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be the kind of person that when I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about my behavior toward somebody who was innocent trying
Speaker 1: to do her job, you know, is being treated like
Speaker 1: in some kind of like some guy, you know, with
Speaker 1: a power assertion type thing. So I immediately called downstairs
Speaker 1: and I asked to speak with her, and I apologized,
Speaker 1: and she was actually quite gracious in accepting my apology,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful for that. But the ability to kind
Speaker 1: of recognize it, you know, it was a really bad thing. Ideal.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't treat anybody that way. I would never want
Speaker 1: to be treated that way. This is adaptive humility. I'm
Speaker 1: not a saint, but it was an opportunity for me
Speaker 1: to to sort of say, yeah, that's a regret that
Speaker 1: I need to do something about that. I need to
Speaker 1: ask her to forgive me.
Speaker 2: Love that if that's the worst thing you've ever done
Speaker 2: in your whole life, though, I'd say you're a pretty good,
Speaker 2: okay good, pretty good person also gets into the distinction
Speaker 2: you make in your book that I love between productive
Speaker 2: and unproductive rumination. Right, I mean you're just being proactive
Speaker 2: about it. Well you say adaptive, Yeah, productive adaptive. Same shame.
Speaker 1: Shit.
Speaker 2: Let's have the audience learn how to step away from rumination.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to read some of my favorites from
Speaker 2: your book. Imagine that your rumination thought as a balloon
Speaker 2: you can let go. No, I love.
Speaker 1: That because you're creative.
Speaker 2: What I've used that with you can tell, you can
Speaker 2: tell them.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just guessing. I'm just guess. I can tell
Speaker 1: by the books on your shelf back there. It's interest
Speaker 1: because when I've used that with people have an artistic sentiment.
Speaker 1: They really really resonate to it. That's the one thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: I love the thought balloon. You know, that rumination or
Speaker 1: that worry or that regret. I'm holding onto that balloon
Speaker 1: and now I'm letting it go and I'm seeing it
Speaker 1: float in the sky. It's kind of like this visceral
Speaker 1: feeling of watching your worry go away. It doesn't definitely
Speaker 1: work like that, but it gives you this sort of
Speaker 1: like fluidity and imagery. And I bet you do a
Speaker 1: lot of visual imagery like when you when you think
Speaker 1: of recollect something. When I listen to music, I have
Speaker 1: visual imagery of things that occur.
Speaker 2: That one. You're right, letting go is the opposite of regret.
Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about the letting go.
Speaker 1: Regret is being anchored to the past. And as one
Speaker 1: comedian said, the only reason to live in the past
Speaker 1: is the rent was cheaper. So but you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting thing because regret is holding onto the past,
Speaker 1: and nobody says at the end of their life, what
Speaker 1: I really am happy I did all my life is
Speaker 1: hold on to my regrets. You know, if you think
Speaker 1: about things that annoyed you in the past or that
Speaker 1: upset you in the past, very likely at the time
Speaker 1: you had this intense emotion, you thought this is going
Speaker 1: to go on forever. But today you hardly ever think
Speaker 1: of them and be asked, why do you no longer
Speaker 1: think about what you were worried about when you were
Speaker 1: at Cambridge University or living in London or whatever. Because
Speaker 1: you move past it, you put it in perspective, you
Speaker 1: pursued other positive goals. You're no longer held on to it.
Speaker 1: What are the goals in life? This is a technique
Speaker 1: that I've used with people, is the indifference technique. What
Speaker 1: would be the advantage of being indifferent to your regrets
Speaker 1: right as opposed to actually caring a lot about them
Speaker 1: and having to, you know, having to have a dialogue
Speaker 1: with your regrets and you know, having this voice in
Speaker 1: your head about what an idiot you are from making
Speaker 1: those mistakes. Become indifferent about the mistakes that I made,
Speaker 1: or things that happened in the past, or people treating
Speaker 1: me unfairly. You often think about indifference as like, you know,
Speaker 1: surrendering or being defeated, as opposed to rising above. And
Speaker 1: if you think about the image, because you're an imagery person, Scott,
Speaker 1: you think about the image just like one technique that
Speaker 1: I've used as thinking about yourself as you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're up in a in a balloon, a lighter than
Speaker 1: your balloon. You're up about you know, four thousand feet
Speaker 1: and you're looking down at these events. You know, you're
Speaker 1: up in the balcony looking down, and you know you're
Speaker 1: up in space looking down at the Earth. And so
Speaker 1: you get this sort of this sort of emotional distance,
Speaker 1: this perspective of letting go, and you've let go of
Speaker 1: almost everything because you let it go. You don't even
Speaker 1: realize you let it go.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, let it go. I like that, I really
Speaker 2: do like that. Here's another one of my favorite ones,
Speaker 2: flood yourself with the feared thought, the boredom technique. That one,
Speaker 2: by the way, that was I believe in your anxiety book,
Speaker 2: and that helped me out.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the ultimate indifference, isn't it. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like it's an exposure technique. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the boredom technique with regret could be yes, I made
Speaker 1: a stupid decision that I shouldn't have made. Boy, I
Speaker 1: said it just now, and all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 1: feeling pretty bad. But what if you repeat it slowly
Speaker 1: like a zombie, two or three hundred times every day,
Speaker 1: I made a stupid mistake and I shouldn't have made it.
Speaker 1: You eventually become indifferent to it. It's like it becomes
Speaker 1: white noise. And people are often when I introduce the
Speaker 1: boredom technique, whether it's for worry or jealousy or envy
Speaker 1: or regret, whatever or resentment, they initially think, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's going to make everything worse. You're asking me to
Speaker 1: really repeat my negative thoughts. But if I ask you
Speaker 1: to get on the elevator two hundred times, you might
Speaker 1: initially be anxious. But after the tenth time, you say, Bob,
Speaker 1: I think I got this. I think I understand that
Speaker 1: I know what exposure is. I don't need the extra
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty exposure.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love it. Some comedians say that, you know,
Speaker 2: they would go in elevators and make terrible jokes and
Speaker 2: just get over the fear of rejection, get the fear
Speaker 2: of Yeah, just what they say. If you can get
Speaker 2: over the fear of rejection, you you got it me exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, Scott, When I was in college, I had
Speaker 1: a friend on that which is surprising that I had
Speaker 1: a friend, but I had a friend on the faculty. Really,
Speaker 1: I had a friend on the faculty, this guy Danny Daniels,
Speaker 1: who I was a philosopher. Anyway, So I was talking
Speaker 1: with Danny once and I said, you know, Danny, there's
Speaker 1: this guy who in my college who I think he
Speaker 1: doesn't like me, and I don't understand because I have
Speaker 1: so many different kinds of friends. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of my narcissism. Everybody should like me. No
Speaker 1: matter how likable you are, They're going to be a
Speaker 1: group of people somewhere in California or New York. You're
Speaker 1: going to hate your guts. So Danny said to me
Speaker 1: something that was really profound in my mind. He said,
Speaker 1: no matter what you do, they're going to be people
Speaker 1: who don't like you. And so one way of kind
Speaker 1: of an acceptance piece. No matter what you say, what
Speaker 1: you write, what lecture you give, or workshop you do,
Speaker 1: there are going to be some people who don't like it.
Speaker 1: It just comes with the territory. And the question is
Speaker 1: do you need everybody to like it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point. Do you need that
Speaker 2: for your own self esteem? Some people do.
Speaker 1: It's like the idea that somehow I need this is
Speaker 1: kind of a maximizing need for approval. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if you can accept this is kind of like an
Speaker 1: ancient Aristotelian approach to virtue. If you act according to
Speaker 1: your values, to what you think is the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. If you act according to those values, that
Speaker 1: should direct you what you do and what you say,
Speaker 1: not the approval you get. So if you're if you're
Speaker 1: among a lot of racists. You know, you might get
Speaker 1: a lot of approval by making racist comments, but you're
Speaker 1: not acting according to your values.
Speaker 2: I hear you. Great point, Great point. I want to
Speaker 2: circle back to something I meant to ask you. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to reconcile the notion of let it go with
Speaker 2: I had Dan Pink on this podcast recently and he
Speaker 2: said the only ones who let go of regret are
Speaker 2: psychopaths or little children. I wanted to get your thoughts
Speaker 2: about that. Like it sounds like, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: you're saying like, well, actually, regret can be quite powerful
Speaker 2: in our lives, you know, can serve a useful function
Speaker 2: when it's productive, and the other hand, you're saying kind
Speaker 2: of let it go, like, don't even worry about regrets.
Speaker 2: So this is my little nuanced question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a I have a whole chapter on guilt.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, you say guilt is unfinished. Forgiveness is what
Speaker 2: you say? Love that?
Speaker 1: So you know, gilt. It's an interesting thing because one
Speaker 1: of the ways I think we grow in character is
Speaker 1: by what I would call productive guilt. And again, you
Speaker 1: have to think why did guilt evolve? I mean, why
Speaker 1: is it every society has guilt and shame. I mean
Speaker 1: guilt and shame are emotions that maintain social cohesion. They
Speaker 1: maintain the tribe, they maintained the group, they maintain trust,
Speaker 1: and so absolutely people who are in Like if you
Speaker 1: were looking for a life partner and somebody said, you know, gee,
Speaker 1: I really like you, Scott, but I have to tell
Speaker 1: you I have no capacity for regret, shame or guilt,
Speaker 1: so can we pursue a lifelong relationship? You would want
Speaker 1: to run the other way?
Speaker 2: No, Well, what if they said I have no capacity
Speaker 2: for shame, guilt, and what was the third one? You said? Regret, regret,
Speaker 2: but I have capacity for love? Would I run the
Speaker 2: other way?
Speaker 1: I wouldn't believe them because I think the love, the
Speaker 1: love my wife, is to have capacity for being guilty,
Speaker 1: feeling guilty for something I've said that I think is wrong,
Speaker 1: and I think that that doesn't mean you feel stuck
Speaker 1: in the guilt. It's kind of like my experience with
Speaker 1: the concierge at the hotel that I felt guilty. I
Speaker 1: felt this is not the kind of person I want
Speaker 1: to be. I want to apologize, even if she doesn't
Speaker 1: forgive me. I want to do my part to try
Speaker 1: to make an effort to right the wrong. So I
Speaker 1: think the way thinking about regret is to have regret
Speaker 1: about the right things to the right degree in the
Speaker 1: right way, and very much like Aristotle's view of virtue.
Speaker 1: If we think about guilt, what we know is that
Speaker 1: people who are good at expressing the sincere apology are
Speaker 1: more likely to be trusted in the future, and people
Speaker 1: who other people in the work environment know are capable
Speaker 1: of guilt are viewed as more trustworthy in the work environment.
Speaker 1: So productive guilt is looking at your view and saying,
Speaker 1: is this the kind of person I want to be?
Speaker 1: What I feel okay if somebody treated me this way,
Speaker 1: and then trying to learn from that experience and make
Speaker 1: a change. In other words, this is the guilt is
Speaker 1: the first step, and the next step is self correction
Speaker 1: and growth and coming to terms with making yourself a
Speaker 1: better person if possible, making amends, making apologies if you can,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately forgiving yourself. That's not an example. That
Speaker 1: would not be an example of the balloon. That would
Speaker 1: be an example of bringing the balloon down and talking
Speaker 1: to the balloon and saying, you know something, I have
Speaker 1: to make an apology here.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, I really do love that that phrase guilt
Speaker 2: is unfinished forgetting.
Speaker 1: The guilt is regret on steroids too. It's like you're
Speaker 1: full of good quotes.
Speaker 2: You're like, let me give you an even better one. Well,
Speaker 2: let's end here today with the cheekiness where you talk
Speaker 2: about the eight habits of highly regretful people.
Speaker 1: A couple of.
Speaker 2: Things you say like well, dwell, and all the negatives
Speaker 2: that you experience and discount all the positives. Never accept
Speaker 2: great offs when considering a choice, and you need to
Speaker 2: know everything for sure before deciding. So let's just end
Speaker 2: on that cheeky noted so that just people can also
Speaker 2: just kind of laugh at themselves a little bit, because
Speaker 2: I think that people just take you know, maybe that's
Speaker 2: the maximizers that take themselves too seriously. Maybe this satisfizers
Speaker 2: have a little bit more of a sense of humor
Speaker 2: about the sort of inevitable and inevitable imperfections of being human.
Speaker 1: Right, if you take yourself too seriously, life is going
Speaker 1: to have a last laugh on you.
Speaker 2: So, oh my god, that's a great quote. Look at you.
Speaker 1: I should have been advertising, that's the psychology thing.
Speaker 2: Or Hallmark cards. Look I enjoyed so much shying with
Speaker 2: you today. I really appreciate you coming back in the show,
Speaker 2: and I'm glad that we get you on here periodically
Speaker 2: when you get new book.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I'm a big admirer of work and really appreciate
Speaker 2: what you've done. Why don't we dedicate this episode to
Speaker 2: the memory of Aaron Beck?
Speaker 1: Oh God, thank you? Yeah. Tim Beck.
Speaker 2: I think he's kind of a mutual friend of our hims.
Speaker 1: His birthday would have been a few days ago. Remarkable person.
Speaker 1: And uh so much of what I do, you know,
Speaker 1: is based on you know, the the inspiration and and
Speaker 1: the knowledge and simply the way of inquiring that Tim
Speaker 1: Beck you know, gave me, uh over the years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's dedicate this in his memory. And and you're
Speaker 2: always welcome back on the show.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a funny anecdote before we leave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was at a meeting at at Beck's apartment
Speaker 1: about I don't know, seven years ago, and he and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, uh, you know, the Dalai Lama
Speaker 1: contacted me and and because I'm not able to travel
Speaker 1: because he was in a wheelchair, Uh, the Dalai Lama
Speaker 1: said he would come and visit me. In Philadelphia, and
Speaker 1: he sat right in that chair right there, and uh
Speaker 1: and then and then Tim said, well, and his people said,
Speaker 1: the Dalai lama has a has requests about the what
Speaker 1: he wants. And it was like an extensive list of
Speaker 1: foods that he wanted, you know, soup and so in course,
Speaker 1: dessert and all that. And I said, well, he sounds
Speaker 1: like a very hungry lama, doesn't it. He does have
Speaker 1: a great sense of you know, this is kind of
Speaker 1: a gratitude thing about, you know, looking back on your
Speaker 1: life and having access to memories of people who may
Speaker 1: be gone that we learned from and we loved. And
Speaker 1: I think that's that's part of that's the kind of
Speaker 1: part and that some people say live in the present moment.
Speaker 1: I think, try to live in all the moments in
Speaker 1: your life. Try to try to gain from. I grew
Speaker 1: up very poor, and I never want to forget growing
Speaker 1: up poor because it allows me to appreciate what I have.
Speaker 1: It allows me to understand other people are struggling. So
Speaker 1: it's it's good to be connected to people who gave
Speaker 1: you a lot who are no longer here.
Speaker 2: Let's leave on that note. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: being on the show just very extraordinary attribution to the
Speaker 2: field of psychology.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 2: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 2: at thusychology podcast dot com 'or on our YouTube page
Speaker 2: The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of
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Speaker 2: want to check that out. Thanks for being such a
Speaker 2: great supporter of the show, and tune in next time
Speaker 2: for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.