Speaker 1: Pushkin, I'm going through a breakup right now, and so
Speaker 1: that's there's regret in choosing to be together, and there's
Speaker 1: regret and also choosing to be a part. We all
Speaker 1: replay dumb things we did in the past. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of my regrets comes from like school work.
Speaker 1: Every school year comes around and I'm like, this year,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do better, and then like I don't
Speaker 1: or friend about the things we didn't do. I was
Speaker 1: afraid to come out for a long time to my parents.
Speaker 1: It was that fear of rejection, regardless of whether they
Speaker 1: would have really rejected me. I was like hiding myself
Speaker 1: for two other people. And that is something that I
Speaker 1: regret a lot from time to time. Regret sets up
Speaker 1: shop in all our heads. It makes us wonder about
Speaker 1: what we could, should or would have done differently. I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of mistakes, like I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of money, I bade for a lot of people. I
Speaker 1: got used by a lot of people, and I did
Speaker 1: not know my words. Our feelings of regret mostly kind
Speaker 1: of suck. We can experience it as a mild pang,
Speaker 1: a sort of throbbing emotional toothache, but sometimes the anguish
Speaker 1: of regret reduces us to tears or saddles us with
Speaker 1: grief that lasts a lifetime. I was in a relationship
Speaker 1: and it was very toxic. I should have put my
Speaker 1: foot down away earlier, because now it kind of affects
Speaker 1: me to this day, and it's just like then. I
Speaker 1: could have prevented all of these feelings from happening if
Speaker 1: I just would have left it in the beginning. And
Speaker 1: so it's natural to fantasize about a life without this
Speaker 1: painful emotion, to strive to be without the burn that
Speaker 1: comes from looking back. I mean, who needs regrets? Hashtag
Speaker 1: no regrets. I do not believe in regrets or have
Speaker 1: any regrets of my life. My mistakes are me. But
Speaker 1: it's the whole no regrets thing, really right? I mean,
Speaker 1: could it be possible that embracing regret is the key
Speaker 1: to living a better, more and even a happier life.
Speaker 1: Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to
Speaker 1: be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What
Speaker 1: if our minds are lying to us, leading us away
Speaker 1: from what will really make us happy. The good news
Speaker 1: is that understanding the science of the mind can poin
Speaker 1: us all back in the right direction. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab with me, doctor Laurie Santos. Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: Malcolm Glabo. Here's my regret. When I graduated from college,
Speaker 1: I had this idea that I would spend a year
Speaker 1: in Jamaica getting a graduate degree at the University of
Speaker 1: West Indies. My instinct was that my early twenties with
Speaker 1: a perfect moment to broaden my horizons, experience a new
Speaker 1: culture and take a risk. Instead, I moved to Indiana.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, I blew it. Life is full of choices,
Speaker 1: forks in the road where we have to pick one
Speaker 1: path or the other. Sometimes we make those decisions under
Speaker 1: pressure or with incomplete information, or at times we're not
Speaker 1: our calmest, most rational selves. And sometimes once we begin
Speaker 1: to regret the path we've taken, it's too late to
Speaker 1: turn around. That's how it was for author and illustrator
Speaker 1: Liz Vassiline is the child of European immigrants. Liz spend
Speaker 1: a lot of her youth traveling back and forth to
Speaker 1: visit relatives. I just have a lot of happy childhood
Speaker 1: memories there, and it felt like a link to this
Speaker 1: bigger family that I don't feel that I have at
Speaker 1: the US, but with families, it's not always vacations and
Speaker 1: holiday get togethers. There are sometimes emergencies and bereavements. So
Speaker 1: my grandmother died when I was in my early twenties,
Speaker 1: and my mom, who rarely shows emotion or asks for much,
Speaker 1: asked me to go with her to pack up the house.
Speaker 1: Liz dropped everything right, I mean, she wasn't going to
Speaker 1: let down her mom at the very moment she needed
Speaker 1: her presence and support the most. And I said no.
Speaker 1: Liz had just landed a great new consulting job, a
Speaker 1: position she'd badly wanted and had worked hard to win.
Speaker 1: I was like, I have so much going on at work.
Speaker 1: I just can't take two weeks off for an international trip.
Speaker 1: It's just too much for me to take on right now.
Speaker 1: And so Lizza's mom flew across the Atlantic to deal
Speaker 1: with the death of her mother all alone. Decades later,
Speaker 1: that decision still causes Liz tremendous anguish, Like even now,
Speaker 1: I'm like starting to get tears in my eyes because
Speaker 1: I think of my mom alone on this eight hour
Speaker 1: plane ride to go pack up, like her childhood and
Speaker 1: my childhood and our link to our family, though painful
Speaker 1: regrets like these are a creative spur for Liz. Along
Speaker 1: with author Mollys Duffy, she's part of a duo non
Speaker 1: online as Lizz and Molly. They're responsible for a popular
Speaker 1: Instagram feed of illustrations that show how we can deal
Speaker 1: with all kinds of painful feelings, the types of things
Speaker 1: that we too often keep to ourselves. There's just so much,
Speaker 1: especially when we talk about big feelings that all of
Speaker 1: us are experiencing on a daily basis that we don't
Speaker 1: share with people. I'm a huge fan of Lizz and
Speaker 1: Molly's work. I share their simple yet powerful cartoons with
Speaker 1: my students all the time. They're not just poignant, clever
Speaker 1: and funny, they also include lots of science backtips for
Speaker 1: dealing with those big feelings. So you can imagine my
Speaker 1: excitement when I heard that the duo we're also putting
Speaker 1: out a new book. It's called Big Feelings, How to
Speaker 1: Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. The book gives
Speaker 1: advice for navigating seven of our most painful negative emotions.
Speaker 1: The usual emotional culprits things like sadness, anger, and even burnout,
Speaker 1: but there's also one that doesn't get as much attention
Speaker 1: you guessed it. Regret research shows that it's one of
Speaker 1: the most common emotions that people feel. I think it's
Speaker 1: after love or something like that. Some studies estimate that
Speaker 1: over ninety percent of people report having severe regret about
Speaker 1: some decision they've made in their lives. Over ninety percent
Speaker 1: of people. That's basically everyone. And yet one of the
Speaker 1: misconceptions about regret is that it's actually even possible for
Speaker 1: us to live that hashtag no regrets life. It's just
Speaker 1: a completely inaccurate view of the world. There is no
Speaker 1: life in which you will have no regrets. A second
Speaker 1: misconception goes something like this, Okay, so maybe I can't
Speaker 1: have a perfectly hashtag no regrets existence, but I'd definitely
Speaker 1: be able to have a hashtag mostly no regrets life
Speaker 1: if only I could get everything I want. We assume
Speaker 1: that if we had the perfect job, in a swanky
Speaker 1: house and an amazing partner, we'd never experience that painful
Speaker 1: twinge of what if. But this too, is a spot
Speaker 1: where our minds are lying to us, and part of
Speaker 1: that is because you can only choose one life, even
Speaker 1: if your current life path is mostly awesome. There's probably
Speaker 1: something great out there in the universe that you're not
Speaker 1: going to get a chance to experience another fork in
Speaker 1: the road you could have chosen but didn't. And sometimes
Speaker 1: we can't help but regret not taking it. And we
Speaker 1: also have a tendency to put on rose colored glasses
Speaker 1: when we consider that alternate path, especially in moments when
Speaker 1: our current reality is a little harder. I feel like
Speaker 1: we have a lot to learn about regret, so I
Speaker 1: decided to call in an expert. My name is Daniel Pink.
Speaker 1: I'm the author of the Power of Regret, How looking
Speaker 1: backward Moves Us forward. Daniel developed what he calls the
Speaker 1: World Regret Survey, which collected the experiences of tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of people for more than a hundred countries. It's
Speaker 1: one of the largest databases of regrets ever. With all
Speaker 1: that data to draw on, I was hoping that Daniel
Speaker 1: could give us a bit of a crash course on regret,
Speaker 1: starting with a definition. I think one way to start
Speaker 1: is that a regret is an emotion, and is an
Speaker 1: emotion that makes us feel bad, and it's a motion
Speaker 1: that arises from I think some really fascinating and interesting
Speaker 1: powers of our brain. Regret requires a few complicated and
Speaker 1: possibly unique cognitive abilities. The first of these is the
Speaker 1: ability to accept blame. Unlike other negative emotions, like say, disappointment,
Speaker 1: regret requires agency. We can only regret stuff that we caused.
Speaker 1: You experience a regret because it's your fault. Regret also
Speaker 1: requires the capacity to time travel. Regret forces us to
Speaker 1: hop in a mental time machine and travel back to
Speaker 1: some remembered event of the past, and once we get there,
Speaker 1: our brains engage in a third impressive cognitive feat what
Speaker 1: Daniel calls fabulism. We imagine making a different decision than
Speaker 1: we actually made. And then what's even more crazy is
Speaker 1: that we negate that experience. We get back in our
Speaker 1: time machine. We arrived back in the present, and we
Speaker 1: now see a present that has reconfigured because of this
Speaker 1: decision that we've undone in the past. And that's the
Speaker 1: final cognitive superpower we engage in when feeling regret. What's
Speaker 1: known as counterfactual thinking. We create a new, completely imaginary
Speaker 1: timeline that runs counter to the facts. And there are
Speaker 1: two kinds of counterfactual thinking. One of them is known
Speaker 1: as a downward counterfactual, So that is we imagine how
Speaker 1: things could have been worse. Downward counterfactuals often involved the
Speaker 1: phrase well at least, So let's say you miss your
Speaker 1: morning flight because you spent too long getting ready, You
Speaker 1: might engage in a downward counterfactual and say things like, well,
Speaker 1: at least there was a later flight, or well, at
Speaker 1: least I didn't miss my Downward counterfactuals help us remember
Speaker 1: that it could have been worse. They usually make us
Speaker 1: feel better, but less hopefully. We also engage in upward counterfactuals,
Speaker 1: which is got you imagine things could have been better.
Speaker 1: Upward counterfactuals make us say, if only, if only I
Speaker 1: had spent a year in Jamaica, if only I had
Speaker 1: helped my mom when she needed me, if only I
Speaker 1: had done this thing or that thing differently, then everything
Speaker 1: now would be so much better. I kind of regret
Speaker 1: going to college. I might have like ended up, I
Speaker 1: don't know, working on a flower farm. Upward counterfactuals convince
Speaker 1: us that we've totally screwed things up. They kind of
Speaker 1: make us feel like crap, and sadly they also dominate
Speaker 1: our thoughts because I'm a lawyer, but it would have
Speaker 1: been nice to find something that I'm passionate about an actress,
Speaker 1: a science teacher, or I'm going to be a doctor
Speaker 1: because I love health, nutrition kind of stuff. Researchers have
Speaker 1: looked at how often we use each of these two
Speaker 1: kinds of count factuals, those painful if only counterfactuals. They
Speaker 1: beat out the nicer feeling of at least counterfactuals more
Speaker 1: than eighty percent of the time. We are biased, on
Speaker 1: this case toward the negative. We're a biased toward the
Speaker 1: upward counterfactual, toward the if onlies. I think the interesting
Speaker 1: thing here, as we try to sort out the puzzle is,
Speaker 1: you know, why would we do that? Why would we
Speaker 1: be prone to do something that makes us feel worse?
Speaker 1: And so there must be something about this that confers
Speaker 1: a benefit. There must be something about this that is adaptive.
Speaker 1: So becoming happier must involve banishing those negative if onlies. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: Daniel argues that wouldn't be such a smart thing to do.
Speaker 1: I'm all for positivity, right, I'm all for positive emotions.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. I don't want to have only
Speaker 1: positive emotions because negative emotions serve a function. I think
Speaker 1: that no regrets. The philosophy of no regrets. That you
Speaker 1: should never look backward, you should always look forward, never
Speaker 1: be negative, always be positive is a profoundly bad idea.
Speaker 1: I think it is an unhealthy recipe for living. I
Speaker 1: think what we have to do is actually use our
Speaker 1: regrets as information, as signal, as data, not ignore them,
Speaker 1: not wallowing them, but use them to help clarify what
Speaker 1: we value and instruct us on how to live better.
Speaker 1: When we get back from the break, we'll explore just
Speaker 1: how we can use these if onlies to live a
Speaker 1: better life. We'll see that regret can be a critical
Speaker 1: signpost for the version of ourselves that we most want
Speaker 1: to be, and we'll see that if we better understand
Speaker 1: that ideal self, we can start to use this painful
Speaker 1: emotion to live a healthier, happier and more authentic life.
Speaker 1: That being a lab We'll be right back. I'm Maya Shunker,
Speaker 1: host of a slight change of Plans. When I was
Speaker 1: around eleven years old, at summer music camp, I had
Speaker 1: the biggest crush on another violinist, Shinsaka Sato. He was cute,
Speaker 1: a total violent prodigy, and was really funny too. I
Speaker 1: thought maybe he liked me as well, but I could
Speaker 1: never tell for sure. One day, a mutual friend of
Speaker 1: ours just asked me, point blank, Hey, do you like Shinseka.
Speaker 1: I think he might like you. Shinseka was an ear shot,
Speaker 1: and I remember seeing him lightly smile in response to
Speaker 1: her question. But even with that affirmation, I was too
Speaker 1: embarrassed and said no, he could have been my summer boyfriend.
Speaker 1: That I was too much of a wimp, and it
Speaker 1: took me until I was nineteen to actually have my
Speaker 1: first boyfriend. How different things could have been for me.
Speaker 1: Regrets can feel so troubling that we'd move mountains to
Speaker 1: change things, like I would give a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: of money to go back and make a different decision.
Speaker 1: Liz Fossiline still hurts when she reflects on her grandmother's
Speaker 1: death and not being there for her grieving mother, but
Speaker 1: Liz argues that experiencing the painful, big feelings that come
Speaker 1: with regret have helped her to learn what really matters
Speaker 1: in life, remembering how painful it was, or it wasn't
Speaker 1: just regret. It was pain, it was shame, it was guilt,
Speaker 1: It was all these sort of really really thorny, difficult
Speaker 1: feelings that were welling inside me. But that really really
Speaker 1: clarified the decisions I wanted to make going forward. Liz
Speaker 1: tackled this idea in a recent Liz and Molly comic
Speaker 1: on Instagram. In it, a tiny, dejected looking figure looks
Speaker 1: regretfully back into the past, but another similar figure turns
Speaker 1: to the future and asks, what if I do things
Speaker 1: differently from now on. Lizz and Molly then quote the
Speaker 1: author Augustin Burrows, to live in regret and change nothing
Speaker 1: else in your life is to miss the entire point,
Speaker 1: and the science shows that this is one of the
Speaker 1: big benefits of being a creature that can feel regret.
Speaker 1: Our regrets can help us to better understand the kind
Speaker 1: of people we want to be, even if we're not
Speaker 1: currently living up to those standards. Just as our brains
Speaker 1: are good at simulating imaginary counterfactual situations, say asking out
Speaker 1: that person we liked but never spoke to we're going
Speaker 1: to graduate school in the Caribbean rather than working in Indiana,
Speaker 1: so too can our brains simulate imaginary counterfactual versions of ourselves.
Speaker 1: When I'm having a tough day as a professor, I
Speaker 1: might simulate a version of Laurie who's an astronaut or
Speaker 1: a veterinarian or a beach bum. Perhaps more usefully, I
Speaker 1: can also simulate a better version of Laurie, who doesn't
Speaker 1: skip her workouts, who never spends too much time on
Speaker 1: social media, and who always gets enough sleep. Research has
Speaker 1: found that paying attention to the different kinds of better
Speaker 1: selves we simulate can help us to make choices that
Speaker 1: could ultimately make us happier. Back in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Columbia University psychologist Tory Higgins proposed an idea he called
Speaker 1: self discrepancy theory. It started from the observation that people
Speaker 1: tend to compare their real, actual self to two very
Speaker 1: different kinds of model selves. The first is what he
Speaker 1: called the ideal self. Your ideal self is the truest,
Speaker 1: most authentic version of you. Ideal you ignores what society
Speaker 1: says and fearlessly shoots for all your hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
Speaker 1: Liz knew exactly what her ideal self wanted. So this
Speaker 1: is the career that makes you come alive, versus the
Speaker 1: career that you feel pressured to pursue. But we also
Speaker 1: fanticize about a second counterfactual self, the aught self. The
Speaker 1: aught self is all about duty, obligation and doing what's
Speaker 1: expected of you. So for me, that is being a doctor.
Speaker 1: My parents were both immigrants, academics, it was very much
Speaker 1: like doctor banker, lawyer. That is success. My own aut
Speaker 1: self is a me that never takes a break. That
Speaker 1: Laurie is a perfectionist who is a perfect body and
Speaker 1: great clothes and a flawlessly clean house. But ideal Laurie
Speaker 1: has a completely different set of aspirations. Ideal Laurie does
Speaker 1: want to do good work in the world, but she
Speaker 1: also wants to take care of herself and live her dreams.
Speaker 1: And the aught self an ideal self sometimes require you
Speaker 1: to pick two very different paths. When Lizza's grandmother died
Speaker 1: far away across the ocean, ideal is an aut Liz
Speaker 1: clashed about what to do next. Lizza's ideal self would
Speaker 1: have hands down risk upsetting her new bosses to help
Speaker 1: her mom in that moment of grief. The ideal self
Speaker 1: is someone who shows up for the people that I
Speaker 1: care about in the moments that really matter. But her
Speaker 1: self went out. Rather than following her heart and going
Speaker 1: to the airport, she headed to the office. I really
Speaker 1: felt like I could not fail, especially early on in
Speaker 1: this job, otherwise it would ruin my career forever. And
Speaker 1: looking back now, I totally understand that that was ridiculous,
Speaker 1: catastrophic thinking. And there are many examples of this in
Speaker 1: my early twenty like I cannot believe some of the
Speaker 1: things I did, Like the time Liz passed out and
Speaker 1: spent the night in the hospital. The next morning, her
Speaker 1: aut self convinced her that she needed to go to
Speaker 1: work anyway. And I looked terrible, and my boss asked
Speaker 1: what had happened, and I briefly mentioned that I had
Speaker 1: been in the er, and he just stared at me
Speaker 1: and was like, you need to go home. It's not
Speaker 1: okay that you are here. But again it was a
Speaker 1: similar compulsion of like I have to be present, I
Speaker 1: have to be showing up. So, given we have these
Speaker 1: two different imaginary versions of ourselves on our shoulders, each
Speaker 1: screaming different things, which one should we listen to? Well,
Speaker 1: Tory Higgins found that ignoring either of these voices doesn't
Speaker 1: feel great in the short term. If Liz had flown
Speaker 1: to Europe, she'd probably have worried about her job as
Speaker 1: soon as the airplane left the tarmac. But research shows
Speaker 1: that When it comes to long term regrets, the severe
Speaker 1: kind that give us anguish years after the fact, they're
Speaker 1: much more likely to stem from ignoring the person we
Speaker 1: ideally want to be. If you pursue the path that
Speaker 1: brings you closer to your ideal self, you tend to
Speaker 1: be happier. But if confronted with, hey, this is the
Speaker 1: job that really sings to my soul versus this is
Speaker 1: the job that everyone has expected me to take, but
Speaker 1: the thought of taking it actually fills me with a
Speaker 1: deep existential dread. You should go with the ideal self job.
Speaker 1: It may sound grim, but people at the very end
Speaker 1: of life bear out this observation. Palliative nurse Brawny Ware
Speaker 1: had years of experience living with patients in their final weeks,
Speaker 1: and she repeatedly witnessed the pain and anguish of their regrets.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't wish it on anyone, she once said. Mood
Speaker 1: by their stories and hopeful to share the wisdom she'd
Speaker 1: gain from her patients, she wrote a best selling book
Speaker 1: called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. All of
Speaker 1: the Top five regrets where shares in her book involved
Speaker 1: disappointing the ideal self rather than the odd self, the
Speaker 1: dying regret not being emotionally available to their friends and
Speaker 1: loved ones, being too devoted to proving themselves at work,
Speaker 1: and caring too much about what other people think. Social
Speaker 1: psychologist Tom Gillowitch and Shy David I did a more
Speaker 1: empirically based survey of long term regrets. They studied a
Speaker 1: very different cohort of people, not the terminally ill, but
Speaker 1: everyone from college students to residence in an old age home.
Speaker 1: People's regrets about not living up to the person they
Speaker 1: ideally wanted to be far outnumbered their regrets about not
Speaker 1: living up to what they ought to do to please bosses, neighbors,
Speaker 1: or the wider society. Findings like these have shaped how
Speaker 1: Liz now listens to her two different counterfectual selves. One
Speaker 1: I'm faced with something, and when I have this little
Speaker 1: voice within me that says like, well, but work is
Speaker 1: really busy this week, I'm like, no, remember the pain
Speaker 1: that you're trying to avoid in the future. Just put
Speaker 1: that sort of perfectionist at self to the side and
Speaker 1: go show up, because that's what you're going to remember
Speaker 1: in ten years. I truly do not know what I
Speaker 1: was doing at work that week. I can tell you
Speaker 1: nothing about the project I was working on about how
Speaker 1: it turned out. It just wasn't as important in the
Speaker 1: long run. Lizz is now convinced that past regrets are
Speaker 1: great learning points. That recent Lizzen Molly cartoon I mentioned
Speaker 1: also included an important quote. Regrets can be burned as fuel,
Speaker 1: but regrets burn hot. And we can only become better
Speaker 1: people if we're committed to directly embracing our regrets and
Speaker 1: the pain they cause. Because I think when we do that,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence that it is a powerfully
Speaker 1: transformative emotion. The Happiness Lab will be right back. I'm
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein. I host a podcast called What's Your Problem?
Speaker 1: And when I was in my twenties, I regretted pretty
Speaker 1: much everything all the time. It got to the point
Speaker 1: where anytime I had to make a big decision, I
Speaker 1: would be paralyzed by the fear that I would regret
Speaker 1: whatever choice I made. It was like preregret pregret. Eventually,
Speaker 1: I mostly got past it. I came to trust myself more,
Speaker 1: feel better about my decisions. Regret, thankfully is no longer
Speaker 1: a big part of my life, but I guess I
Speaker 1: do still regret a little that I spent so many
Speaker 1: years of my life living in fear of regret. One
Speaker 1: of the interesting things about regret is that people want
Speaker 1: the instruction that comes from regret. They just don't want
Speaker 1: a bad feeling. And that's not the offer that's on
Speaker 1: the table here. If we can tough out the discomfort,
Speaker 1: Author Daniel Pink thinks we can learn valuable lessons from
Speaker 1: our regrets if we get past this kind of fog
Speaker 1: machine that we should never have regrets, that we should
Speaker 1: always be positive. We can look at this emotion and
Speaker 1: say it's telling us something, it's teaching us something, And
Speaker 1: if we actually think about our regrets differently, we can
Speaker 1: enlist them to lead a better, more fulfilling, more satisfying life.
Speaker 1: Daniel's extensive survey of regrets around the world taught him
Speaker 1: that the only way to learn from this painful emotion
Speaker 1: is to let ourselves feel it. As much as we'd
Speaker 1: like to, we can't fast forward through the painful parts
Speaker 1: of our regrets. The reason they make us do better
Speaker 1: is because they make us feel worse, and once you
Speaker 1: experience the pain, you can commit to doing better. But
Speaker 1: how Daniel says, the first step is determining the specific
Speaker 1: category of regret you're dealing with. So there's an interesting
Speaker 1: distinction in the architecture of regret, which is a distinction
Speaker 1: between action regrets and inaction regrets, regrets about what we
Speaker 1: did and regrets about what we didn't do. So let's
Speaker 1: take action regrets regrets about what I did. Those are
Speaker 1: things that you can undo. When I think of such situations,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of the advice of life coach Valerie Burton,
Speaker 1: who I spoke to for previous episode about dealing with guilt.
Speaker 1: Valerie said that the first steps to dealing with our
Speaker 1: action regrets are to admit what we've done, assess the
Speaker 1: damage done, apologize for our actions, and then a tone
Speaker 1: as best we can. So if you regret saying something
Speaker 1: mean to a friend, you should apologize. If you carelessly
Speaker 1: broke your work buddy's favorite mug, you should buy them
Speaker 1: a new one. Undoing doesn't mean erasing what you did,
Speaker 1: but you could acknowledge your actions and make amends for
Speaker 1: the damage at least a bit. But if the regret
Speaker 1: you're experiencing stems from an inaction something you didn't do yet,
Speaker 1: then the solution is also clear. If possible, you should
Speaker 1: do the thing you haven't gotten around to doing yet.
Speaker 1: As the old saying goes, the best time to plant
Speaker 1: a tree was twenty years ago, but the second best
Speaker 1: time is now. Daniel's survey results demonstrated the importance of
Speaker 1: fixing inactions as soon as possible. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: domains in which Daniel observed the painful consequences of inaction
Speaker 1: regrets was in our social relationships, which are if only
Speaker 1: I'd reached out, And the typical pattern was a relationship
Speaker 1: comes apart, usually in very very undramatic ways. It's like
Speaker 1: there's not yelling and screaming, and it was just like
Speaker 1: things drift apart. Your relationship drifts apart. And then what
Speaker 1: happens is that one person wants to reach out and
Speaker 1: they say, ah, it's going to be really awkward if
Speaker 1: I reach out, and the other side's not going to care,
Speaker 1: so they don't. Then they wait a few more years
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, now it's going to be even
Speaker 1: more awkward and they're going to care even less, so
Speaker 1: they don't. And so people are making a I think
Speaker 1: a pretty profound misjudgment. They say it's going to be
Speaker 1: awkward and it turns out to be way less awkward
Speaker 1: than they think, and they say the other side's not
Speaker 1: going to care, and the other side almost always cares.
Speaker 1: If you are at a juncture where you're wondering should
Speaker 1: I reach out or should I not reach out? To
Speaker 1: my mind, being at that juncture has answered the question.
Speaker 1: Always reach out. And I think it's very clear when
Speaker 1: we look prospectively that if you don't reach out, you're
Speaker 1: going to regret it. And I have too many stories
Speaker 1: of people who didn't reach out and then it was
Speaker 1: too late because somebody passed away. But you might be
Speaker 1: left asking how can we deal with regrets that we
Speaker 1: can't fix those hurts that we cause to people who
Speaker 1: are no longer with us, or some stranger we hurt,
Speaker 1: or mistakes that we can't undo, or cases where enough
Speaker 1: time has passed that we simply can't complete the actions
Speaker 1: we failed to do before. Daniel argues that situations like
Speaker 1: these require changes in how we think. We first need
Speaker 1: to normalize the fact that we messed up and commit
Speaker 1: to not beating ourselves up over it. One of the
Speaker 1: most important things that you can do when you screw
Speaker 1: up is treat yourself with self compassion, treat yourself with
Speaker 1: kindness rather than contempt, recognize that your mistakes are part
Speaker 1: of the human condition. And when engaging in this more
Speaker 1: compassionate self talk, we can also use the power of
Speaker 1: specific words to better see the lessons that come from
Speaker 1: our mistakes, like, for example, harnessing that less painful counterfactual
Speaker 1: phrase that allows us to feel better at least as
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. You can least them, you can
Speaker 1: find the silver lining, you can do that downward counter factual.
Speaker 1: Liz Fossiline agrees that using new words in our self
Speaker 1: talk can be a valuable way to learn about possible
Speaker 1: silver linings. One thing that I've found really valuable is
Speaker 1: replacing the phrase should have with what if? So instant
Speaker 1: my case, like I should have gone with my mom
Speaker 1: and gotten on that plane, changing it and saying like, well,
Speaker 1: what if the next time I do get on the plane.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a quick phrasing shift that allows us
Speaker 1: to both give ourselves grace but then shift more into
Speaker 1: this mindset of what could the future look like if
Speaker 1: I learned from this past experience. Another effective, although somewhat counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: strategy involves sharing your regrets more broadly, we assume that
Speaker 1: talking about our mistakes will feel shameful or embarrassing, but
Speaker 1: the science shows that admitting your regrets, either to a
Speaker 1: close confidant or to the pages of written journal, can
Speaker 1: make you feel better. In one study, researchers had subjects
Speaker 1: talk about their regrets on a tape recorder for fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes a day. After four weeks, participants report at higher
Speaker 1: levels of life satisfaction and better overall mental well being.
Speaker 1: Daniel argues that this works because talking about our regrets
Speaker 1: can make them more concrete, and that makes them less fearsome,
Speaker 1: and it also begins the sense making process, and that
Speaker 1: sense making process is the final step of harnessing our regrets.
Speaker 1: We're trying to extract a lesson from what we did
Speaker 1: badly in the past so we can do better in
Speaker 1: the future. I don't think it's good enough to simply say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to treat myself with kindness, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write about or disclose it. I think you have to
Speaker 1: go to the next step and say, what did I
Speaker 1: learn from this? What is the lesson that I've derived
Speaker 1: from this, and how do I apply it going forward?
Speaker 1: The sense making process is one of the reasons Liz
Speaker 1: is also keen to share the power of regret. By
Speaker 1: courageously processing her own regrets about not showing up when
Speaker 1: her mother needed her, she's been able to better live
Speaker 1: up to the person she ideally wants to be. And
Speaker 1: so I don't even want to say I'm grateful, because
Speaker 1: that's not quite true, but I do. I try every
Speaker 1: time I'm confronted with a similar situation to make the
Speaker 1: choice that I know is going to lead to less
Speaker 1: long run pain, and that actually aligns more with my values. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Liz had a chance to test that commitment to her
Speaker 1: new ideal self when her father was rushed to the
Speaker 1: hospital and at the time, we didn't, you know, we
Speaker 1: really didn't know if he was going to make it,
Speaker 1: so it was very scary. Liz was living in San
Speaker 1: Francisco at the time. She knew that flying halfway across
Speaker 1: the country to her father's hospital in Chicago at short
Speaker 1: notice and in the middle of the COVID nineteen pandemic
Speaker 1: would be a logistical nightmare. And this time even her
Speaker 1: mother was telling her not to bother making the trek,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, absolutely not, I'm coming. Just
Speaker 1: you know, like pick me up an airport, or I'll
Speaker 1: take a lift or whatever it is. By fully processing
Speaker 1: her previous experience, Liz was sure that, no matter how
Speaker 1: difficult that trip to Chicago was, the anguish of not
Speaker 1: going would be worse. I do not want to arience
Speaker 1: that pain again. And I have learned my lesson that
Speaker 1: I will never ever make that decision. And so Liz
Speaker 1: made the trek and quickly enjoyed the benefits that come
Speaker 1: from being the person you ideally want to be. My
Speaker 1: dad luckily ended up being sort of overall okay, and
Speaker 1: my mom a couple days later it was just like,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're here, and I said, I am too,
Speaker 1: And I absolutely have no regrets around that. We often
Speaker 1: think that in order to be happy, we need to
Speaker 1: shield ourselves from painful emotions, and there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Feeling regret is painful. It's one of the suckiest emotions around.
Speaker 1: But as Daniel Pink put it in his book, it's
Speaker 1: time you started thinking of your regrets not as emotional threats,
Speaker 1: but as opportunities. If there's some past action that makes
Speaker 1: you cringe, fix it didn't take on that big challenge
Speaker 1: your ideal self was pushing for, do it now, And
Speaker 1: if you can't go back and change the past, find
Speaker 1: ways to see those pangs of remorse in a new
Speaker 1: light as a powerful way for your ideal self to
Speaker 1: nudge you in the right direction. And if your ideal
Speaker 1: self wants to avoid at least one future podcast regret,
Speaker 1: then I'd encourage you to come back soon for the
Speaker 1: next episode of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley,
Speaker 1: Emily Anne Vaughan, and Courtney Guerino. Joseph Friedman checked our facts.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing,
Speaker 1: and mastering by Evan Viola. Thanks to everyone who shared
Speaker 1: their regret stories for this episode. Special thanks to Milabelle
Speaker 1: Heather Fame, John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sangler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent,
Speaker 1: Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and Me Doctor Laurie Santos. To find more
Speaker 1: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listened to your podcasts.