Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners, welcome back to our Happiness
Speaker 1: Hot Take series, a whole season in which I call
Speaker 1: out the bad happiness advice that I hear so often
Speaker 1: on the internet. In today's Happiness hot Take, we're going
Speaker 1: back to the Happiness Lab archives to tackle happiness misconception
Speaker 1: that's so common it's even got its own hashtag hashtag
Speaker 1: no regrets, the idea that we should stand by the
Speaker 1: bad decisions we make with confidence, that we should ignore
Speaker 1: all those pangs of remorse that don't feel so hot. Well,
Speaker 1: today's throwback happiness hot take is that no regrets is
Speaker 1: no way to live. And you'll see why in this
Speaker 1: in case you missed it episode, I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I'm going through a breakup right now, and so that's
Speaker 2: there's a regret in choosing to be together, and there's
Speaker 2: regret and also choosing to be a part.
Speaker 1: We all replayed dumb things we did in the past.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of my regrets comes from like
Speaker 3: school work. Every school year comes around and I'm like,
Speaker 3: this year, I'm gonna do better, and then like I don't.
Speaker 1: Or fret about the things we didn't do.
Speaker 3: I was afraid to come out for a long time.
Speaker 3: To my parents, it was that fear of rejection, regardless
Speaker 3: of whether they would have really rejected me. I was
Speaker 3: like hiding myself for two other people. And that is
Speaker 3: something that I regret a lot.
Speaker 1: From time to time. Regret sets up shop in all
Speaker 1: our heads. It makes us wonder about what we could have,
Speaker 1: should have, or would have done differently. I'd done a
Speaker 1: lot of mistakes, like I spent a lot of money,
Speaker 1: I paid for a lot of people. I got used
Speaker 1: by a lot of people, and I did not know
Speaker 1: my worth. Our feelings of regret mostly kind of suck.
Speaker 1: We can experience it as a mild pag a sort
Speaker 1: of throbbing emotional toothache, but sometimes the anguish of regret
Speaker 1: reduces us to tears or saddles us with grief that
Speaker 1: lasts a lifetime.
Speaker 4: I was in a relationship and it was very toxic.
Speaker 4: I should have put my foot down way earlier, because
Speaker 4: now it kind of affects me to this date, and
Speaker 4: it's just like then, I could have prevented all of
Speaker 4: these feelings from happening if I just would have left
Speaker 4: it in the beginning.
Speaker 1: And so it's natural to fantasize about a life without
Speaker 1: this painful emotion, to strive to be without the burn
Speaker 1: that comes from looking back. I mean, who needs regrets?
Speaker 1: Hashtag no regrets.
Speaker 3: I do not believe in regrets or have any regrets
Speaker 3: in my life.
Speaker 2: My mistakes are me.
Speaker 1: But is 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 authentic, 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 point
Speaker 1: us all back in the right direction. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab with me, doctor Laurie Santis.
Speaker 5: Hey, I'm Malcolm Glabo. Here's my regret. When I graduated
Speaker 5: from college, I had this idea that I would spend
Speaker 5: a year in Jamaica getting a graduate degree at the
Speaker 5: University of West Indies. My instinct was that my early
Speaker 5: twenties with a perfect moment to broaden my horizons, experience
Speaker 5: a new culture, and take a risk instead, I moved
Speaker 5: to Indiana.
Speaker 2: Oh Man, I blew it.
Speaker 1: Life is full of choices, forks in the road where
Speaker 1: we have to pick one path or the other. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we make those decisions under pressure, or with incomplete information,
Speaker 1: or at times when we're not our calmest, most rational selves.
Speaker 1: And sometimes once we begin to regret the path we've taken,
Speaker 1: it's too late to turn around. That's how it was
Speaker 1: for author and illustrator Liz Vosselyn is the child of
Speaker 1: you European immigrants. Liz spend a lot of her youth
Speaker 1: traveling back and forth to visit relatives.
Speaker 6: I just have a lot of happy childhood memories there,
Speaker 6: and it felt like a link to this bigger family
Speaker 6: that I don't feel that I have in the US.
Speaker 1: But with families, it's not always vacations and holiday get togethers.
Speaker 1: There are sometimes emergencies and bereavements.
Speaker 6: So my grandmother died when I was in my early twenties,
Speaker 6: and my mom, who rarely shows emotion or asks for much,
Speaker 6: 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.
Speaker 6: 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 6: I was like, I have so much going on at work.
Speaker 6: I just can't take two weeks off for an international trip.
Speaker 6: It's just too much for me to take on right now.
Speaker 1: And so Liz'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.
Speaker 6: Like even now, I'm like starting to get tears in
Speaker 6: my eyes because I think of my mom alone on
Speaker 6: this eight hour plane ride to go pack up, like
Speaker 6: her childhood and my childhood and our link to our family.
Speaker 1: Though painful regrets like these are a creative spur for Liz.
Speaker 1: Along with author Molly we Stuffy, she's part of a
Speaker 1: duo known online as Lizen Molly. They're responsible for a
Speaker 1: popular Instagram feed of illustrations that show how we can
Speaker 1: deal with all kinds of painful feelings, the types of
Speaker 1: things that we too often keep to ourselves.
Speaker 6: There's just so much, especially when we talk about big
Speaker 6: feelings that all of us are experiencing on a daily
Speaker 6: basis that we don't share with people.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of Liz and Molly's work. I
Speaker 1: share There's simple yet powerful cartoons with my students all
Speaker 1: the time. They're not just poignant, clever and funny. They
Speaker 1: also include lots of science back tips for dealing with
Speaker 1: those big feelings. So you can imagine my excitement when
Speaker 1: I heard that the duo we're also putting out a
Speaker 1: new book. It's called Big Feelings, How to Be Okay
Speaker 1: When Things Are Not Okay. The book gives advice for
Speaker 1: navigating seven of our most painful negative emotions. The usual
Speaker 1: emotional culprits things like sadness, anger, and even burnout. But
Speaker 1: there's also one that doesn't get as much attention. You
Speaker 1: guessed it. Regret.
Speaker 6: Research shows that it's one of the most common emotions
Speaker 6: that people feel. I think it's after love or something
Speaker 6: like that.
Speaker 1: Some studies estimate that over ninety percent of people report
Speaker 1: having severe regret about some decision they've made in their lives.
Speaker 1: Over ninety percent of people. That's basically everyone, and yet
Speaker 1: one of the misconceptions about regret is that it's actually
Speaker 1: even possible for us to live that hashtag no regrets life.
Speaker 6: It's just a completely inaccurate view of the world. There
Speaker 6: is no life in which you will have no regrets.
Speaker 1: A second misconception goes something like this, Okay, so maybe
Speaker 1: I can't have a perfectly hashtag no regrets existence, but
Speaker 1: I'd definitely be able to have a hashtag mostly no
Speaker 1: regrets life if only I could get every thing I want.
Speaker 1: We assume that if we had the perfect job, in
Speaker 1: a swanky house and an amazing partner, we'd never experience
Speaker 1: that painful twinge of what if. But this too is
Speaker 1: a spot where our minds are lying to us, and
Speaker 1: part of that is because you can only choose one life.
Speaker 1: Even if your current life path is mostly awesome, there's
Speaker 1: probably something great out there in the universe that you're
Speaker 1: not going to get a chance to experience another fork
Speaker 1: in the road you could have chosen but didn't, And
Speaker 1: sometimes we can't help but regret not taking it.
Speaker 6: And we also have a tendency to put on rose
Speaker 6: colored glasses when we consider that alternate path, especially in
Speaker 6: moments when our current reality is a little harder.
Speaker 1: I feel like we have a lot to learn about regret.
Speaker 1: So I decided to call in an expert.
Speaker 2: My name is Daniel Pink. I'm the author of the
Speaker 2: Power of Regret, How looking backward moves us forward.
Speaker 1: Daniel developed what he calls the World Regret Survey, which
Speaker 1: collected the experiences of tens of thousands of people for
Speaker 1: more than one hundred countries. It's one of the largest
Speaker 1: databases of regrets ever. With all that data to draw on,
Speaker 1: I was hoping that Daniel could give us a bit
Speaker 1: of a crash course on regret, starting with a definition.
Speaker 2: I think one way to start is that a regret
Speaker 2: is an emotion, and is an emotion that makes us
Speaker 2: feel bad, and it's emotion that arises from I think
Speaker 2: some really fascinating and interesting powers of our brain.
Speaker 1: Regret requires a few complicated and possibly unique cognitive abilities.
Speaker 1: The first of these is the ability to accept blame.
Speaker 1: Unlike other negative emotions, like say disappointment, regret requires agency.
Speaker 1: We can only regret stuff that we caused.
Speaker 2: You experience a regret because it's your fault.
Speaker 1: Regret also requires the capacity to time travel. Regret forces
Speaker 1: us to hop in a mental time machine and travel
Speaker 1: back to some remembered event of the past, and once
Speaker 1: we get there, our brains engage in a third impressive
Speaker 1: cognitive feet what Daniel calls fabulousm.
Speaker 2: We imagine making a different decision than we actually made.
Speaker 2: And then what's even more crazy is that we negate
Speaker 2: that experience. We get back in our time machine. We
Speaker 2: arrive back in the present, and we now see a
Speaker 2: present that is reconfigured because of this decision that we've
Speaker 2: undone in the past.
Speaker 1: And that's the final cognitive superpower we engage in when
Speaker 1: feeling regret, what's known as counterfactual thinking. We create a new,
Speaker 1: completely imaginary timeline that runs counter to the facts.
Speaker 2: And there are two kinds of counterfactual thinking. One of
Speaker 2: them is known as a downward counterfactual, so that is,
Speaker 2: we imagine how things could have been worse.
Speaker 1: Downward counterfactuals often involve the phrase well at least. So
Speaker 1: let's say you miss your morning flight because you spent
Speaker 1: too long getting ready. You might engage in a downward
Speaker 1: counterfactual and say things like, well, at least there was
Speaker 1: a later flight, or well, at least I didn't miss
Speaker 1: my connection. Downward counterfactuals help us remember that it could
Speaker 1: have been worse. They usually make us feel better but
Speaker 1: less hopefully, we also engage in upward counterfactuals.
Speaker 2: Is gouy you imagined 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.
Speaker 6: I might have ended up, I don't know, working on
Speaker 6: a flower farm.
Speaker 1: Upward counterfactuals convince us that we've totally screwed things up.
Speaker 1: They kind of make us feel like crap, and sadly,
Speaker 1: they also dominate our.
Speaker 7: Thoughts because I'm a lawyer, but it would have been
Speaker 7: nice to find something that I'm passionate about an actress,
Speaker 7: a science teacher, or I'm going to be a doctor
Speaker 7: because I love health, nutrition and.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff. Researchers have looked at how often
Speaker 1: we use each of these two kinds of counterfactuals, those
Speaker 1: painful if only counterfactuals. They beat out the nicer feeling
Speaker 1: of at least counterfactuals more than eighty percent of the time.
Speaker 2: We are biased on this case, towards the negative, where
Speaker 2: a biased toward the upward counterfactual toward the if onlies.
Speaker 2: I think the interesting thing here, as we try to
Speaker 2: sort out the puzzle is, you know, why would we
Speaker 2: do that? Why would we be prone to do something
Speaker 2: that makes us feel worse? And so there must be
Speaker 2: something about this that confers a benefit. There must be
Speaker 2: 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 2: I'm all for positivity, right, I'm all for positive emotions,
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. I don't want to have only
Speaker 2: positive emotions, because negative emotions serve a function. I think
Speaker 2: that no regrets, the philosophy of no regrets, that you
Speaker 2: should never look backward, you should always look forward, never
Speaker 2: be negative, always be positive, is a profoundly bad idea.
Speaker 2: I think it is an unhealthy recipe for living. I
Speaker 2: think what we have to do is actually use our
Speaker 2: regrets as information, as signal as not ignore them, not
Speaker 2: wallowing them, but use them to help clarify what we
Speaker 2: 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 Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 8: I'm maya Shunker, host of a slight Change of Plans.
Speaker 8: When I was around eleven years old, at summer music camp,
Speaker 8: I had the biggest crush on another violinist, shinse Qesato.
Speaker 8: He was cute, a total violent prodigy, and was really
Speaker 8: funny too. I thought maybe he liked me as well,
Speaker 8: but I could never tell for sure. One day, a
Speaker 8: mutual friend of ours just asked me, point blank, Hey,
Speaker 8: he like shinse Kay.
Speaker 1: I think he might like you. Shinse Kay was.
Speaker 8: An earshot, and I remember seeing him lightly smile in
Speaker 8: response to her question. But even with that affirmation, I
Speaker 8: was too embarrassed and said no, he could have been
Speaker 8: my summer boyfriend. That I was too much of a wimp,
Speaker 8: and it took me until I was nineteen to actually
Speaker 8: have my first boyfriend, how different things could have been
Speaker 8: for me.
Speaker 1: Regrets can feel so troubling that we'd move mountains to
Speaker 1: change things.
Speaker 6: Like I would give a lot, a lot, a lot
Speaker 6: of money to go back and make a different decision.
Speaker 1: Liz Fossilene 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.
Speaker 6: Remembering how painful it was. It wasn't just regret. It
Speaker 6: was pain, It was shame, it was guilt, It was
Speaker 6: all these sort of really really thorny, difficult feelings that
Speaker 6: were welling inside me. But that really really clarified the
Speaker 6: decisions I wanted to make going forward.
Speaker 1: Liz tackled this idea in a recent Listen 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? Listen Molly then quote the author
Speaker 1: Augustin Burrows to live in regret and change nothing else
Speaker 1: in your life is to miss the entire point, and
Speaker 1: the science shows that this is one of the big
Speaker 1: benefits of being a creature that can feel regret. Our
Speaker 1: regrets can help us to better understand the kind of
Speaker 1: people we want to be, even if we're not currently
Speaker 1: living up to those standards. Just as our brains are
Speaker 1: good at simulating imaginary counterfactual situations, say asking out that
Speaker 1: person we liked but never spoke to, or going to
Speaker 1: 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 does
Speaker 1: it skip her workouts, who never spends too much time
Speaker 1: on social media, and who always gets enough sleep. Research
Speaker 1: has found that paying attention to the different kinds of
Speaker 1: better selves we simulate can help us to make choices
Speaker 1: that 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.
Speaker 6: Wanted, So this is the career that makes you come
Speaker 6: alive versus the career that you feel pressured to pursue.
Speaker 1: But we also fantasize about a second, counterfactual self, the
Speaker 1: ought self. The ought self is all about duty, obligation,
Speaker 1: and doing what's expected of you.
Speaker 6: So for me, that is being a doctor. My parents
Speaker 6: are both immigrants, academics. It was very much like doctor banker, lawyer.
Speaker 6: That is success.
Speaker 1: My own ought self is a me that never takes
Speaker 1: a break. That Laurie is a perfectionist who has the
Speaker 1: perfect body and great clothes and a flawlessly clean house.
Speaker 1: But ideal Laurie has a completely different set of aspirations.
Speaker 1: Ideal Laurie does want to do good work in the world,
Speaker 1: but she also wants to take care of herself and
Speaker 1: live her dreams.
Speaker 6: And the ought self and ideal self sometimes require you
Speaker 6: to pick two very different paths.
Speaker 1: When Lizz's grandmother died far away across the ocean, ideal
Speaker 1: is an autlis clashed about what to do next. Liz's
Speaker 1: ideal self would have hands down risk upsetting her new
Speaker 1: bosses to help her mom in that moment of grief.
Speaker 6: The ideal self is someone who shows up for the
Speaker 6: people that I care about in the moments that really matter.
Speaker 1: But her aught self out. Rather than following her heart
Speaker 1: and going to the airport, she headed to the office.
Speaker 6: I really felt like I could not fail, especially early
Speaker 6: on in this job, otherwise it would ruin my career forever.
Speaker 6: And looking back now, I totally understand that that was ridiculous,
Speaker 6: catastrophic thinking. And there are many examples of this in
Speaker 6: my early twenties, like I cannot believe some of the
Speaker 6: things I did.
Speaker 1: Like the time Liz passed out and spent the night
Speaker 1: in the hospital. The next morning, her aunt self convinced
Speaker 1: her that she needed to go to work anyway.
Speaker 6: And I looked terrible, and my boss asked what had happened,
Speaker 6: and I briefly mentioned that I had been in the er,
Speaker 6: and he just stared at me and was like, you
Speaker 6: need to go home. It's not okay that you are here.
Speaker 6: But again, it was a similar compulsion of like, I
Speaker 6: have to be present, I have to be showing up.
Speaker 1: So, given that we have these two different imaginary versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves on our shoulders, each screaming different things, which
Speaker 1: one should we listen to? Well Tory Huggins found that
Speaker 1: ignoring either of these voices doesn't feel great in the
Speaker 1: short term. If Liz had flown to Europe, she'd probably
Speaker 1: have worried about her job as soon as the airplane
Speaker 1: left the tarmac. But research shows that when it comes
Speaker 1: to long term regrets, the severe kind that give us
Speaker 1: anguish years after the fact, they're much more likely to
Speaker 1: stem from ignoring the person we ideally want to be.
Speaker 6: If you pursue the path that brings you closer to
Speaker 6: your ideal self, you tend to be happier. But if
Speaker 6: confronted with, hey, this is the job that really sings
Speaker 6: to my soul, versus this is the job that everyone
Speaker 6: has expected me to take, but the thought of taking
Speaker 6: it actually fills me with a deep existential dread. You
Speaker 6: 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 Brownie 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: gained 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 wear 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 Gilovich 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 residents. In an old age
Speaker 1: home people's regrets about not living up to the person
Speaker 1: the ideally wanted to be far outnumbered their regrets about
Speaker 1: not living up to what they ought to do to
Speaker 1: please bosses, neighbors, or the wider society. Findings like these
Speaker 1: have shaped how Liz now listens to her two different
Speaker 1: counterfectual selves.
Speaker 6: One I'm faced with something, and when I have this
Speaker 6: little voice within me that says like, well, but work
Speaker 6: is really busy this week, I'm like, no, remember the
Speaker 6: pain that you're trying to avoid in the future. Just
Speaker 6: put that sort of perfectionist self to the side and
Speaker 6: go show up, because that's you're going to remember in
Speaker 6: ten years. I truly do not know what I was
Speaker 6: doing at work that week. I can tell you nothing
Speaker 6: about the project I was working on, about how it
Speaker 6: turned out. It just wasn't as important in the long run.
Speaker 1: Liz is now convinced that past regrets are great learning points.
Speaker 1: That recent listen Molly cartoon I mentioned also included an
Speaker 1: important quote. Regrets can be burned as fuel, but regrets
Speaker 1: burn hot, and we can only become better people if
Speaker 1: we're committed to directly embracing our regrets and the pain
Speaker 1: they cause, because.
Speaker 2: I think when we do that, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: evidence that it is a powerfully transformative emotion.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 9: I'm Jacob Goldstein. I host a podcast called What's Your Problem?
Speaker 9: And when I was in my twenties, I regretted pretty
Speaker 9: much everything all the time. It got to the point
Speaker 9: where anytime I had to make a big decision, I
Speaker 9: would be paralyzed by the fear that I would regret
Speaker 9: whatever choice I made. It was like pre regret pregret. Eventually,
Speaker 9: I mostly got past it. I came to trust myself more,
Speaker 9: feel better about my decisions. Regret, thankfully is no longer
Speaker 9: a big part of my life, but I guess I
Speaker 9: do still regret a little that I spent so many
Speaker 9: years of my life living in fear of regret.
Speaker 2: And one of the interesting things about regret is that
Speaker 2: people want the instruction that comes from regret. They just
Speaker 2: don't want the bad feeling. And that's not the offer
Speaker 2: that's on the table here.
Speaker 1: If we can tough out the discomfort. Author Daniel Pink
Speaker 1: thinks we can learn valuable lessons from our.
Speaker 2: Regrets if we get past this kind of fog machine
Speaker 2: that we should never have regrets, that we should always
Speaker 2: be positive. We can look at this emotion and say
Speaker 2: it's telling us something. It's teaching us something, And if
Speaker 2: we actually think about our regrets differently, we can enlist
Speaker 2: them to lead a better and 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.
Speaker 2: The reason they make us do better is because they
Speaker 2: make us feel worse.
Speaker 1: And once you experience the pain, you can commit to
Speaker 1: doing better. But how Daniel says, the first step is
Speaker 1: determining the specific category of regret you're dealing with.
Speaker 2: So there's an interesting distinction in the architecture of regret,
Speaker 2: which is a distinction between action regrets and inaction regrets,
Speaker 2: regrets about what we did and regrets about what we
Speaker 2: didn't do. So let's take action regrets regrets about what
Speaker 2: I did. Those are things that you can undo.
Speaker 1: When I think of such situations, I'm reminded of the
Speaker 1: advice of life coach Valerie Burton, who I spoke to
Speaker 1: for a previous episode about dealing with guilt. Valerie said
Speaker 1: that the first steps to dealing with our action regrets
Speaker 1: are to admit what we've done, assess the damage done,
Speaker 1: apologize for our actions, and then atone as best we can.
Speaker 1: If you regret saying something mean to a friend, you
Speaker 1: should apologize. If you carelessly broke your work buddy's favorite mug,
Speaker 1: you should buy them a new one. Undoing doesn't mean
Speaker 1: erasing what you did, but you could acknowledge your actions
Speaker 1: and make amends for the damage at least a bit.
Speaker 1: But if the regret you're experiencing stems from an inaction
Speaker 1: something you didn't do yet, then the solution is also clear.
Speaker 1: If possible, you should do the thing you haven't gotten
Speaker 1: around to doing yet. As the old saying goes, the
Speaker 1: best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: but the second best time is now. Daniel's survey results
Speaker 1: demonstrated the importance of fixing inactions as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest domains in which Daniel observed the
Speaker 1: painful consequences of inaction regrets was in our social relationships, which.
Speaker 2: Are if only i'd reached out. And the typical pattern
Speaker 2: was a relationship comes apart, usually in very very undramatic ways.
Speaker 2: It's like there's not yelling and screaming, and there's this
Speaker 2: like things drift apart, Your relationship drifts apart. And then
Speaker 2: what happens is that one person wants to reach out
Speaker 2: and they say, oh, it's going to be really awkward
Speaker 2: if I reach out, and the other side's not going
Speaker 2: to care, so they don't. Then they wait a few
Speaker 2: more years and they say, oh, now it's going to
Speaker 2: be even more awkward and they're going to care even less,
Speaker 2: so they don't. And so people are making a I
Speaker 2: think a pretty profound misjudgment. They say it's going to
Speaker 2: be awkward, and it turns out to be way less
Speaker 2: awkward than they think, and they say the other side's
Speaker 2: not going to care, and the other side almost always cares.
Speaker 2: If you are at a juncture where you're wondering should
Speaker 2: I reach out or should I not reach out, to
Speaker 2: my mind being at that juncture is answered the question
Speaker 2: always reach out. And I think it's very clear when
Speaker 2: we look prospectively that if you don't reach out, you're
Speaker 2: going to regret it. And I have too many stories
Speaker 2: of people who didn't reach out and then it was
Speaker 2: too late because somebody passed away.
Speaker 1: But you might be left asking how can we deal
Speaker 1: with the regrets that we can't fix, those hurts that
Speaker 1: we cause to people who are no longer with us,
Speaker 1: or some stranger we heart, or mistakes that we can't do,
Speaker 1: or cases where enough time has passed that we simply
Speaker 1: can't complete the actions we failed to do before. Daniel
Speaker 1: argues that situations like these require changes in how we think.
Speaker 1: We first need to normalize the fact that we messed
Speaker 1: up and commit to not beating ourselves up over it.
Speaker 2: One of the most important things you can do when
Speaker 2: you screw up is treat yourself with self compassion. Treat
Speaker 2: yourself with kindness rather than contempt, Recognize that your mistakes
Speaker 2: are part of the human condition.
Speaker 1: And when engaging in this more compassionate self talk, we
Speaker 1: can also use the power of specific words to better
Speaker 1: see the lessons that come from our mistakes, like, for example,
Speaker 1: harnessing that less painful counterfactual phrase that allows us to
Speaker 1: feel better at least, as.
Speaker 2: We talked about earlier, you can at least them you
Speaker 2: can find the silver lining you can do that downward counterfactual.
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.
Speaker 6: One thing that I've found really valuable is replacing the
Speaker 6: phrase should have with what if so instant my case,
Speaker 6: I should have gone with my mom and gotten on
Speaker 6: that plane, changing it and saying like, well, what if
Speaker 6: the next time I do get on the plane. It's
Speaker 6: sort of a quick phrasing shift that allows us to
Speaker 6: both give ourselves grace but then shift more into this
Speaker 6: mindset of what could the future look like if I
Speaker 6: learned from this past experience.
Speaker 1: Another effective, although somewhat counterintuitive, strategy involves sharing your regrets.
Speaker 1: More broadly, we assume that talking about our mistakes will
Speaker 1: feel shameful or embarrassing, but the science shows that admitting
Speaker 1: your regrets, either to a close confidant or to the
Speaker 1: pages of a written journal, can make you feel better.
Speaker 1: In one study, researchers had subjects talk about their regrets
Speaker 1: on a tape recorder for fifteen minutes a day. After
Speaker 1: four weeks, participants report at higher levels of life satisfaction
Speaker 1: and better overall mental well being. Daniel argues that this
Speaker 1: works because talking about our regrets can make them more concrete.
Speaker 2: And that makes them less fearsome, and it also begins
Speaker 2: the sense making.
Speaker 1: Process, and that sense making process is the final step
Speaker 1: of harnessing our regrets. We're trying to extract a lesson
Speaker 1: from what we did badly in the past so we
Speaker 1: can do better in the future.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's good enough to simply say, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to treat myself with kindness, I'm going to
Speaker 2: write about her disclose it. I think you have to
Speaker 2: go to the next step and say, what did I
Speaker 2: learn from this? What is the lesson that I've derived
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 6: And so I don't even want to say I'm grateful,
Speaker 6: because that's not quite true, but I do. I try
Speaker 6: every time I'm confronted with a similar situation to make
Speaker 6: the choice that I know is going to lead to
Speaker 6: less long run pain, and that actually aligns more with
Speaker 6: my values.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Liz had a chance to test that commitment to
Speaker 1: her new ideal self when her father was rushed to
Speaker 1: the hospital.
Speaker 6: And at the time, we didn't you know, I we
Speaker 6: really didn't know if he was going to make it,
Speaker 6: so it was very scary.
Speaker 1: Liz was living in San Francisco at the time. She
Speaker 1: knew that flying halfway across the country to her father's
Speaker 1: hospital in Chicago at short notice and in the middle
Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic would be a logistical nightmare.
Speaker 1: And this time even her mother was telling her not
Speaker 1: to bother making the trek.
Speaker 6: And I was just like, absolutely not. I'm coming. Just puck,
Speaker 6: you know, like pick me up at the airport, or
Speaker 6: I'll take a lift or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: By fully processing her previous experience, Liz was sure that
Speaker 1: no matter how difficult that trip to Chicago was, the
Speaker 1: anguish of not going would be worse.
Speaker 6: I do not want to experience that pain again. And
Speaker 6: I have learned my lesson that I will never ever
Speaker 6: make that decision.
Speaker 1: And so Liz made the trek and quickly enjoyed the
Speaker 1: benefits that come from being the person you ideally want to.
Speaker 6: Be my dad, it luckily ended up being sort of
Speaker 6: overall okay, and my mom a couple days later it
Speaker 6: was just like, I'm so glad you're here, and I said,
Speaker 6: I am too, and I absolutely have no regrets around that.
Speaker 1: We often think that in order to be happy we
Speaker 1: need to shield ourselves from painful emotions, and there's no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. Feeling regret is painful. It's one of
Speaker 1: the suckiest emotions around. But as Daniel Pink put it
Speaker 1: in his book, it's time you started thinking of your
Speaker 1: regrets not as emotional threats, but as opportunities. If there's
Speaker 1: some past action that makes you cringe, fix it. Didn't
Speaker 1: take on that big challenge your ideal self was pushing for,
Speaker 1: do it now. And if you can't go back and
Speaker 1: change the past, find ways to see those pangs of
Speaker 1: remorse in a new light as a powerful way for
Speaker 1: your ideal self to nudge you in the right direction.
Speaker 1: And if your ideal self wants to avoid at least
Speaker 1: one future podcast regret, then I'd encourage you to come
Speaker 1: back soon for the next episode of the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me doctor Lauriy Santos. The Happiness Lab is co
Speaker 1: written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Ann Vaughan, and
Speaker 1: Courtney Guarino. Joseph Fridman checked our facts. Our original music
Speaker 1: was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and
Speaker 1: mastering by Evan Viola. Thanks to everyone who shared their
Speaker 1: regret stories for this episode. Special thanks to Me LaBelle,
Speaker 1: Heather Fain, John Schnarz, Carl Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Nicol Morano, Royston Preserve, 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 Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your podcasts,