Speaker 1: Pushkin hay Slight Change Listeners. It's Maya this summer. We're
Speaker 1: revisiting four of your all time favorite episodes. Up next
Speaker 1: in the series, we hear from an expert on the
Speaker 1: science of change, Dan Pink. He offers some great insight
Speaker 1: into how we can change our relationship with regret.
Speaker 2: I don't think we've done a very good job equipping
Speaker 2: people with how to deal with negative emotions. I think
Speaker 2: at some level we've sold them a bill of goods
Speaker 2: about the need to be positive all the time, And
Speaker 2: what we should be doing is saying, yeah, have lots
Speaker 2: of positive emotions, they make life fantastic, but you're going
Speaker 2: to have some negative emotions. And these negative emotions are adaptive,
Speaker 2: they're functional if you know how to treat them.
Speaker 1: That's best selling author Dan Pink, who believes that negative
Speaker 1: emotions can be a force for good in our lives.
Speaker 1: Dan is most interested in the emotion of regret, which
Speaker 1: is the focus of his book The Power of Regret,
Speaker 1: How looking backward moves Us forward. But it took Dan
Speaker 1: a while to figure out why regret was such a
Speaker 1: valuable emotion, you.
Speaker 2: Know, reading through all these regrets every day here in
Speaker 2: my office, why was I not more bummed out? I
Speaker 2: got these people opening up their hearts and telling me
Speaker 2: the mistakes that they made and how terrible they feel
Speaker 2: about it. Why did they not bring me down? And
Speaker 2: I finally, over time, realized that when people tell you
Speaker 2: what they regret the most, they're telling you what they
Speaker 2: value the most.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, how to transform our relationship with regret
Speaker 1: to live happier and more fulfilling lives, I'm Maya Shunker
Speaker 1: and this is a slight change of plans, a show
Speaker 1: about who we are and who we become in the
Speaker 1: face of a big change. So I guess I'll start
Speaker 1: Dan by talking about how much I loved this very
Speaker 1: visceral description of regret that you share in your book.
Speaker 1: You call it the stomach churning feeling that the present
Speaker 1: would be better, in the future brighter, if only you
Speaker 1: hadn't chosen so poorly, decided so wrongly, or acted so
Speaker 1: stupidly in the past. Of all the feelings to study,
Speaker 1: why did you choose this one to examine in particular?
Speaker 2: Because my stomach was churning, because I had that emotion
Speaker 2: and I wasn't sure what to do about it, and
Speaker 2: at some level. I was at a point in my
Speaker 2: life where, to my surprise, I had milajehn bye. I
Speaker 2: had a room to look back, and like many people
Speaker 2: who look backward, I look backward and I see, Oh,
Speaker 2: if only I had been kinder, if only I had
Speaker 2: taken more risks, if only I had worked harder, if
Speaker 2: only I had done that rather than that. And my
Speaker 2: stomach was churning in a way that made me want
Speaker 2: to talk about it. And when I very tenderly began
Speaker 2: mentioning it to other people, I discovered that everybody wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about regret, and that our perception of this
Speaker 2: emotion and what it meant to people was very different
Speaker 2: from how it lived in people's hearts and heads.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that. I think you probably identified there
Speaker 1: was something counterintuitive we might discover if you were to
Speaker 1: go down that path. Before we analyze how regret affects
Speaker 1: our lives, I first want to recognize just how remarkable
Speaker 1: it is that we as humans are even capable of
Speaker 1: feeling this thing called regret. I mean, as a cognitive scientist,
Speaker 1: I'm always marveling at human abilities, but this one, in
Speaker 1: particular kind of knoster socks off. You say that our
Speaker 1: ability to feel regret depends on at least two pretty
Speaker 1: complex mental abilities. Do you mind painting a picture of
Speaker 1: what those are?
Speaker 2: Sure? The two mental abilities are time travel and storytelling.
Speaker 2: So time travel is essential in our ability to experience
Speaker 2: regret if we think about this, So suppose that somebody
Speaker 2: has a regret about marrying Steve rather than Bob. I
Speaker 2: married Steve, and I should have married Bob if only
Speaker 2: I'd marry Bob. All right, so think about that. So
Speaker 2: what are you doing. You're getting into a time machine
Speaker 2: and you're traveling back in time to when you first
Speaker 2: got to know Steve and Bob. Now that itself is
Speaker 2: pretty amazing that we can travel through time in our heads.
Speaker 2: That's amazing in itself. But wait, there's more, because what
Speaker 2: we do is we go back and imagine what happened,
Speaker 2: but then rewrite the story, essentially negate what really happened,
Speaker 2: overwrite it with our own tail. Hey I'm gonna marry Bob.
Speaker 2: That's amazing too. But wait, there's more, because then we
Speaker 2: get back in our time machine and come back to
Speaker 2: the present, and suddenly the present looks entirely different because
Speaker 2: we've reconfigured the past. And so that's an incredible cognitive ability.
Speaker 2: This the ability of counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking is when
Speaker 2: we imagine a situation that runs counter to the actual facts.
Speaker 2: So counterfactual thinking can be it rained yesterday, if only
Speaker 2: it were sonny yesterday, that's counterfactual thinking. How would my
Speaker 2: life be different if it was sunny yesterday. It's one
Speaker 2: reason why I mean, as a cognitive scientist, you know
Speaker 2: that little kids can't do this. Their brains are not
Speaker 2: fully developed enough to do this kind of processing. So
Speaker 2: I love to.
Speaker 1: Dig into the fact that kids can't do this because
Speaker 1: it is fascinating from the child development perspective.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. So this is an experiment done by a couple
Speaker 2: of developmental psychologists and what they did is they told
Speaker 2: kids a story about two boys. One was named Bob
Speaker 2: and one was named David. Now these boys live near
Speaker 2: each other, and each day Bob and David would each
Speaker 2: ride their bikes to school and they would take a
Speaker 2: path that went around a pond. Now can go around
Speaker 2: the right side of the pond to get to school,
Speaker 2: or you can go around the left side of the
Speaker 2: pond to get to school, and both paths are equidistant.
Speaker 2: It's the same length, the same amount of time. But
Speaker 2: every day Bob goes around the right side of the
Speaker 2: pond and David goes around the left side of the pond. Okay,
Speaker 2: So what they tell the kids is this is the
Speaker 2: following story. One morning, Bob rides around the right side
Speaker 2: of the pond, but unbeknownst to Bob, a tree has fallen,
Speaker 2: smacking itself into the center of the path, and Bob
Speaker 2: collides with the branch. He falls off the bike, He
Speaker 2: hurts himself and is late to school. The left side
Speaker 2: of the path was fine. Now that same morning, David
Speaker 2: who gets up, I guess a little bit later, David
Speaker 2: who always takes the left side of the pond, He says, no,
Speaker 2: what today, I want to take the right side of
Speaker 2: the pond. David also hits the branch, he gets thrown
Speaker 2: off his bike, He's injured two and he is late
Speaker 2: for school. And so the question that these researchers asked
Speaker 2: these young children is who would be more upset about
Speaker 2: riding along the path that went around the right side
Speaker 2: of the pond. Bob who does it every day, David
Speaker 2: who just did it that one day, or would they
Speaker 2: feel the same? So five year olds said, Ah, that'd
Speaker 2: be the same. They'd be totally bummed out because they
Speaker 2: hit a branch and fell off their bike and were
Speaker 2: late to school. But seven year olds realized that it
Speaker 2: was actually David who would be more upset because he
Speaker 2: deviated from his ordinary path.
Speaker 1: He'd be more likely to feel regret in this case.
Speaker 2: Exactly, David would feel more regret because a seven year
Speaker 2: old is saying, if only David had taken the left
Speaker 2: side of the pond, he would have avoided that branch
Speaker 2: and gotten to school safely and on time. You know,
Speaker 2: five year olds and seven year olds are only two
Speaker 2: years apart, but a lot goes on in that time
Speaker 2: for these young brains to acquire the strength and the
Speaker 2: muscularity to perform this kind of mental trapeze act that
Speaker 2: we're talking about, where you're swinging back and forth between
Speaker 2: past and present, between reality and imagination. That's a very
Speaker 2: hard act to perform, and you need the muscle memory,
Speaker 2: you need the strength, you need the dexterity. And that
Speaker 2: happens somewhere probably between the ages of five and seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, it's so funny. Literally, in this moment, I'm
Speaker 1: feeling starstruck by our own minds so parted me while
Speaker 1: I just have a moment.
Speaker 2: It's incredible, though I'm such a nerd. I'm with you,
Speaker 2: I'm with you one hundred persons actually just astonished she
Speaker 2: seeing what our minds can do. I mean it should, honestly,
Speaker 2: it should take our breath away. That is when I
Speaker 2: was reading the neuroscience and the cognitive science, It's like, Wow,
Speaker 2: our brains are awesome. They're a little glitchy in certain circumstances,
Speaker 2: but it's a pretty good piece of equipment. You know.
Speaker 2: I'm not returning it to the factory.
Speaker 1: I've said. I've said before I feel like we as
Speaker 1: humans are so hard on ourselves, but actually we should
Speaker 1: just feel like we're crushing it every moment of our existence,
Speaker 1: just by virtue of existing and doing like ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the things we do on any given day.
Speaker 1: So you know who needs celebrity sightings? Dan, When you've
Speaker 1: got the human brain, That's what I say, you can get.
Speaker 2: Absolutely to just pull up your just pull up your
Speaker 2: your MRI. You'll and you'll see that's that's your celebrity
Speaker 2: siding for the day.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Okay, So to summarize the Bob and
Speaker 1: David study, we see that five year olds are able
Speaker 1: to identify, of course, that Bob and David are both
Speaker 1: experiencing negative emotions. Right. They're probably feeling sad, there might
Speaker 1: be a little concerned about the bruises they have. Then
Speaker 1: there's this huge developmental milestone where for the first time
Speaker 1: we seem to understand intuitively that David would feel more
Speaker 1: of this thing called regret than Bob would. And so
Speaker 1: with that in mind, you know, there's lots of negative
Speaker 1: emotions we feel, and one of the things you do
Speaker 1: in your book is you differentiate regret from some of
Speaker 1: these other negative emotions. I'm curious to hear what you
Speaker 1: see as the necessary ingredients for feeling regret as opposed
Speaker 1: to another kind of negative emotion.
Speaker 2: What makes you we're very different or two things. It's
Speaker 2: comparison and it is blame essentially, So with regret, we
Speaker 2: compare one set of circumstances to another set of circumstances.
Speaker 2: So regret doesn't exist in absolute terms. It exists in
Speaker 2: comparative terms. And so we're comparing one set of circumstances
Speaker 2: and set of facts to another. Imagine set of facts.
Speaker 2: Perhaps even more important, is blame. Regret is your fault, right,
Speaker 2: and that makes it different from other kinds of emotions.
Speaker 2: It makes it different from, say, the emotion of disappointment.
Speaker 2: I could feel disappointed that it's raining today, but I
Speaker 2: can't feel regret that it's raining because I don't control
Speaker 2: the skies. I can feel regret if I leave the
Speaker 2: house without an umbrella and I know that it's raining
Speaker 2: because that's on me. But regret and disappointment, the big
Speaker 2: demarcation is agency. Regret is your fault.
Speaker 1: And for those listening who are as self critical as
Speaker 1: I am, this is also why regret stings so much,
Speaker 1: right because of this agency component. It just makes it
Speaker 1: such a painful feeling.
Speaker 2: Right because you can't pin it on somebody else.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, now that we have a better handle on
Speaker 1: what regret is and the conditions that must be satisfied
Speaker 1: in order for us to feel regret, let's talk for
Speaker 1: a bit about how common it is for us to
Speaker 1: experience regret. Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so. There's research in social psychology from years ago
Speaker 2: showing that in people's everyday conversation, the negative emotion that
Speaker 2: people express the most in everyday conversations is regret. It was,
Speaker 2: in this particular piece of research, the second most common
Speaker 2: emotion of any kind that they expressed, even after love.
Speaker 2: And one of the exciting things about this project was
Speaker 2: I was able to do some research of my own,
Speaker 2: able to conduct a very large quantitative survey, the largest
Speaker 2: public opinion survey of American attitudes about regret ever conducted,
Speaker 2: and I ask people a bunch of questions, including the
Speaker 2: question how often do you look back on your life
Speaker 2: and wish you had done things differently? Now? I agonized
Speaker 2: over the wording of that question because I wanted to
Speaker 2: describe regrets without saying it yeah, but I didn't want
Speaker 2: to use the R word, because there's such a stigma
Speaker 2: attached to the R word. And what we found is
Speaker 2: that eighty two percent of the US population did this
Speaker 2: thing at least occasionally. We have this performed idea that
Speaker 2: I have no regrets. I always look forward, I never
Speaker 2: looked backward. But the percentge of people who said they
Speaker 2: never do this was one percent.
Speaker 1: You know, in this culture, especially Western culture, where it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's all about positive emotions, all about positive feelings,
Speaker 1: live with no regrets is the anthem that people are
Speaker 1: just screaming from the rooftops. One thing that really landed
Speaker 1: with me when reading your book, as you say, to
Speaker 1: live is to accumulate at least some regret. It is
Speaker 1: almost definitionally the case that if one has lived, they
Speaker 1: will feel regret. And I think there's actually a common
Speaker 1: element to that message.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I'll see that point and raise you
Speaker 2: and say that if you're feeling regret, it's actually a
Speaker 2: good sign. It's like, oh, my cognitive machinery is working.
Speaker 2: I am experiencing regret. If you don't experience a regret, truly,
Speaker 2: it's a sign of a potentially grave problem.
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting, Dan, because when we engage in
Speaker 1: mental time travel and counterfactual thinking, we don't have to
Speaker 1: imagine how things could have gone better, right. We could
Speaker 1: instead imagine how things could have gone far worse. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that we as humans have a very
Speaker 1: strong bias towards the former, which helps explain why we
Speaker 1: so often regret things. And you capture this point really
Speaker 1: nicely when you talk about framing a thought in terms
Speaker 1: of at least versus if only yes.
Speaker 2: So when we think about counterfactual thinking, there are two
Speaker 2: different varieties of it. One is an upward counterfactual, So
Speaker 2: you imagine how things could have been better. If only
Speaker 2: I had become an accountant rather than an engineer, everything
Speaker 2: in my life would be fantastic. So you imagine a
Speaker 2: better scenario. Upward kind of factuals if only make us
Speaker 2: feel worse, but they can help us do better. But
Speaker 2: there's another kind of counterfactual, a downward counterfactual, where you
Speaker 2: imagine how things could have become worse. And so you say, oh,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have married Edward, but at least I have
Speaker 2: these two great kids. You find the silver lining in
Speaker 2: that What that does is that minimizes the sting. It
Speaker 2: makes you feel better, but it doesn't help you necessarily
Speaker 2: do better. And I think what's curious is that we're
Speaker 2: much more inclined to do the counterfactual thinking that makes
Speaker 2: us feel worse. Our brains are built for progress and efficiency,
Speaker 2: and they know that those upward count of factuals. So
Speaker 2: if onlis while they hurt, they're going to make us
Speaker 2: better if we do it right.
Speaker 1: There's a really interesting study around Olympians and their response
Speaker 1: to winning different types of medals that I think illustrates this.
Speaker 1: At least, if only kind of thinking, very well, do
Speaker 1: you mind sharing that study?
Speaker 2: This is a really really interesting study of Olympic medalists.
Speaker 2: And what they did is they showed a group of
Speaker 2: participants photographs of medalists on the Olympic platform, the gold
Speaker 2: medal winner, the silver medal winner, the bronze medal winner,
Speaker 2: except they blocked out the actual medals that these olympians won,
Speaker 2: and they had these participants who didn't know what the
Speaker 2: researchers were studying, evaluate how happy the people looked, and
Speaker 2: they ranked the olympians based on how happy they were.
Speaker 2: And so as we would expect, the person who won
Speaker 2: the gold medal look the happiest, which makes sense, right,
Speaker 2: But then there was a bit of a surprise. The
Speaker 2: person who was the next happiest looking was the bronze medalist,
Speaker 2: and the silver medalist often didn't look all that happy,
Speaker 2: which is weird, right, You just want a silver medal
Speaker 2: in the Olympics. You should be pumped too, And except
Speaker 2: they weren't. The bronze medalists were beaming. The bronze medalists,
Speaker 2: in some cases we're looking as happy as the gold medalist.
Speaker 2: And the way we explain this riddle is through counterfactual thinking.
Speaker 2: The bronze medalist is doing an at least a downward counterfactual.
Speaker 2: They're imagining how things could have been worse. The bronze
Speaker 2: medals is saying, I won a bronze medal, which is
Speaker 2: great because at least it wasn't like that shmow finished fourth,
Speaker 2: who's going home with no hardware. But the silver medals
Speaker 2: is saying, if only I had there a swimmer reached
Speaker 2: for the wall a little bit earlier, if only I
Speaker 2: had kicked a little harder, I would be wearing that
Speaker 2: gold medal instead of this crappy silver metal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, naturally, regret gets a really bad wrap, right,
Speaker 1: because as you've just described with that swimmer, it's just
Speaker 1: such an unpleasant feeling. But you make the case stand,
Speaker 1: and I think a very convincing case that we should
Speaker 1: see regret of something we should embrace and learn from.
Speaker 1: And so, what are some of the positive effects that
Speaker 1: you feel regret can have when we engage with it
Speaker 1: in the right way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the key is that we have to engage
Speaker 2: with it in the right way. I think too often
Speaker 2: we're kind of conditioned to ignore regrets. Oh, it's negative,
Speaker 2: don't even think about it. Just move on, look forward,
Speaker 2: don't look back. That's a bad idea, but sometimes I
Speaker 2: think if we're not equipped to deal with it properly,
Speaker 2: we get captured by our regrets. We wallow on them,
Speaker 2: we ruminate on them. Yeah, what we should be doing
Speaker 2: is listening to our regrets, confronting them, using them as signals,
Speaker 2: as data, as information. And when we do that, there
Speaker 2: are many many benefits. For instance, there's research in social
Speaker 2: psychology showing that it can help make us better negotiators.
Speaker 2: You do a negotiation, you think about what you regret
Speaker 2: in that negotiation, you often do better in the next one.
Speaker 2: It can help us become better problem solvers, better strategists.
Speaker 2: There's even evidence that it can actually help us a
Speaker 2: deepen sense of meaning in our lives. And so when
Speaker 2: we treat this emotion properly, and that's a big if
Speaker 2: we can use it as an engine for moving forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, regrets really serving as a catalyst here, right, for
Speaker 1: actually driving meaningful action.
Speaker 2: Sure, And I think what's I think what's puzzling here
Speaker 2: is to people is that you know, a solution in
Speaker 2: some cases is to invite this negative emotion, not to
Speaker 2: bat it away. Not to ignore it, but in some
Speaker 2: sense to invite it. And that seems a little counterintuitive
Speaker 2: because you're inviting something that feels bad. And the thing
Speaker 2: about regret is that regret can clarify what we value
Speaker 2: and instruct us on how to do better, and people
Speaker 2: like that. But it comes with discomfort, It comes with
Speaker 2: some amount of pain, and people don't like that. But
Speaker 2: that's not the deal. It's a package deal. You got
Speaker 2: to have both. That's right, and arguably I think that
Speaker 2: pain and discomfort is the source of the clarification and
Speaker 2: the instruction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's signaling to your brain that you've acted in
Speaker 1: a way that might conflict with value for example. Yep.
Speaker 1: There's also research you talk about in your book that
Speaker 1: when we engage with regret in a meaningful, constructive way,
Speaker 1: it can also increase our performance. Do you mind talking
Speaker 1: about some of the studies in this area, sure.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a lot of research in experimental psychology
Speaker 2: where you give people puzzled, especially anagrams, and what it
Speaker 2: shows in general is that you put people into a
Speaker 2: problem solving situation, they solve the problem, and then you
Speaker 2: ask them to reflect on what they regret doing or
Speaker 2: not doing. In that problem solving exercise. Again, you're inviting
Speaker 2: this negative emotion. They often do better in the next
Speaker 2: round because they felt bad. That bad feeling is a
Speaker 2: signal to the brain saying huh, maybe I should do
Speaker 2: things differently. It's a form of instruction. And so if
Speaker 2: you think about those puzzle solvers, if they actually subscribe
Speaker 2: to the no regrets philosophy, they said, oh, I screwed
Speaker 2: up this anagram. I did it slowly, I didn't get
Speaker 2: the right answer. But no regrets. I'm always positive, I
Speaker 2: never look backward. They're not going to get any better
Speaker 2: at performance on a whole array of problem solving skills.
Speaker 1: And how can regret deep in our sense of meaning?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, what it does in many cases is
Speaker 2: that when we think about counterfactually we at some level
Speaker 2: we sometimes will appreciate what we have, which deepens our
Speaker 2: sense of meaning. But it can also help clarify what
Speaker 2: we actually value in our lives. So there's one person
Speaker 2: I wrote about who regretted not spending time with their grandparents.
Speaker 2: Every winter, the grandparents would come and visit her, and
Speaker 2: she hated it as a she thought they were intruding.
Speaker 2: She didn't want to talk to them, she would stand offish,
Speaker 2: and when her grandparents passed away, she regretted it because
Speaker 2: she missed hearing their stories and hearing what their lives
Speaker 2: were about. And it actually prompted her to collect her
Speaker 2: own parents' stories, because that feeling of regret spurred at
Speaker 2: least a quest for meaning and understanding of her own
Speaker 2: life and her own story.
Speaker 1: I want to dig in a bit to this notion
Speaker 1: of doing regret right, because I think this is so important.
Speaker 1: We want to make sure that we are not ignoring
Speaker 1: the negative feeling, not ignoring the regret. We also want
Speaker 1: to make sure that we're not marinating in it, We're
Speaker 1: not ruminating in this unproductive way. But just as importantly,
Speaker 1: we need to draw the right conclusion from the regret.
Speaker 1: And we shouldn't code a regret as something that reflects
Speaker 1: this deep underlying flaw in our character and our personality. Instead,
Speaker 1: we should evaluate that behavior in isolation. Right, It's just
Speaker 1: a reflection of a behavior in a particular moment of time,
Speaker 1: And we shouldn't overgeneralize, which we as humans so often do,
Speaker 1: especially again hypercritical people. Oh my god, this must mean
Speaker 1: that I am a bad person. This must mean that
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible decision maker or what have you.
Speaker 2: That is one of the secrets to process and regret effectively.
Speaker 2: But I also think it's one of the secrets to
Speaker 2: leading a life where you're not torturing yourself. We say
Speaker 2: that if I made a mistake, I'm a bad person,
Speaker 2: rather than I did a stupid thing, And you're always
Speaker 2: better off evaluating the behavior rather than making some kind
Speaker 2: of broader assessment of the person. So there's a temporal
Speaker 2: aspect of it as well. You have to understand that
Speaker 2: any mistake that you make, any screw up, any regret,
Speaker 2: any blunder, is a moment in your life, not the
Speaker 2: full measure of your life. We're willing to make universal
Speaker 2: attributions about our entire lives based on a moment, always
Speaker 2: a negative moment, and essentially neglect the other ninety nine
Speaker 2: nine nine nine percent of our lives and our evaluation.
Speaker 2: Don't do that. That's a recipe for that's a recipe
Speaker 2: for unhappiness. And you know, when you explain this to people,
Speaker 2: they get it, and if you coach them, they can
Speaker 2: stop doing that. The problem is is that I think
Speaker 2: it's a bigger problem is that I don't think we've
Speaker 2: done a very good job equipping people with how to
Speaker 2: deal with negative emotions. I think at some level we've
Speaker 2: sold them a bill of goods about the need to
Speaker 2: be positive all the time, and what we should be
Speaker 2: doing is saying, yeah, have lots of positive emotions. Positive
Speaker 2: emotions are great, they make life fantastic. But you're going
Speaker 2: to have some negative emotions. And these negative emotions are adaptive,
Speaker 2: they're functional if you know how to treat them.
Speaker 1: When we're back from the break, Dan teaches us how
Speaker 1: we should treat our regrets and why regrets about long
Speaker 1: lost romances and misjob opportunities are far more similar than
Speaker 1: we might think, and I come in with some hot
Speaker 1: takes about whether we're maybe putting too much weight on
Speaker 1: our deathbed regrets. We'll be back in a moment with
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans. As Dan Pink was researching regret,
Speaker 1: he first wanted to learn what people tend to regret,
Speaker 1: so he launched the World Regret Survey and collected tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of regrets from people all over the world.
Speaker 1: Researchers have previously sorted regret into specific life categories like
Speaker 1: romance regrets or education regrets. But when Dan analyzed the
Speaker 1: results of his survey, he realized these categories weren't telling
Speaker 1: the full story.
Speaker 2: What I found is that when you listen to what
Speaker 2: people are saying, what matters is not the domain of life.
Speaker 2: It's something else going on just beneath the surface. And
Speaker 2: the easiest way to make that clear is with an example.
Speaker 2: I was shocked by how many people who went to college,
Speaker 2: especially in America, regret not STUF being abroad. It blew
Speaker 2: my mind. And the reason they didn't study abroad is that, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's kind of risky. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: I want to do that. And I was surprised by
Speaker 2: how salient that regret was. And then there were lots
Speaker 2: of people all over the world who had a regret
Speaker 2: that basically went like this, X years ago. There was
Speaker 2: someone who I really liked. I wanted to ask them
Speaker 2: out on a date, but I was too chicken to
Speaker 2: do that, and I've regretted it ever since. Okay, that's
Speaker 2: a romance regret. So we've got an education regret. We've
Speaker 2: got a romance regret. Then I have lots of people
Speaker 2: all over the place who say, oh, I always wanted
Speaker 2: to start a business rather than staying in this dead
Speaker 2: end job. But I didn't have the guts to do that,
Speaker 2: and now I regret it. That's a career regret. But
Speaker 2: to my mind, those are all the same regret. They're
Speaker 2: in different domains of life, but they share a common root,
Speaker 2: and at the common root is this, you're at a
Speaker 2: juncture in your life. You can play it safe or
Speaker 2: you can take the chance. And most people regret not
Speaker 2: taking the chance. Not all the time. There are people
Speaker 2: who took the chance and regret it because things went
Speaker 2: south on them. But for every one of those, there
Speaker 2: are dozens and dozens and dozens who have the opposite regrets.
Speaker 2: So that's one of the four core regrets, boldness regrets,
Speaker 2: if only I'd taken the chance, And let's.
Speaker 1: Stick into boldness of it, because this one's really interesting.
Speaker 1: You talk about the fact that when we're in our
Speaker 1: twenties right, what we would call in action regrets, so
Speaker 1: things that we didn't do and action regrets regretting things
Speaker 1: we did do are roughly the same in number, but
Speaker 1: by the time we hit fifty, in action regrets are
Speaker 1: twice as likely to be felt than before. And help
Speaker 1: me understand why it is that as we age, we
Speaker 1: increase the ratio of the things we regret not having
Speaker 1: done than the things we have done.
Speaker 2: I think it's an interesting question. I'm not sure we
Speaker 2: know the full answer to that, but I think that
Speaker 2: we can speculate certain kinds of action regrets. We can
Speaker 2: find the silver lining it. We can do it. At least,
Speaker 2: we can say, oh, I shouldn't have moved to Houston,
Speaker 2: but at least there is in a state in cup techs,
Speaker 2: so you can find the silver lining in that. The
Speaker 2: other thing is that certain kinds of action regrets we
Speaker 2: can undo. If we fullied somebody, maybe we can make
Speaker 2: amends and make an apology. If we've stolen from somebody,
Speaker 2: maybe we can make restitution. I have one guy who
Speaker 2: I wrote about who got a tattoo that said no regrets,
Speaker 2: decided that he didn't like it and decided to have
Speaker 2: his tattoo removed. And so we can remove our tattoos.
Speaker 2: So with action regrets, we can make peace with them
Speaker 2: at some level. We can at least them, we can
Speaker 2: undo them. In action regrets, you can't do that. You
Speaker 2: typically can't find it at least, and there's nothing to undo,
Speaker 2: could you haven't done anything? So I think that's a
Speaker 2: big part of it.
Speaker 1: You know, in the research on aging, like Laura Carsonsen's work,
Speaker 1: for example, she finds that as we get older, we
Speaker 1: tend to have fewer anxieties because there's just less future
Speaker 1: to be anxious about. And I do wonder if there's
Speaker 1: a parallel here, which is, as we get older, you know,
Speaker 1: the range of opportunity that lies ahead for us that
Speaker 1: we could potentially explore diminishes pretty considerably, and so that
Speaker 1: might make us lust after past moments when we actually
Speaker 1: did have opportunity but didn't take advantage of it.
Speaker 2: I think that's very plausible. I think that we do
Speaker 2: have a sense that many of us, not all of us,
Speaker 2: have a sense that when we're young, there are boundless opportunities,
Speaker 2: and then at some point, relatively early in our lives,
Speaker 2: we get a bracing reality check.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've talked about boldness regrets. Do you mind
Speaker 1: talking about the three other categories?
Speaker 2: Sure? So one category is what I call foundation regrets.
Speaker 2: These are regrets that people have where they made small
Speaker 2: decisions or small mistakes early in life, no single one
Speaker 2: of which is consequential, but that accumulate into nasty consequences.
Speaker 2: So a very common one would be I spent too
Speaker 2: much and save too little, and now I'm broke. Now
Speaker 2: I have no money. And the same thing was true
Speaker 2: with health. You know, I didn't exercise, I didn't eat right,
Speaker 2: and I it's not like for one day, I did
Speaker 2: that for years and now I am in ill health
Speaker 2: or woefully out of shape. So foundation regrets are if
Speaker 2: only I'd done the work. Moral regrets are if only
Speaker 2: I'd done the right thing. So you're at a juncture
Speaker 2: in your life. You can take the high road, you
Speaker 2: can take the low road. And when people take the
Speaker 2: low road, not everybody, but most of everybody regrets it
Speaker 2: because I think most of us are good and want
Speaker 2: to be good. And in that category, we had a
Speaker 2: lot of regrets about marital infidelity, a lot of regrets,
Speaker 2: a huge number of regrets about bullying. I couldn't believe
Speaker 2: how many regrets we had about bullying. Morality ends up
Speaker 2: being a little bit more complicated because people have different
Speaker 2: moral taste buds. And then finally are connection regrets. These
Speaker 2: are regrets about relationships, and not only romantic relationships, but
Speaker 2: all the relationships in our lives, and what often happens
Speaker 2: is that these relationships that were intact come apart. And
Speaker 2: what I found is that many of these relationships come
Speaker 2: apart in very uncinematic ways. They just drift apart. And
Speaker 2: what happens is that one person wants to reach out.
Speaker 2: They say, oh, man, I was such good friends with
Speaker 2: Maya ten years ago. I really should reach out and
Speaker 2: say hi to her. And then we say, oh man, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's been ten years. That's going to be so awkward,
Speaker 2: and besides, they don't want to hear it. And besides,
Speaker 2: Maya doesn't want to hear for me, she doesn't care.
Speaker 2: And then we wait another few years and then it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: and now it's thirteen years. Oh man, it's even more
Speaker 2: awkward to reach out. That ends up being a colossal
Speaker 2: mistake on both fronts, because it's when we do reach out,
Speaker 2: it's way less awkward than we think, and the other
Speaker 2: side almost always cares.
Speaker 1: I like that there's a signaling here, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: these categories that you've talked about, because we tend to
Speaker 1: regret them. What that teaches us is that those are
Speaker 1: the things we care most about in life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that for me, a personal
Speaker 2: puzzle I was trying to resolve, was, you know, reading
Speaker 2: through all these regrets every day here in my office,
Speaker 2: why was I not more bummed out? I got these
Speaker 2: people opening up their hearts and telling me the mistakes
Speaker 2: that they made and how terrible they feel about it.
Speaker 2: Why did they not bring me down? And I finally,
Speaker 2: over time, realized that when people tell you what they
Speaker 2: regret the most, they're telling you what they value the most.
Speaker 2: So it is, as you say, this very powerful signal.
Speaker 2: If you think about all the decisions that any of
Speaker 2: us made today or yesterday, or this week or last week.
Speaker 2: I don't remember half of it. I don't remember most
Speaker 2: of them. But if you remember a decision or an
Speaker 2: indecision from a year ago, or five years ago or
Speaker 2: ten years ago, and it bugs you still, you got
Speaker 2: to pay attention to that. Man, that's a very strong signal.
Speaker 2: That is an airhorn screaming in your psyche telling you
Speaker 2: pay attention to me. It's telling me something, and it's
Speaker 2: what's telling us is this is a signal about what
Speaker 2: you value, and it's a signal about how to do
Speaker 2: better in the future.
Speaker 1: So let's see Dan. I'm listening to this episode and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself, Okay, Dan's convinced me I need
Speaker 1: to engage with my regret more proactively and also in
Speaker 1: this productive way. What are some strategies that you could
Speaker 1: give me the listener for taking a regret and actually
Speaker 1: turning it into something productive.
Speaker 2: When you have a regret, treat yourself with kindness rather
Speaker 2: than contempt. Recognize that your regrets are part of the
Speaker 2: human condition. That's a big part of it too. We
Speaker 2: have this kind of pluralistic ignorance where we think, oh
Speaker 2: my god, I'm the only person who regrets bullying. I'm
Speaker 2: the only person who regrets being too timid in my choices,
Speaker 2: when in fact, I got a database of nearly twenty
Speaker 2: two thousand people with your exact same regret. Another thing
Speaker 2: that we should do. I think there's a very strong
Speaker 2: argument to make for disclosing our regrets, even if it's
Speaker 2: only in private writing. I actually think the power of disclosure,
Speaker 2: even if we don't disclose it publicly, is a conversion process,
Speaker 2: is in some ways a transmutation process, because emotions, by
Speaker 2: their nature are blobby, They're abstractions, and that's what makes
Speaker 2: positive emotions feel good. It's also what makes negative emotions
Speaker 2: feel bad. And when we write about our negative emotions,
Speaker 2: talk about our negative emotions, we convert these abstractions into
Speaker 2: concrete words, and those are just less menacing and they
Speaker 2: can begin the sense making process and then we move forward.
Speaker 2: It's very important to draw a lesson, to extract a
Speaker 2: lesson from our scrops, from our regrets. The challenge is
Speaker 2: that we're terrible at solving our own problems. We're too
Speaker 2: caught up in the details. And I actually like the
Speaker 2: technique of using our crazily amazing brains ability for time
Speaker 2: travel is essentially having a consultation with the you of
Speaker 2: ten years from now and asking the U of ten
Speaker 2: years from now what you should do, because I think
Speaker 2: we can make a pretty safe bet what the U
Speaker 2: of ten years and now is going to care about
Speaker 2: I want to?
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think I have a broader question, just
Speaker 1: generally about regret, which is why it is we put
Speaker 1: so much weight on regrets that we may feel later
Speaker 1: in life. So there's this proverbial deathbed regret, and people
Speaker 1: often say, well, you know, Dan, when you're on your deathbed,
Speaker 1: are you really going to regret A, aren't you going
Speaker 1: to regret B instead? And that calculus can really influence
Speaker 1: our present day decisions. And I want to challenge this
Speaker 1: thinking a bit because it seems to be grounded in
Speaker 1: the idea that the values we express at the end
Speaker 1: of our lives somehow represent a truer or more accurate
Speaker 1: expression of either what we care about or what we
Speaker 1: ought to care about. Right it's prescriptive, and this way
Speaker 1: of thinking implies that there is just one constant, true
Speaker 1: set of things that we ought to care about. And
Speaker 1: another way to think about it, a different framing is
Speaker 1: that we are people whose values naturally change and evolve
Speaker 1: over time. And if you take that view, then there's
Speaker 1: no obvious reason why we should privilege the values of
Speaker 1: future Maya over present day Maya.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and so this is one reason why there's a
Speaker 2: reason that I say ten years and not deathbed. I
Speaker 2: am very skeptical of death that regrets. I'm skeptical of
Speaker 2: the accuracy of the reporting of them because it's purely anecdotal.
Speaker 2: The numbers are not very vast. And also I don't
Speaker 2: think that what we're thinking in a moment of fog
Speaker 2: when we're about to perish from the Earth is necessarily
Speaker 2: the clearest and highest expression of what we value exactly
Speaker 2: as you say, well.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm already super happy if we're just constraining the
Speaker 1: timeframe with which we view the future. So I'm on
Speaker 1: board with the like ten years from now, maya. The
Speaker 1: death fed stuff just drives me nuts, because, like you said,
Speaker 1: in our final moments, there's a lot of factors that
Speaker 1: are weighing into what we say we regret, what we
Speaker 1: think we should be saying about what we regret in
Speaker 1: order to maybe pass by people who live on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's lots of things.
Speaker 2: That's a very good point. That's one that I hadn't
Speaker 2: thought about, is that there could be a kind of
Speaker 2: performative side of it. There could be a kind of
Speaker 2: oh my god, I got to get you know, I
Speaker 2: got to get my last argument in here before the
Speaker 2: final decider decides whether I go up or down, if.
Speaker 1: You have kind of apologize or maake right with so
Speaker 1: and so right right. But I just think it's important
Speaker 1: in general, as much as we can value regret, to
Speaker 1: remember it is also just a feeling. Regret is a
Speaker 1: feeling that can be transient and can pass. And it's
Speaker 1: not always something. I say this only Dan, because regret
Speaker 1: often gets this trump card. It's like, we're making a decision,
Speaker 1: We're trying to weigh costs and benefits. I don't really
Speaker 1: want a kid right now, but I think I might
Speaker 1: regret not having a kid later, And the minute our
Speaker 1: society here's the word regret, it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: then go do the thing right And so I just
Speaker 1: want to make sure we're not elevating it to too
Speaker 1: important a category, because, like a lot of other negative emotions,
Speaker 1: it is just a feeling.
Speaker 2: I think that's a fair point. And the other thing
Speaker 2: empirically is that there's a decent amount of evidence showing
Speaker 2: that if we over index on our anticipated regret, we
Speaker 2: end up making suboptimal decisions. We can end up making
Speaker 2: decisions that actually are a little bit more risk averse, because,
Speaker 2: as Dan Gilbert says, we end up buying emotional insurance
Speaker 2: we don't need. And so anticipating regret is not a
Speaker 2: perfect decision making tool. This is why I think there's
Speaker 2: some nuance in it. I think one should anticipate what
Speaker 2: I think most people will regret in the future, but
Speaker 2: actually chill out on most stuff, and also recognize that
Speaker 2: some regrets are ephemeral.
Speaker 1: I'd love to end on a personal note. Dan, I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you know you've been in the world of regret for
Speaker 1: I imagine several years now, right researching for this book,
Speaker 1: writing this book. What is something that you had long
Speaker 1: regretted or you do still regret, but that you now
Speaker 1: see through a different lens.
Speaker 2: I felt pretty bad about certain regrets that I had
Speaker 2: with regard to kindness, and I never talked about them,
Speaker 2: but I had them there. I harbor these regrets about kindness.
Speaker 2: Now it's a moral regret, although it's a peculiar kind
Speaker 2: of moral regret because my moral regrets about kindness were
Speaker 2: regrets of inaction, not action. So they're not regret threats
Speaker 2: about bullying people, but their regrets about being in situations
Speaker 2: where people were not being treated well, where people were
Speaker 2: being left out or being made fun of, or being excluded.
Speaker 2: And I didn't participate in that, but I saw it,
Speaker 2: and I knew it was wrong, and I didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: And I have to say that has bugged me so
Speaker 2: much for so long, to the point where I kind
Speaker 2: of sublimated it. I said, ok I don't want to
Speaker 2: deal with this. And one of the things about reading
Speaker 2: through all these regrets is that I started seeing that
Speaker 2: regret among other people, and I've started in a weird
Speaker 2: way that made me feel better. It's like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm not the only person who did this. And the
Speaker 2: other thing that it did is that if you listen
Speaker 2: to that, Okay, so this is a good example of
Speaker 2: how you process a regret. So I could I could
Speaker 2: feel that that kindness regret and I could say, no regrets,
Speaker 2: it's in the past. I'm going to look forward. I
Speaker 2: don't want to be negative. That's a bad idea. I
Speaker 2: could also say, oh my god, earlier in my life
Speaker 2: I wasn't as kind as I could be. I am
Speaker 2: just an wretched, awful, worthless individual. I am this the worst.
Speaker 2: That's a bad idea too. What I could do instead
Speaker 2: is like, wow, twenty five years later, this is bugging me.
Speaker 2: This is something I need to pay attention to. And
Speaker 2: what it's teaching me is it's clarifying what I value
Speaker 2: in ways that I didn't realize. I guess I value
Speaker 2: kindness more than I expected, and it's instructing me on
Speaker 2: how to do better. So that when you know, I
Speaker 2: try as much as I can when people are being
Speaker 2: excluded and way small or large to say something, to
Speaker 2: do something to pull people in. I'm not saying I'm
Speaker 2: perfect in doing that, but that spear of regret is
Speaker 2: prompting me to do better in the future because I
Speaker 2: don't want to feel that feeling again, and that feeling
Speaker 2: is telling me what I value and I need to
Speaker 2: pay attention to that.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my
Speaker 1: conversation with Dan Pink, I recommend you check out another
Speaker 1: conversation I had on the show with Susan Messing. Susan
Speaker 1: and her partner Michael McCarthy were a beloved couple in
Speaker 1: the Chicago comedy scene. Michael passed away from cancer in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. As part of Susan's grieving process, she began
Speaker 1: to sift through the fifty or so boxes of his
Speaker 1: writing that he had left behind. What followed was a
Speaker 1: complicated grief. We'll link to that episode in the show notes.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 1: our showrunner Tyler Green. Our story editor Kate Parkinson Morgan,
Speaker 1: our sound engineer Andrew Vastola, and our associate producer Sarah McCrae.
Speaker 1: Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 1: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker See you next week.
Speaker 2: And what they did is they told kids a story
Speaker 2: about two boys who lived near each other and same
Speaker 2: neighborhood and each day rode their bikes to work. So
Speaker 2: one kid's name was Bob. Oh, sorry, one kid?
Speaker 1: Is it to work or school? Because they're little kids, right, okay,
Speaker 1: just like these are some very advanced kids you've got, Yes.
Speaker 2: Indeed, indeed they're they're they're child actress. And so this
Speaker 2: is a this is taking place in Hollywood, and they're
Speaker 2: going to quickly descend into drug addiction and despair. But
Speaker 2: first they're going to ride their big