Another view: Feeling is for feeling. According to this position, emotions are the essence of our being. Talk about them. Vent about them. Luxuriate in them. “Always trust your feelings,” this perspective says.[23] They are to be honored—sat upon a throne and revered. Emotions are the one real truth. They are all there is; all the rest is commentary.
For negative emotions, especially regret, this approach is even more perilous than the Panglossian strategy of delusion-through-elusion. Too much regret is dangerous, sometimes devastating. It can lead to rumination, which severely degrades well-being, and to the regurgitation of past mistakes, which can inhibit forward progress. Excessive regret is linked to an array of mental health problems—most prominently depression and anxiety, but also post-traumatic stress disorder.[24] “Individuals who ruminate on their regrets are more likely to report reduced life satisfaction and to experience difficulty coping with negative life events,” concludes one paper.[25] This is especially true when regrets become repetitive. Repetitive thought can worsen regret, and regret can exacerbate repetitive thought, creating a descending spiral of pain.[26] Rumination doesn’t clarify and instruct. It muddies and distracts. When feeling is only for feeling, we build a chamber from which it’s difficult to escape.
When it comes to regret, a third view is healthier: Feeling is for thinking. Don’t dodge emotions. Don’t wallow in them either. Confront them. Use them as a catalyst for future behavior. If thinking is for doing, feeling can help us think.[27]
This approach to regret is akin to the modern science of stress. Stress. It sounds bad. But stress, we now know, is not a single, unmalleable entity. Much of how it affects us, even what it fundamentally is, depends on our individual mindset.[28] If we think of stress as permanent and debilitating, that tugs us in one direction. If we think of it as temporary and enhancing, that leads us in a different direction. Chronic, omnipresent stress is poisonous. But occasional, acute stress is helpful, even essential.
Regret can work in a similar way. For example, framing regret as a judgment of our underlying character—who we are—can be destructive. Framing it as an evaluation of a particular behavior in a particular situation—what we did—can be instructive. Suppose you forgot a loved one’s birthday. A regret about being a clueless, uncaring person won’t help. A regret about not keeping important dates in one’s computer calendar or not regularly expressing gratitude to relatives is useful. Ample research shows that people who accept, rather than judge, their negative experiences end up faring better.[29]
Likewise, framing regret as an opportunity rather than a threat helps us transform it—so that it operates as a sharp stick rather than a leaden blanket. Regrets that hurt deeply but dissolve quickly lead to more effective problem solving and sturdier emotional health.[30] When regret smothers, it can weigh us down. But when it pokes, it can lift us up.
The key is to use regret to catalyze a chain reaction: the heart signals the head, the head initiates action. All regrets aggravate. Productive regrets aggravate, then activate. The chart on the next page explains the process. It also demonstrates the key point: your response determines your result. When you feel the spear of regret, you have three possible responses. You can conclude that feeling is for ignoring—and bury or minimize it. That leads to delusion. You can conclude that feeling is for feeling—and wallow in it. That leads to despair. Or you can conclude that feeling is for thinking—and address it. What does this regret tell you? What instructions does it offer for making better decisions? For improving your performance? For deepening your sense of meaning?
Three options for responding to regret
? 2022, Daniel H. Pink
When feeling is for thinking, and thinking is for doing, regret is for making us better.
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In the fifteenth century, or so the story goes, a Japanese shogun named Ashikaga Yoshimasa dropped a Chinese tea bowl, which broke into several pieces when it hit the floor. He sent the damaged bowl back to China to be repaired. But what he received in return months later was an ungainly mess of an object, the bowl’s pieces held together by bulky metal staples. There’s got to be a better way, he thought, and he asked local craftspeople to find it.
They chose to repair the pottery by sanding down the edges of the broken pieces and gluing them back together using lacquer mixed with gold. The artisans’ goal wasn’t to faithfully reproduce the original work, or even to conceal its newly acquired flaws. It was to transform the piece into something better. Their work established a new—and now centuries-old—art form called kintsugi. “By the 17th century,” according to one report, “kintsugi was such a fashionable phenomenon that some people were known to smash their tea bowls on purpose in order to embed them with golden-veined repairs.”？[31]