STEP 1. UNDO IT
Suppose that without provocation, you slapped your best friend in the face or said something snarky about the deceased to his relatives at his funeral. You’d probably regret it. Most of us would. But only an entertainment executive would see within these indiscretions the seeds of a television show.
Het Spijt Me was a program that began airing on Dutch television in 1993 and continued to run in various iterations for the next twenty years. The basic format of the show （in English, the title is I Am Sorry） always involved two protagonists. The first was the person with a regret—say, the one who’d smacked her bestie. The second was the person who’d been wronged—the individual on the receiving end of said smack.
In the original version of the show, the regretter, sitting on a couch, talk-show-style, before a studio audience, would tell Het Spijt Me’s host about her regret. Then together they’d watch footage of the show’s producers tracking down the regrettee, hearing the story from her point of view, and asking if she’d accept an apology. It being Holland, flowers were always involved.
If the regrettee accepted the apology, she’d stride through a pair of sliding doors and greet the regretter on stage. （In subsequent versions of the program, the regretter waited down the street from the regrettee’s home.） As amends were made, tears were shed and hugs exchanged.
Three Dutch researchers, led by social psychologist Marcel Zeelenberg, a leading scholar of regret, analyzed two seasons of Het Spijt Me to determine which regrets people sought to reverse. They found that on the show, as well as in the nontelevised parts of life, people are much more likely to undo regrets of action than regrets of inaction.[1] We’re more apt to repair what we did than what we didn’t do.
The reasons are many. As we saw in Chapters 8 and 9, action regrets typically arise from concrete incidents and elicit “hot” emotions that we respond to quickly. Inaction regrets, by contrast, are often more abstract and elicit less immediately intense emotions.
What’s more, many inaction regrets are inherently difficult to undo. If in my twenties I regret not studying hard enough in high school, I can’t reenroll in eleventh grade. My only option is to focus on the future.
But with regrets of action, I still have the chance to recalibrate the present—to press Ctrl+Z on my existential keyboard.[*] For instance, with moral regrets, which often involve actions like bullying a weaker kid, cheating on a spouse, or insulting coworkers, one form of undoing is to apologize. Apologies, wrote the great sociologist Erving Goffman, are “admissions of blameworthiness and regret for an undesirable event that allow actors to try to obtain a pardon from audiences.”[2] If that pardon is granted, the emotional and moral debt of the past is reduced, which at least partially rebalances the ledger.
When we undo what we’ve done, we improve our current situation. That helps. But undoing a regret is not quite the same as erasing it. Jeff Bosley told me that even after many tattoo removal sessions, the words on his left arm are impossible to read, but they haven’t fully disappeared. “It almost looks like a light bruise now,” he says.
So, to address regrets of action, begin by asking yourself these questions:
If I’ve harmed others, as is often the case with moral regrets and sometimes the case with connection regrets, can I make amends through an apology or some form of emotional or material restitution?
If I’ve harmed myself, as is the case for many foundation regrets and some connection regrets, can I fix the mistake? For example, can I begin paying down debt or logging a few more hours at work? Can I reach out immediately to someone whose connection I severed?
If the action regret can be undone, try to do that—even if a light physical or metaphysical bruise remains. But if it can’t be undone, fear not. You’ve got another possibility.
STEP 2. AT LEAST IT
The other way to address the present is not to repair our previous actions but to recast the way we think about them. Let me offer an example from my own life.
Thirty years ago, nearly fresh out of college, I went to law school. I regret it. It wasn’t a calamity. It was just a poor decision. If only I’d made a wiser choice, perhaps by waiting longer or by choosing an entirely different trajectory, I could have devoted those years to endeavors more fulfilling and better for the world—and I would have struggled less in the early years of my working life. But I also met my wife in law school, which was a glorious triumph for my well-being. I can’t undo an action regret like this. But one way to ease its sting is to switch from If Only to At Least. Going to law school was a mistake—but at least I met my wife.