The most powerful and promising alternative—and the second step in the regret-reckoning process—was pioneered nearly twenty years ago by University of Texas psychologist Kristin Neff. It is called “self-compassion.”
Self-compassion emerged in part from Neff’s recognition that when we stumble or fail, we treat ourselves more harshly than we would ever treat friends, family, or even strangers in the same predicament. That’s counterproductive, she has shown. Rather than belittling or berating ourselves during moments of frustration and failure, we’re better off extending ourselves the same warmth and understanding we’d offer another person. Self-compassion begins by replacing searing judgment with basic kindness. It doesn’t ignore our screwups or neglect our weaknesses. It simply recognizes that “being imperfect, making mistakes, and encountering life difficulties is part of the shared human experience.”[15] By normalizing negative experiences, we neutralize them. Self-compassion encourages us to take the middle road in handling negative emotions—not suppressing them, but not exaggerating or overidentifying with them either.
Self-compassion is also something that people can learn.[16] And when they master it, the benefits are considerable. Research by Neff and others has found that self-compassion is associated with increased optimism, happiness, curiosity, and wisdom;[17] enhanced personal initiative and emotional intelligence;[18] greater mental toughness;[19] and deeper social connections.[20] It can protect against unproductive mind-wandering,[21] and help students cope with academic failure.[22] It also correlates with less depression, anxiety, stress, perfectionism, and shame[23]—and reduces symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.[24] A 2019 meta-analysis of more than ninety studies showed that self-compassion can even promote better physical health, including improved immune function.[25]
In a sense, self-compassion delivers the benefits of self-esteem without its drawbacks. It can insulate us from the debilitating consequences of self-criticism, while short-circuiting self-esteem’s need to feel good through vanity and comparison.
Its powers are especially evident with regret. In 2016, psychologists Jia Wei Zhang, now at the University of Memphis, and Serena Chen of the University of California, Berkeley, explored the effect that self-compassion has in helping people overcome and learn from their regrets. The researchers recruited several hundred participants and asked each of them to list their biggest regret.
Then they randomly divided participants into three groups. One group wrote a letter to themselves about their regret “from a compassionate and understanding perspective.” The second group wrote a letter to themselves about the regret “from a perspective of validating your positive （rather than negative） qualities.” The third group, which served as the control, wrote about a hobby they enjoyed.
The people who addressed their regret with self-compassion were more likely to change their behavior than those who approached their regret with self-esteem. Even this modest writing intervention led people to plan ways to avoid the behavior in the future—regardless of whether the regret involved action or inaction. “Self-compassion appears to orient people to embrace their regret,” Zhang and Chen write, “and this willingness to remain in contact with their regret may afford people the opportunity to discover avenues for personal improvement.”[26]
For a regret like Cheryl’s, self-compassion doesn’t mean exonerating herself for not making more of an effort to maintain her friendship. It means treating herself with the same graciousness she’d treat someone else who regretted a splintered friendship. It means “remaining in contact” with the regret, as Zhang and Chen put it, but not making the dissolved friendship the defining feature of her character. And it means moving past language like “I really screwed up,” which Cheryl told me several times, and instead recognizing how normal, universal, and human her regret is.
A self-compassionate approach does not foster complacency, as some might fear.[27] While self-flagellation seems motivating—especially to Americans, whose mental models of motivation often begin with howling, red-faced, vein-popping football coaches—it often produces helplessness. Self-compassion, by contrast, prompts people to confront their difficulties head-on and take responsibility for them, researchers have found. As Neff writes, “Far from being an excuse for self-indulgence, therefore, self-compassion pushes us forward—and for the right reasons.”[28]
So, drawing on the science of self-compassion, the second step in transforming our regrets is to ask ourselves three questions: