With these two massive surveys as the base, the seven chapters of Part Two examine what people truly regret. Most academic research on the topic has categorized regrets by the domains of people’s lives—work, family, health, relationships, finances, and so on. But beneath this surface I found a deep structure of regret that transcends these domains. Nearly all regrets fall into four core categories—foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. This deep structure, previously hidden from view, offers new insights into the human condition as well as a pathway to a good life.
Part Three, “Regret Remade,” describes how to turn the negative emotion of regret into a positive instrument for improving your life. You’ll learn how to undo and reframe some regrets to adjust the present. You’ll also learn a straightforward, three-step process for transforming other regrets in ways that prepare you for the future. And I’ll explore how to anticipate regret, a behavioral medicine that can help us make wiser decisions but that should also come with a warning label.
By the time you reach the end of the book, you’ll have a new understanding of our most misunderstood emotion, a set of techniques for thriving in a complicated world, and a deeper sense of what makes you tick and what makes life worth living.
“I regret pawning my flute. I loved my flute in high school, but when I got to college and was broke I pawned it for thirty dollars and never had the money to go back and get it. My mother worked so hard to pay for that instrument when I was in beginner band and I loved it so much. It was my prized possession. I know it sounds silly because it’s a ‘thing,’ but it represented so much more—my mother supporting me and making payments on an instrument we couldn’t afford, hours and hours of practice learning to play, happy memories with my closest friends in marching band. Losing it is something I can’t change and I have a recurring dream about it.”
Female, 41, Alabama
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“I regret rushing to marry my wife. Now, three kids later, it is difficult to go back in time, and divorce would break up and hurt my kids too much.”
Male, 32, Israel
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“When I was a child, my mother would send me to a small local store for a few grocery items. I frequently would steal a candy bar when the grocer wasn’t looking. That’s bothered me for about sixty years.”
Female, 71, New Jersey
2.
Why Regret Makes Us Human
What is this thing we call regret?
For a sensation so easy to recognize, regret is surprisingly difficult to define. Scientists, theologians, poets, and physicians have all tried. It is “the unpleasant feeling associated with some action or inaction a person has taken which has led to a state of affairs that he or she wishes were different,” say the psychotherapists.[1] “Regret is created by a comparison between the actual outcome and that outcome that would have occurred had the decision maker made a different choice,” say the management theorists.[2] It is “a feeling of unpleasure associated with a thought of the past, together with the identification of an object and the announcement of an inclination to behave in a certain way in the future,” say the philosophers.[3]
If the precise definition feels elusive, the reason is revealing: regret is better understood less as a thing and more as a process.
TIME TRAVELING AND STORYTELLING
This process begins with two abilities—two unique capacities of our minds. We can visit the past and the future in our heads. And we can tell the story of something that never actually happened. Human beings are both seasoned time travelers and skilled fabulists. These two capabilities twine together to form the cognitive double helix that gives life to regret.
Consider this regret, one of the many thousands submitted in the World Regret Survey:
I wish I had followed my desire to get a graduate degree in my chosen field instead of giving in to my dad’s wishes and then dropping out of that program. My life would be on a different trajectory now. It would be more satisfying, fulfilling, and would have given me a greater sense of accomplishment.
In just a few words, this fifty-two-year-old woman from Virginia pulls off a stunning feat of cerebral agility. Discontent with the present, she mentally returns to the past—decades earlier, when she was a young woman contemplating her educational and professional path. Once there, she negates what really happened—giving in to her father’s wishes. And she substitutes an alternative: she enrolls in the graduate program she prefers. Then she hops back in her time machine and hurtles forward. But because she’s reconfigured the past, the present she encounters when she arrives is vastly different from the one she left moments earlier. In this newly remodeled world, she’s satisfied, fulfilled, and accomplished.