Living without regret is no way to live and we need to look back and examine the pain of the past, says best-selling author Daniel Pink.
After surveying thousands of people around the world, including New Zealand, about their regrets, he says he's learned how to embrace it and learn from it.
Photo: supplied
His new book is called The Power of Regret: How looking Backward Moves Us Forward.
People who say they have no regrets are deluding themselves, he told Jesse Mulligan.
“The truth of the matter is that everybody has regrets. And that's not a philosophical concept, that's what 60 years of science tells us.”
Neuroscience says that the only people who don't have regrets are five-year-olds, people with brain damage and sociopaths, he says.
Regret is one of the most common emotions and most common negative emotion that we have, he says.
“You have to wonder why does something that makes us feel bad persist and is so ubiquitous? And the answer to that is very simple. It's useful if we deal with it right.”
The notion of relentlessly focusing on the positive is unhealthy, he says.
“That's just not a blueprint for healthy, effective living. It's actually a really bad idea.
“What we should be doing is not ignore our regrets and not wallow in them either but think about them and do something about them.”
He believes there are strong evolutionary reasons for regrets.
“Imagine a person who was incapable of experiencing fear, that person is not going to live very long, right?
“If you have too much fear you're hobbled. But if you have no fear, you're not going to escape the burning building.”
A “huge amount of social science evidence” suggests if we deal with our regrets properly the evolutionary purpose of them is vast, Pink says.
“It helps us become better decision-makers, it helps us become better problem solvers, and it helps us find greater meaning in our life.”
Studies of Olympic medallists give us insights into the nature of regret, he says.
Photo: Supplied
“In general gold medallists are ecstatic - understandably they just won the gold medal. Bronze medallists are almost as ecstatic and silver medallists are rarely ecstatic at all.”
This stems from our ability to engage in counterfactual thinking, Pink says, of which there are two kinds – upward and downward.
“The silver medallist is doing an upward counterfactual, ‘if only I had pumped my legs a little faster, I’d have skated across the finish line before that other person had gotten the gold medal’.
“The bronze medallist says at least I got a bronze rather than that schmo who finished fourth and is going back from Beijing with no hardware.”
These counterfactuals have different effects on emotion and consequently performance, he says.
“The “if onlys” upward counterfactuals make us feel worse, but they can make us do better. That's what regret is, at least these downward counterfactuals make us feel better, but they actually don't do a lot to make us do any better.
“What's interesting is that these “if onlys”, they hurt, but they also instruct and regret hurts and instructs. And as much as we want the instruction without the hurt, it doesn't work that way. The hurt is actually what triggers the instruction.”
Pink conducted a regret survey and asked more than 15,000 people from 105 countries, including New Zealand, questions about their regrets.
He found most regrets fell into four categories – if only I’d done the work, boldness regrets, moral regrets and connection regrets.
If only I’d done the work is all about making bad decisions early in life, he says.
“These are people who regret not working hard enough in school or university and as a consequence, getting on the wrong trajectory.
Or saving too little and spending too much.”
Boldness regrets are the if only I’d asked, spoken up taken a risk-type regrets, he says.
“They're the same regret deep down, which is, if only I taken the chance, you're at a juncture, you can play it safe, you can take the chance.
“And it's surprising how many people regret not taking the chance and how few seem to regret taking the chance. And even if it doesn't work out, they at least they know.”
Moral regrets are about lamenting not doing the right thing, he says.
Connection regrets are regrets about relationships that should have been intact or were intact, that somehow come apart, he says
“I drifted apart from this friend and I want to reach out but it's gonna be really awkward to reach out and they're not gonna care. And so, it drifts apart further, and then sometimes the door closes. And so, connection regrets are if only I'd reached out.”
Nevertheless, to err is to be human, he says, and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about it.
“Treat yourself with the same kindness you would treat somebody else. And if you do that, in response to your regrets, it opens the way to making sense of your regret and extracting a lesson from it.”
