The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward(3)

Amber Chase, who was thirty-five when we talked over Zoom one evening, told me, “There’s so many wrong turns you can take in life.” One of hers was her first marriage. At age twenty-five, she married a man who, it turned out, “had a lot of issues.” The union was often unhappy, occasionally tumultuous. One day, with zero notice, her husband disappeared. “He got on a plane and left . . . and I didn’t know where he was for two weeks.” When he finally called, he told her, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not coming home.” In a blink, the marriage was over. If she had to do it over again, would Chase have married the guy? No way. But that unfortunate move propelled her journey to the happy marriage she has today.

Chase’s tattoo even winks at the flimsiness of the philosophy it claims to endorse. Hers doesn’t say “No Regrets.” It says “No Ragrets”—with the second word intentionally misspelled. The choice was an homage to the movie We’re the Millers, an otherwise forgettable 2013 comedy in which Jason Sudeikis plays David Clark, a small-time marijuana dealer forced to assemble a fake family (a wife and two teenage kids) to work off a debt to a big-time dealer. In one scene, David meets Scottie P., a sketchy young fellow who’s arrived on a motorcycle to take David’s “daughter” on a date.

Scottie P. wears a cruddy white tank top that reveals several tattoos, including one that runs along his collarbone and reads, in blocky letters, No Ragrets. David sits him down for a quick talk, which begins with a tour of Scottie P.’s tattoos and leads to this exchange:

    DAVID



(pointing to the “No Ragrets” tattoo)

    What is the one right there?

SCOTTIE P.

Oh, this? That’s my credo. No regrets.

DAVID



(his expression skeptical)

    How about that. You have no regrets?

SCOTTIE P.

Nope . . .

DAVID

Like . . . not even a single letter?

SCOTTIE P.

No, I can’t think of one.



If Scottie P. ever does muster second thoughts about the words encircling his neck, he wouldn’t be alone. About one of every five people who get tattoos (presumably including people whose tattoos read “No Regrets”) eventually regret their decision, which is why the tattoo removal business is a $100 million-a-year industry in the United States alone.[6] Chase, though, doesn’t regret her tattoo, perhaps because most people will never see it. On that cold Calgary Sunday in 2016, she chose to locate her tattoo on her rear end.





THE POSITIVE POWER OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS


In the early 1950s, a University of Chicago economics graduate student named Harry Markowitz conceived an idea so elementary it now seems obvious—yet so revolutionary it earned him a Nobel Prize.[7] Markowitz’s big idea came to be known as “modern portfolio theory.” What he figured out—if I may oversimplify in the service of getting on with the story—were the mathematics that underlie the adage “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Before Markowitz came along, many investors believed the route to riches was to invest in one or two high-potential stocks. After all, a few stocks often produced humongous returns. Choose those winners and you’d make a fortune. Under this strategy, you’d end up picking lots of duds. But, hey, that’s just the way investing worked. It’s risky. Markowitz showed that instead of following this recipe, investors could reduce their risk, and still produce healthy gains, by diversifying. Invest in a basket of stocks, not just one. Broaden the bets across a variety of industries. Investors wouldn’t win big on every pick, but over time they’d make a lot more money with a lot less risk. If you happen to have any savings parked in index funds or ETFs, modern portfolio theory is the reason why.

Powerful as Markowitz’s insight is, we often neglect applying its logic to other parts of our lives. For example, human beings also hold what amounts to a portfolio of emotions. Some of these emotions are positive—for example, love, pride, and awe. Others are negative—sadness, frustration, or shame. In general, we tend to overvalue one category and undervalue the other. Heeding others’ advice and our own intuitions, we stuff our portfolios with positive emotions and sell off the negative ones. But this approach to emotions—to jettison the negative and pile on the positive—is as misguided as the approach to investing that prevailed before modern portfolio theory.

Positive emotions are essential, of course. We’d be lost without them. It’s important to look on the bright side, to think cheerful thoughts, to detect light in darkness. Optimism is associated with better physical health. Emotions like joy, gratitude, and hope significantly boost our well-being.[8] We need plenty of positive emotions in our portfolio. They should outnumber the negative ones.[9] Yet overweighting our emotional investments with too much positivity brings its own dangers. The imbalance can inhibit learning, stymie growth, and limit our potential.

That’s because negative emotions are essential, too. They help us survive. Fear propels us out of a burning building and makes us step gingerly to avoid a snake. Disgust shields us from poisons and makes us recoil from bad behavior. Anger alerts us to threats and provocations from others and sharpens our sense of right and wrong. Too much negative emotion, of course, is debilitating. But too little is also destructive.[10] A partner takes advantage of us again and again; that snake sinks its teeth into our leg. You and I and our upright, bipedal, large-brained sisters and brothers wouldn’t be here today if we lacked the capacity, occasionally but systematically, to feel bad.