The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward(50)

      Self-compassion. Normalize and neutralize the regret by treating yourself the way you’d treat a friend.



      Self-distancing. Analyze and strategize about the lessons you’ve learned from the regret by zooming out in time, in space, or through language.





To Use Anticipated Regrets in Your Decision Making:




      Satisfice on most decisions. If you are not dealing with one of the four core regrets, make a choice, don’t second-guess yourself, and move on.



      Maximize on the most crucial decisions. If you are dealing with one of the four core regrets, project yourself to a specific point in the future and ask yourself which choice will most help you build a solid foundation, take a sensible risk, do the right thing, or connect with others.





    “I regret that I wasn’t braver and that I didn’t do more to uphold our democracy!”

Female, 82, Pennsylvania

//


“I regret not being kinder to people. I was too often concerned with being ‘right’ instead of being kind.”

Male, 41, United Kingdom

//


“Not going to see Prince in concert because it was ‘a school night.’ Tons of ‘school nights’ vs. one Prince. Stupid choice.”

Female, 58, Colorado





Coda


    Regret and Redemption



When I first reviewed the data from the American Regret Project, I fixated on a pair of findings that annoyed me.

Recall that the prerequisite for experiencing regret is agency—exercising some measure of control over at least some aspects of our lives. I wondered whether the people in my sample felt this sense of dominion over their choices and actions. That is, did they believe they had free will? Or did they instead believe they weren’t actually in charge—that their lives unfolded as part of a larger plan and beyond their control?

I posed both questions.

I asked our 4,489 respondents: Do you believe that people have free will—that they largely control their decisions and choices?

A huge majority—82 percent of the population—answered “Yes.”

Score one for personal agency.

Elsewhere in the survey, I also asked: Do you believe that most things in life happen for a reason?

A huge majority—78 percent of the population—also answered “Yes.”

Score one for fate.

And let’s declare the game a tie—as well as a conceptual knot.

When I overlaid the responses to both questions, the results were confounding. Just 5 percent of the sample disagreed with both propositions. Those people said they didn’t have free will and that things didn’t happen for a reason. Call this tiny cohort the nihilists.

Meanwhile, 10 percent believed they exercised free will while rejecting the idea that events unfold for a purpose. Call this group the individualists. Another 10 percent held the reverse view. Free will was a myth and everything happened for a reason, they said. These are the fatalists.

But the largest group by far—three out of four Americans in the survey—maintained both that they have free will and that most things happen for a reason, two beliefs that seem to contradict each other.

What to call this mystifying group?

I thought about it awhile. And after careful consideration, the name I’ve chosen to assign them is . . . the humans.

Open the hood of regret, and you’ll see that the engine powering it is storytelling. Our very ability to experience regret depends on our imagination’s capacity to travel backward in time, rewrite events, and fashion a happier ending than in the original draft. Our capacity to respond to regret, to mobilize it for good, depends on our narrative skills—disclosing the tale, analyzing its components, and crafting and recrafting the next chapter.

Regret depends on storytelling. And that raises a question: In these stories, are we the creator or the character, the playwright or the performer?

As the survey respondents told me—with their seemingly contradictory, bafflingly human responses to my perfectly logical questions—we are both. If our lives are the stories we tell ourselves, regret reminds us that we have a dual role. We are both the authors and the actors. We can shape the plot but not fully. We can toss aside the script but not always. We live at the intersection of free will and circumstance.

Dan McAdams is a Northwestern University psychologist who has long argued that people forge their identities through stories. According to his research, two prototypical narratives wrestle for primacy as we make sense of our existence. One is what he calls “contamination sequences”—in which events go from good to bad. The other he calls “redemption sequences”—in which events go from bad to good.[1]

McAdams has found that people whose identities involve contamination narratives tend to be unhappy with their personal lives and unimpressive in their professional contributions. But people with narratives rooted in redemption are the opposite. They are generally more satisfied and accomplished—and they rate their lives as meaningful.

Regret offers us the ultimate redemption narrative. It is as powerful and affirming as any positive emotion. But it arrives on our doorstep wearing a disguise.