The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward(51)

Just ask Cheryl Johnson.

The regret she harbored about losing touch with her close friend Jen continued to nag at her—so much so that one morning in May 2021, she pushed past her awkwardness and decided to send Jen an email.

“I suspect it might be strange to hear from me after all these years,” the message began.

Although they hadn’t communicated in twenty-five years, Jen replied within hours. The two old friends then decided to meet for a virtual lunch to reconnect.

“I finally got to say to her that I knew I made a mistake,” Cheryl told me after that lunch, “and how much I regretted losing so many years that could have been spent watching our lives unfold together.”

Jen’s response?

“But we still have a lot of years left.”

If we think about regret like this—looking backward to move forward, seizing what we can control and putting aside what we cannot, crafting our own redemption stories—it can be liberating.

It has been for me.

One of my deeper regrets is that I wasn’t kinder to people when I was younger. I’m not sure that happened for a reason, but I am sure I can find reason in the recollection. Now I try (not always successfully) to make kindness a higher priority.

I also regret moments of dishonesty, which were not cataclysmic yet somehow remain seared in my memory. Now I try to avoid placing new items on those mental shelves by working harder to do the right thing.

I regret certain educational and professional choices that I made. But now I kick myself less for these blunders and use the lessons I learned to guide the rest of my life and to inform the advice I offer others.

I regret not forging enough close connections with friends, mentors, and colleagues. Now I try harder to reach out.

I regret not taking enough entrepreneurial and creative risks, not being as bold as my privilege allows and my heart desires. Now . . . stay tuned.

After a few years immersed in the science and experience of our most misunderstood emotion, I’ve discovered about myself what I’ve discovered about others. Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. Regret gives me hope.





Acknowledgments


I sure don’t regret having so many amazing people in my corner. Special thanks to:

Jake Morrissey for his wise (and badly needed) structural revisions to the book, for his elegant refinements of my inelegant prose, and for our regular conversations, which were always a bright spot during the dark days of the pandemic.

Team Riverhead—especially Ashley Garland, Lydia Hirt, Geoff Kloske, Jynne Dilling Martin, and Ashley Sutton—for putting their brains and muscle behind all projects Pink.

Rafe Sagalyn, literary agent extraordinaire, for his sage advice on this book and for our twenty-five-year partnership on all books.

The sixteen thousand people who completed the World Regret Survey, the nearly five thousand people whose opinions formed the American Regret Project, and the more than one hundred people who sat for (mostly virtual) interviews about (decidedly real) matters.

Joseph Hinson, Nathan Torrence, and Josh Kennedy, along with the crew at Qualtrics, for building the World Regret Survey and making it powerful and easy to use.

Fred Kofman for jump-starting my stalled mental car with a few jolts of purpose.

Cameron French for once again finding facts, fixing fictions, and being a Swiss Army knife of research skills.

Tanya Maiboroda for once again delivering first-class graphics despite coach-class instructions.

Sophia Pink for her next-level quantitative skills and for unearthing shiny nuggets of insight buried in muddy heaps of data.

Eliza Pink and Saul Pink for their eloquent example of how to finish strong—in college and in high school—during suboptimal conditions.

Jessica Lerner for everything.