Why You Should Have Regrets
Do you know why I love books? Because I can flex on non-readers readers and show how brilliant I am.
I kid.. I kid..
It's actually the opposite. It's because books often give me the words that I'm too obtuse to find on my own. It feels awesome when I discover words for the thoughts or emotions I've been struggling to find.
I recently had one of those moments.
For years, I'd heard people say, "I don't have any regrets" or "regret is a choice."
On the surface, it seemed empowering. I understand that regrets come from things we did (or didn't do) in the past, and ruminating on those things which we cannot change isn't helpful. Continuing to replay our terrible choices to eat an entire bucket of popcorn by ourselves or to jump off the roof onto a trampoline and bounce into the pool as a kid (sorry, mom) isn't psychologically healthy.
"Having no regrets" seemed freeing from the burden of "I wish I…" but it always rubbed me the wrong way. To have no regrets would inherently mean these people never made mistakes. Not me. I've got a rolodex of should'ves, my bads, oh nos, and I can't believes…
Ironically, when I'd ask these no-regret people, "So there's not any mistake you've made that you wish you didn't?"
They'd respond, "Well, of course."
But isn't that a regret? 🤔🤔🤔 What sort of mental gymnastics are these people playing?
And that's where my man Dan Pink comes in. His latest book, "The Power of Regret," gave me the words for the discomfort I felt when people would tell me they had no regrets.
Having regrets isn't something to be embarrassed or ashamed about, and it's not a badge of honor to never look in the rear-view mirror. Regrets are something that we experience as human beings. And when acknowledged, owned, and learned from, regrets have valuable insights for learning, growth, and clarity.
Something unique to humans is our ability to utilize "counterfactual thinking" -- the psychological tendency to imagine alternative paths to past life events. We all engage in this type of thinking and there are generally two types of counterfactual thinking: "if only.." and "at least.."
"At least" is the counterfactual thinking of the "No regrets" crowd. When they inevitably fail or come up short at something (because hey, we're human), they think:
"At least I didn't come in last.." or "At least I didn't eat the whole cake." Or a fan favorite, "At least it led to the person I am today."
These rationalizations make us feel better in the moment, but rarely lead to growth or better decision-making in the future.
On the other end, if only thinking makes us feel worse in the moment. An Olympian silver medalist might say, "If only I practiced harder, I could've gotten gold." I might think, "If only I didn't eat that entire bucket of popcorn…"
If-onlys never feel good in the short term but experiencing the regret that comes with if-only thinking can help us make better decisions in the long run, enhance our ability to persist during challenging times and strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness.
My point is three-fold:
First, it's impossible to have no regrets. If you're truly living, you're going to experience some regret. To be human inherently means you're going to make mistakes and wish you were nicer when you were tired and hungry. Trying to live in a way where there are no regrets is a futile process at best, limiting our growth and, at worst, can lead us toward perfectionist tendencies. And perfectionism isn't sexy. Perfectionism is tied to a range of disorders and problems, from low self-esteem to sexual dysfunction to depression and anxiety to difficulties in relationships and beyond.
Second, by embracing an attitude of "I have no regrets," we miss valuable opportunities to learn and grow. But by acknowledging and accepting some of the poor choices we make, we become better coaches, leaders, and human beings. The cost of that is feeling bad in the moment.
And lastly, Pink presents four types of regrets, but I want to highlight one in particular that is important for us as coaches, managers, and leaders.
Foundational Regrets
The first type of regret Pink covers in his book is foundational regrets. These regrets happen when we lack foresight in life. They are the regrets of bad habits compounded over many years. And to me, these are the scariest regrets of all. These are the regrets that slow drip until it's too late. By the time foundational regrets hit us, we're already sick in the hospital, broke when we want to retire, or have no relationship with our kids.
These are the exact things we're trying to help our people change course on or avoid altogether. We're trying to help people make small changes in their behaviors or better choices over the course of the week, knowing that it's the compounding of all these little choices that eventually make or break our future selves.
But it's hard. Like, really hard.
To avoid making poor decisions now that our future selves will pay for, we have to understand a concept psychologists call temporal discounting – our tendency to value the now over the later. A study by Princeton University psychologist Emily Pronin showed that people are more likely to look out for a stranger than their future selves.
As humans, we all have this wired in to a degree. We evolved to focus on the now – eat all the berries and buffalo you can get your hands on before winter, or be intensely focused on the present so that lion lurking in the bush doesn't eat you.
And then, my fellow millennials doubled down on temporal discounting. It's partially our fault: we embraced YOLO as a generational ethos. And it's partially not our fault: we learned it doesn't matter how hard we worked because bankers were going gamble our mortgages, healthcare would bankrupt us, Facebook would sell our private lives, and pandemics would keep us locked inside.
So, with our cave-dwelling ancestors in our DNA and Drake songs at the top of our minds, we have all the ingredients for foundational regrets. Like anything, discounting is a sliding scale. We all have a different baseline. Research shows that those with higher "discount rates" are more susceptible to a ton of foundation regrets:
They drink, smoke, gamble, and procrastinate more
They save less & spend more
More likely to drive drunk or have unprotected sex
And according to professor Kelly McGonigal, "They're even less likely to wear a watch—it's as if they are so focused on the present, time itself doesn't matter."
But also like anything, we can develop certain skills and perspectives to lower our discounting rates. So how do we do that (for both ourselves and others)?
The first step is to recognize the mini-moments in which these regrets occur. We know that a single mini-moment isn't going to generate regrets, but it can be an indication of the path we're on. We can typically identify them in the "should'ves," "too much-es," and "too littles"
I should've exercised more, saved more, spent less, or given more effort
I drank too much alcohol, watched too much TV, spent too much, or ate too much
I exercised, saved, and studied too little
The next step is to engage with these moments. Yep, we're back where we started. Don't be a "no regrets!" person. Don't be a cheerleader coach who has the tendency to brush off mistakes for fear of criticizing or the nice guy manager who "doesn't like conflict." Take mistakes seriously and have a conversation about them. Engage with these mini-moments with curiosity. Why did they occur? What can be done in the future to prevent them? What benefit is there to NOT changing these things? What if you never change? What guardrails can we start to put in place now? Get very honest with yourself. Our brains have a ton of tricks to help us rationalize our behaviors. Ever heard "I'll start on Monday"? Of course you have. Assume whatever you do today, you'll do forever.. and then what?
These honest assessments allow us to consider and connect with our future selves. One experiment asked people who were overweight to imagine their future selves. Did they hope for a future self who worked out and felt energized? Did they fear their future self who was suffering health consequences for the choices their current self made? Both visualizations worked. Two months later they were exercising more frequently than a control group.
Every year during our anniversary, my wife and I sit down together and write about the past year, the mistakes we made, and the habits we'd like to change. We set goals, fantasize about future possibilities, and crush wine. But my favorite part is at the end, we write a letter to our current selves from our future selves. It's a strategy to help our future selves feel less like a stranger, and it's amazing to me how often these future visions come true. Is it the magic of manifestation? I don't think so. I think it's merely taking an honest look at our current selves to feel some embarrassment and regret for the choices we made, and take some time to learn and grow from those regrets, then reducing our discount rates by connecting to our future selves.
So have regrets, acknowledge your regrets, and learn from your regrets. You'll be a better leader and person for it.