Keep Calm And Regret Responsibly
Regrets are tricky. It’s very personal. It requires an admission that at some point in your life, you messed up, or you made the wrong choice.
Are we doomed to carry these regrets like albatrosses on our necks? Or are we better off ignoring them?
A common conviction is to live life with “No Regrets”. It sounds aspirational. It’s great for songs, tattoos and bumper stickers. But, the author of this book argues: to direct your life with “No Regrets” is unfounded. It can be harmful in the sense that it’s easy to burn yourself out of pacifying anticipated regrets or in fixating about past regrets.
The healthy response is to see regrets as universal. Everybody has them. Another is to treat regrets as signals-information that you can then use to act upon. The author stresses that if treated the right way, regrets can improve your decision making. It can improve your performance. And it can deepen your sense of meaning.
The author conducted two research studies on regret. One he called the “World Regret Survey”. He found from thousands of submissions that regrets fall in four categories.
Foundation Regrets – failures of conscientiousness (stability)
Boldness Regrets – failures to take chances (growth)
Moral Regrets – failures to follow one’s values and ideals (goodness)
Connection Regrets – failures to reach out (love)
These regrets come from failures of opportunity and obligation. And they reveal a mirror image of what we long for (in parenthesis above). The next necessary step is to acknowledge its presence and make up for it.
Addressing past regrets starts with self-compassion. Not self-esteem. Not self-criticism. You have to be able to forgive yourself, and at the same time to keep yourself responsible. You shouldn’t ignore your regrets, but you shouldn’t wallow in it also.
To address potential regrets, you have to know that regrets are not equal. It’s not wise to attend to all potential regrets. The author suggests a rule of thumb: If a potential regret falls in one of the four core regrets, maximize your time on them. Otherwise, aim for good enough.
Losing good friends will have more impact in your life than regretting if you picked the wrong color for a car.
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