The Power Of Regret With Daniel Pink

Looking back on your life, what do you wish you had done differently? Where do you wish you were bold? Which relationships do you wish you tended to more? Regrets are difficult to avoid. We all have them. When you approach regrets with perspective and self-compassion you can learn from them. This week Diana Hill and Daniel Pink explore his research on the psychology of regret and discuss how to face your regrets head-on so you can use them as opportunities for growth.

Transcript

When you look back on your life,

What do you wish you had done differently?

What do you regret?

And how can you use your regrets to guide you towards a more meaningful and fulfilling life?

That's what I'm going to explore today with Daniel Pink on your life in process.

In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy,

We are all about frames and framing.

And when you start to look at things through the frame of regret,

It changes how you see yourself and how you see your life.

And if you can learn to handle your regrets skillfully,

Without avoiding them or becoming entangled in them,

You can use them to build a more psychologically rich and meaningful life.

It's an honor to talk with Daniel Pink today.

He's written seven books,

Five of them being New York Times bestseller.

And he was the host and co-executive producer of the National Geographic Channel social sciences TV series,

Crowd Control.

He was also the chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore.

Daniel Pink has a really interesting perspective on regret.

And in today's episode,

You'll learn about how he came to researching this topic,

The information that he's gleaned from his research,

And some ideas around how you can face your regret head on so that you can use it as an asset,

Not something that pulls you down or pulls you back in your life.

After my conversation with Daniel Pink,

I will wrap things up by integrating what he shared with us about regret with some of the processes from psychological flexibility and ACT so that you have a direction to head this week to bring your regrets into your daily practice.

One of the things that I've been doing for the past 15 years of therapy is that every time I terminate with a client,

We do a practice called appreciation,

Hopes,

And regrets.

And the regret part is the most powerful part of the termination in part,

Because I get to hear my client's regrets and it's sort of a launching point for what they're going to work on next.

You know,

Like it's therapy's not over because you're done with therapy.

It actually is that now you get to go continue to do this work,

But then also it's made me a better therapist because a client may say,

I regret,

I didn't talk to you about my drinking earlier.

And then I may say something back like,

I regret not asking you about your drinking earlier when I suspected it.

So it gives feedback to me.

So I think one place to start is how you got to this point of writing this book.

What got me here was something mundane,

Which is I had regrets.

And also I had gotten to a point in my life,

What was kind of startling is that,

You know,

Sort of one day I woke up and realized that I had some mileage on me.

You know,

I'd always consider myself like very,

You know,

I went,

You know,

In my early days of working,

I was always the youngest person in the room.

And as I started,

Suddenly I looked up and I thought,

Oh my God,

I am so not the youngest person in the room.

I'm actually older than almost everybody here.

And I realized I had this,

I had mileage on me.

And what,

You know,

When I look back,

There were some things that I wish I had done or wish I hadn't done.

And I think the curious thing about that was that when I mentioned those things to other people,

When I,

When I took the very tentative step of discussing my regrets with others,

Which I did with some apprehension,

I got an incredible response.

People leaned in,

They wanted to talk about it.

Now,

For,

As a therapist,

You're probably not shocked that people want to talk about these things.

But to me,

As I just arrived,

I was like,

Whoa,

This is interesting.

I'm getting a very,

Very robust response,

Very different from what I had thought the response would be to even broaching the topic of regrets.

And to make a long story longer,

That took me down a looking at some of the existing academic research on this topic,

And then doing a couple of research projects of my own,

Largely just to try to make sense of this misunderstood emotion.

I think people want to talk about it in the right setting,

But they don't want to feel it.

So it's sort of an interesting,

Yeah,

I think that when regret shows up,

We tend to emotionally avoid it.

And one of the things you,

You write about is sort of how people say,

I have no regrets.

That's sort of a common thing that people say.

But what I find is that we have the twinge of regret and we,

We kind of want to not think about it,

Not feel it,

Not go there.

But as soon as someone opens the door for you to start talking about it,

It's kind of like,

Oh,

Wait,

This is like the self-disclosure connection I can share with you that I have some regrets.

And I agree.

I agree with you.

I think that's a good,

I think that's a good way to analyze it.

I'll also see you and raise you just a little bit.

One of the things that we know from the research on regret is that,

Is,

Is that,

You know,

Of course that regret is one of the most common emotions that human beings have.

But it's also done right.

It's actually beneficial that we can actually harness it to learn and grow.

And the thing is,

Is that people love the learning and growing part.

They want that,

But they don't like the fact that it's,

That it comes with discomfort.

So that what they want is the learning and growing without the discomfort.

And that is not the bargain is on the,

On the table.

Those two things are,

Those two things are twinned.

If you want the learning and growth,

You have to have some of the discomfort,

Some of the pain,

Some of the unpleasantness.

Well,

I've done a little reconnaissance on you.

One of the things that I do when I,

Before I do a podcast is I read the book,

I listen to every thing that I can find.

It's impossible to listen to everything about you.

And then I've been taking your,

A masterclass with my family.

Oh God.

Okay.

I know I heard you're a July birthday.

My husband is actually a July birthday and he's turning 50.

One of the things that happens when you turn 50 is you start to look at all of the relationships that have drifted like,

Oh my gosh,

My high school friends.

I haven't talked to you.

Looked at your,

You look at your health,

You look at,

You know,

You just basically look at your life and you're sitting in a big pile of regret.

I'm curious for you.

What were some of the regrets that,

That came up that launched this work?

And then we can talk a little bit about the science of it and what you found.

Sure thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

So,

I mean,

You make it really another really interesting point,

Which is that a lot of times what triggers these regrets or which is not really natural triggers the regrets,

But what triggers are look backward,

Which often leads to regrets are milestones like your husband's 50th birthday.

And for me,

There was,

You know,

One of the catalysts for me was a milestone.

It wasn't a personal milestone.

It was my eldest daughter graduated from college.

And for me,

That was kind of like this weird milestone.

It's like,

I couldn't even believe it.

And that's what kind of sparked me to that's what kind of sparked me to look back.

And when I look back on my own regrets there are,

There are a lot you know,

Among them,

Among the most persistent,

I guess,

Or maybe not persistent,

But among the most innovating are,

Are regrets about kindness,

Especially earlier in my life.

I just don't think I was an especially kind person.

And and I can think of as many specific instances where I wasn't aggressively unkind.

I wasn't,

I don't have regrets about bullying.

Like many of the regrets that I captured,

I had a lot of regrets.

And some of the research I did about people who have regrets about bullying other people,

But what I had regrets were sort of unkindness by inaction.

So that I was in situations where people were not being treated well,

Particularly situations where people were being excluded.

And I saw it happen.

I knew it was wrong and I didn't do anything.

And that has bugged me for 30 years,

Over 30 years.

And so that's one of the big,

That's one of the big regrets that I had.

The other thing is that I also feel like I,

In many cases in my life,

Not always,

I wasn't quite bold enough.

That is,

I could have taken a bigger shot.

You know,

I was a little bit too circumscribed.

So and so I have those kinds of regrets.

I have regrets about losing touch with people.

I've done a pretty good job of dealing with that.

That's an easier one for me to deal with.

And I have regrets about I have regrets sort of about conscientiousness and diligence to some.

So what was the barrier then to being kind or being bold?

Like,

What was the thing that showed up that prevented you from doing it?

So I think in both cases,

It was fear.

It was in the case of sort of standing up and sort of when people were being mistreated,

It was I didn't want to be ostracized myself.

I didn't want to be I didn't want to be the spiky nail sticking up.

I didn't have the guts to sort of put my neck on the line for something that was something that was right.

And I think the same thing is true with boldness.

So maybe it was a fear of,

Of I don't know,

Rejection or failure,

That kind of thing.

Yeah.

That concept of fear,

Like fear shows up and then you turn left when you really want to turn right and you repeatedly turn left in your life and all of a sudden you're moving in circles that you'd want to be in.

Correct.

Yeah.

What were some of the common themes that came out of the research?

Well,

Maybe describe the research that you did and then some of the.

Yeah.

Well,

Yeah.

So let me show my work and let you explain how I got there.

So I did two big pieces.

So I did basically there are three research legs underneath all the arguments and concepts that I'm trying to push here.

One of them is looking at about 50 or 60 years of research,

Existing research in social,

Not so much,

Not,

Not,

I didn't look at a lot in clinical psychology,

But a lot of research in social psychology and develop a lot in developmental psychology,

Neuroscience,

Cognitive science.

Like,

What does science tell us about this emotion?

That's one thing.

Second thing is that I did my own very large public opinions survey of the US population,

Where we put together a very,

Very large sample,

4,

489 people to try to model the I think we very successfully modeled the demographics of the US,

Asking people a lot of questions about their attitudes on regret.

That was designed to do two main things.

One is to try to figure out what people regretted and then also to see if there were what kinds of demographic differences there were in people's regrets.

And unfortunately,

What I found is that people regretted a lot of stuff.

So it wasn't a clear answer to that.

And also there were not that many demographic differences.

So fortunately,

I also did a third piece of research,

Which is a more qualitative piece of research,

Which was called the World Regret Survey,

Where I collected regrets from around the world.

And at this point,

We have a database of 21,

000 regrets from people in 109 countries.

And that proved to be fascinating.

I mean,

And revelatory,

I think.

When you write the different vignettes of people's regrets that you're pulling from and you hear everything from regrets about affairs to regrets about not trying out for a job or exactly.

Exactly.

So what I got there was and it was a it began I mean,

Just to pull back the curtain a little bit in case your listeners are interested.

It began largely as a.

As a storytelling tool that as I did it initially because I wanted to get stories of people's regrets to enliven the research,

To my surprise,

What happened were two things.

Number one,

The volume of responses I got was unbelievable.

I mean,

Like it is stunning.

I was that I did like two tweets and one newsletter mention,

And then I had to stop mentioning it because they didn't want to get overwhelmed.

So the volume of it,

But but but also it turned out to be that that was a profoundly important research tool because I read all these regret.

I mean,

I don't read all twenty one thousand.

I read the first fifteen thousand.

And once you start reading them,

I mean,

I guess it's sort of like being a therapist.

Once you start reading them,

You start you start hearing you start hearing the same language.

You start literally sometimes seeing the exact same language and certainly kind of hearing the same kind of music.

And and and that made me think there was something else going on.

And again,

Getting in the weeds here a little bit,

The flaw such as it was in the first survey,

The quantitative survey where I asked people for regret and had them slotted into a category like career,

Education,

Romance,

Family,

Whatever.

That was that kind of categorization was less meaningful than the categorization that I realized was underneath all of that.

When I actually read through these thousands upon thousands and thousands of regrets that what matters and regret is not the domain of life that you're in,

But some something else,

A hidden motivation,

A hidden set of emotions,

A hidden kind of architecture of aspiration.

I don't know what to call it,

But but sort of just very,

Very like one layer beneath.

There's something bigger going on that transcends the domains of life.

And what I found is that around the world with remarkable regularity,

People seem to have the same four core regrets.

OK,

So spell them out for us.

The four.

So for the four core regrets,

One foundation regrets,

If only I'd done the work.

These are regrets that people have.

The biggest single category in these are essentially I spent too much and saved you a little.

So it's it's and now I don't have any money.

It's small,

But it doesn't have to be money.

That's the thing.

It's small decisions early in life that accumulate to terrible consequences later in life.

They don't it's not the kind of thing where it's like one instance destroys your life,

That not at all.

It's basically this accumulation of bad choices.

Yes,

I often talk about my tanning beds in college is that one.

OK,

So a lot of sun.

So that could be in that and that and that that one actually is a it's an interesting example because there's a cumulative you go to a tanning bed once you're who cares.

But it's the it's the accumulation of it all.

And then that becomes something very difficult to undo.

These foundation regrets are are sometimes difficult to to to address.

And it could be things involving health.

It could be things involving a lot of more than I expected.

Regrets where people said,

I wish I had worked harder in school.

So that's what foundation regrets are.

OK,

So boldness regrets are the second category.

Boldness regrets are only taking the chance.

And again,

These are regrets.

A lot of these regrets begin at a juncture in life where you can go this way or you can go that way.

You talked about it,

You know,

Turning left and turning right.

And that's a good,

Interesting metaphor for that.

So so you so in this case,

You can play it safe.

You can take the chance.

And what I found is that much of the time,

Not all the time,

But much of the time when people don't take the chance,

They ultimately regret it.

And it doesn't matter the domain of life,

As I sounded like a broken record here,

But this is really important.

So these are people who have regrets about not asking somebody out on a date years ago.

Stunning number of those regrets about not starting a business,

Regrets about not traveling,

Regrets about not speaking up.

So basically,

If only you're at a juncture and people play it safe and then they regret it because what they really wanted to do was stand up,

Speak up,

Do something.

Yeah.

Third category.

Let me pause,

Let me pause you on bonus regrets.

So I have,

I think this starts young and I have two young boys that play baseball.

And what I noticed is that when they're,

So when there's,

When you're six or seven and you play baseball,

What they do is they put the ball on a tee and then you walk up to it and you hit the ball and you get to be a pretty good hitter.

Right.

But then between like seven and eight,

Something changes where someone throws the ball at you.

And now what's changed about baseball is if you don't hit that ball,

You get out.

Right.

So the very first thing that I noticed my boys starting to do is stop swinging at the ball and you stop swinging the ball because fear it's uncomfortable to get out in that short term to not be bold.

Right.

But then what would happen is we,

I drive them home on the way back.

And what is mom here in the back of the car?

I wish I swung at the ball.

I can't believe I got out without sweet.

I just sat there and I watched three balls come in and I stood and held up my bat.

So I think it's like early on,

We start to take that short term avoidance.

I mean,

This is very acty,

Like avoidance of that fear avoidance of the pain.

And then we sit in the longterm consequence of that,

Of not being bold,

Of not swinging.

And we can map that onto like,

Yeah,

Not asking someone for out for a date,

Not going to graduate school,

Whatever it is that we aren't bold around.

But I see a lot of that in my therapy and it seems like the boldness regrets actually,

Unlike the foundation regrets is something that we can start to do right here,

Right now,

You know,

Like we can start being bold.

I've been really in the business of being bold since I like from my forties on.

Cause I'm trying to make up for lost time.

I hear you.

I hear you.

I mean,

I think that's,

So,

So I think they make a very good point.

I think foundation regrets are difficult to undo because it's accumulation of forces.

And you know,

I mean,

Again,

This is a little bit of a cliche,

But there's this proverb,

You know,

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.

The second best time is today.

So you know,

So if you have these foundation regrets,

You can't undo 20 years of bad health choices,

But you can start today to make better health choices.

So that's,

That's one thing that boldness regrets.

I think one of the,

I think the lesson of boldness regrets,

I think is to have a slight bias for action in basically every realm of life,

Not to be wild and like a massive risk taker in every domain,

But to have a slight bias for action.

And if you want to,

You know,

Bring a baseball metaphor to this,

And I welcome baseball metaphors at any time of the day or night is that you don't,

If you're going to strike out,

Strike out swings.

Don't,

Don't,

Don't,

Don't,

Don't strike out taking a pitch,

Strike out swinging.

And you know,

And I think that part of it is also like,

I wouldn't put the,

I mean,

I was along,

You know,

My,

My son was a baseball player.

I was a baseball coach not a good one.

And you know,

I think one of the things that,

You know,

When you're talking about kids that age,

I think what you have to do is you have to essentially celebrate striking out swinging.

I think you have to say,

Oh my God,

That was such a great final cut.

You really went after that way to go,

You know?

And not,

You know,

Say,

Oh,

Too bad.

You struck out,

You'll get them next time,

But actually say,

What a great cut.

You really went after that pitch way to go,

You know,

And just celebrate that kind of celebrate that kind of risk-taking.

And then we do that.

We can do that for ourselves.

So it's,

It's all about behavioral reinforcement.

What are you,

What are you reinforcing in yourself?

What are you reinforcing in others?

And if you want to dial up your boldness,

Then you need to reinforce boldness,

Not reinforce outcome.

Sure.

Absolutely.

I agree with that completely.

And I agree with that completely.

And I think that,

Um,

One of the interesting things,

It's a very,

It's another interesting point.

One of the interesting things that I thought about these regrets as I collected them is that what really bugged people were not the outcomes.

What bugged them was the moment where they didn't swing.

Okay.

So,

So for instance,

So I,

I have,

I have regrets about,

I like,

Let's go back to some of these romantic regrets where,

Which there were many,

Many where people say,

Oh,

If only I had,

You know,

Said something to that person,

Or if only I had asked that person out on a date,

Very few of the people who say that when I,

In the followup interviews were saying,

Oh my God,

If I had asked him out on a date,

We would have gotten married and we'd be living in this beautiful house.

And we'd have these nine great kids and this idyllic life.

They don't say that they don't say that they don't focus that much on the outcomes.

What they focus on is the moment itself where they didn't step up and that's what ultimately irks them.

Yeah.

So there's these big,

And we're going to get to the,

I know there's two more,

We're going to get to the two more,

But I want to stay on boldness because this,

This one is one that I work a lot with people in therapy around and there's the big moments of being bold,

But then there's the little moments.

And I was just,

So again,

I've been steeping in regret in preparation for this episode.

And last week I was in a yoga class and a teacher said,

Okay,

If you want to,

You can get into a balance pose here.

They were,

He was trying to teach us a side Crow,

Which is like basically you're balancing your knees on one elbow and your feet are off the ground.

That sounds very difficult.

I don't know anything about yoga.

Yeah.

So your hands are on the ground.

You're balancing both knees on one elbow and your feet are off the ground.

You're crouched down like a,

Oh,

Wow.

Okay.

Very challenging.

So I looked over and there was this woman,

I did the set Cardinal sin of like looking at the person next to you.

You're not supposed to compare.

Right.

But I looked over and there she was a 55 year old woman in like full on this amazing,

Crazy balance post.

And it's,

I had a twinge of regret.

And the regret that I had in that moment was all the classes that I'd been at for the past 20 years,

Where I hadn't tried to do that thing because I didn't want to fall down.

And I told myself I wasn't strong enough.

And I looked at her and I was like,

There's no difference between this woman and me.

The only difference is that for the past 20 years,

She's been trying it.

And now look at her.

So I made it.

So in that moment,

I was like,

Okay,

I'm going to pull a Daniel pink here and I'm going to fall on my face in the service of trying this because maybe when I'm 55,

I'll be able to do that pose,

But not even that just for the sake of I won't regret it when I'm 55,

That I didn't try.

So the small it's like almost like the those bold moves that we don't do because we don't want to embarrass ourselves,

Or we don't want to experience fear or all the emotions that we avoid in,

In the discomfort of being bold.

I think that the key word and what you just said,

Which I think is powerful is discomfort.

I think it's discomfort.

We spend too much of our,

I think we need in some ways,

A reframing of discomfort.

Discomfort is not something to be avoided.

It's something,

You know,

I don't want to sound glib here,

But it's something to be sought that,

That in many ways discomfort is a positive signal.

We look at,

We look at discomfort as a negative signal.

We say discomfort,

Oh,

Something's wrong.

I need to escape.

I think that what we need to do when we experienced discomfort is say,

Oh,

I'm feeling discomfort.

Okay.

I'm doing something right here.

Sometimes if that discomfort is in the service of your values,

Good point,

Good point.

Because I wouldn't say discomfort.

I'm going to be,

I'm going to have,

I'm going to be,

I'm going to be experienced discomfort breaking into my neighbor's back door.

You're right.

You know,

But so I agree with you.

I agree in the service of,

I think it's well said at the end,

The service of something that you value and the service of your values.

Yeah.

Right.

So it's the value.

That's the,

That's the guide and discomfort is likely to come along the way as you're moving towards your value.

It's actually more likely to,

You're more likely to experience discomfort.

If your value is,

If your value in the case of yoga is,

Is excellence or your value is health or your value is,

I don't know,

Serenity or whatever it is that the path to any of those things is not a path of comfort.

It's a path studded with discomfort.

And I think what we have to realize is that when we pursue our values,

That discomfort is a positive signal.

It's not a negative signal.

Absolutely.

So that leads to one of the other big regrets,

Which is around connection.

And there's a lot of discomfort in connection and intimacy and just maintaining relationships is uncomfortable.

So what did you learn about this,

About connection regrets,

This third type connection regrets are another good example of this,

Which is connection regrets are about these relationships we have in our lives and mostly not romantic relationships,

But just the whole spectrum of relationships we have in our lives.

And a lot of times these relationships come apart and you know,

They come apart in at least as a reporter to me in these pretty undramatic ways.

They're not coming apart because of some,

In most cases because of some giant fight or some trying to estrangement and they just kind of drift.

And what happens is that somebody wants to reach out,

But there's discomfort and the discomfort comes in the form of awkwardness.

I say,

Oh man,

If I reach out to her right now,

After having not talked to her for eight years,

It's going to be so awkward and besides she's not going to care.

And so we don't,

Because we don't want to,

We just want to avoid that discomfort so profoundly.

We want to get rid of,

We want to race away from that awkwardness.

So we wait a couple more years and we say,

Oh man,

Now it's super awkward because it's now 11 years since I talked to her and it's going to be even more awkward and she's not going to care.

And I think that here we make a colossal error or two colossal errors.

One colossal error is that it's way less awkward than people think.

It's way less awkward than people think.

Our fears of awkwardness are often far in excess of the reality of the awkwardness that we feel.

Second,

The other side almost always cares.

And so to me,

Again,

If we want to derive a lesson from it,

And it's similar to the lesson that we were talking about with boldness in regards,

Is to have a bias for action.

And for me personally,

We know what,

I mean,

I feel like now having talked to all these people and done this research that if I'm at a moment where I'm saying,

Oh,

Should I reach out to X,

Y,

Or Z?

If I've made it to that moment,

The making to the moment answers the question,

Reach out.

Yeah.

Reach out.

Yeah.

And it'll make your 50 year old or your 60 year old birthday a lot better if you have,

Instead of going through your address list and being like,

Who do I invite to my party?

Ooh,

I can't invite them because I haven't talked to them in 10 years,

But I really do care about them.

You'll be like,

But for some of us,

Our 50th birthday's in the rear view mirror.

I know I said 60th.

Cause I,

Yeah,

I,

I know where you're headed and you're in your birthday line,

70th,

Whatever it is,

Um,

Yeah.

Of those relationships.

So that's,

That's the drifting kind,

Like the,

The relationships that we don't tend to that we don't water that just sort of,

And now we're like,

Oh,

So making that,

That move of connection,

But then there's the other kind,

Which is,

Um,

The relationships that are in a place of just like,

Um,

Gridlock,

You know,

You,

You,

You've had some kind of conflict,

Maybe you've even had estrangement.

And that's another thing that I hear about in therapy,

Obviously is like,

You know,

I,

I don't talk to my sister anymore ever since this thing happened.

And oftentimes when you look at that thing,

It's like,

It wasn't that big of a thing,

But we were so unable to resolve it.

We,

We,

We both just kind of gave up on it and now it feels impossible to find our way back again.

What did you hear in that department in terms of regrets with,

Um,

Estrangement?

I heard some of those,

I,

There was less estrangement than I,

Than I,

Than I would've thought.

And the,

The,

The core estrangement that I,

Or the most common estrangement that I,

That I heard,

Uh,

It was kind of heartbreaking.

It was,

It was estrangement between parents and kids,

Basically parents and adult children.

Um,

That kind of estrangement.

Um,

And,

Uh,

And to me,

Again,

It's easy to say from the outside without,

Without,

Uh,

You know,

Without a horse in the race and look at it outside.

It's like,

Okay,

Guys,

This is totally resolvable here.

It's like,

You know,

I almost like a certain case of,

Okay,

Guys here,

Here,

Let's get on a zoom call.

We'll get it together and we'll talk about this and we'll figure this out.

Cause you're actually not that far apart,

But,

Um,

It's easier for me to say with not having a stake in it and also looking at it from the outside.

But what I found is that the,

The estrangements,

First of all,

I think there's some estrangements that will remain estrangements because I think that the,

The,

The,

The,

The gash is so deep that it's not reparable,

But I think that's the rare case.

I think in most cases you can,

You can bridge that gap.

The problem is as I,

As a lay person,

There's probably a therapeutic answer to this,

But the problem is I see it as a lay person is that people fear the,

Um,

In some ways the ego damage of admitting anything that they did was wrong.

They are risk averse about being the one to reach out.

Uh,

And they have a,

They think of themselves as trustworthy,

But the other side is untrustworthy.

Yeah.

Well,

It's,

It's that foundation of discomfort again,

In the relationships that matter most to you.

So a child relationship is one of the relationships that matter most to us in life.

It's also going to be the relationship that's most painful to you.

And so entering into that pain requires a tremendous amount of acceptance and willingness and clarity around what your values are to be able to do that.

You know,

It's,

It's,

It's quite a,

Um,

Quite a challenge.

Yeah.

And connection regrets is a,

Is a third one where there's,

Um,

Uh,

A common theme.

When,

Um,

My nine-year-old was,

Um,

In second grade,

He woke me up in the middle of the night and he couldn't sleep.

And I went in there and he said,

I just feel so guilty mom.

And you hear your nine-year-old say,

You feel guilty.

And I'm like,

Oh my goodness,

What,

What do you feel guilty about?

He said,

Well,

This,

This little girl had given him a piece of paper in class and the piece of paper said,

I like you,

Do you like me?

And there was a little box that said yes.

And a little box that said no.

And he said,

I checked the no,

And I gave it back to her.

And I feel so guilty because I didn't mean that I didn't like her.

It's just that I didn't like her like her.

And again,

Because I'm a therapist,

What I didn't do was say,

That's not,

You shouldn't feel guilty about that.

It's not a big deal.

It's,

You know,

What I said was,

Of course you feel guilty because you care.

You're a caring kid.

Otherwise you wouldn't feel guilty.

There's a value underneath the feeling of guilt.

We don't feel guilty unless we care.

Right.

Of course.

And then how can we act on that care and how can we act towards repair?

So what he ended up doing was he's like,

Well,

First,

Can you call her moms?

She's got two moms.

And I was like,

Yeah,

I can call her moms and like,

You know,

Prepare,

Prepare them for this.

And he wrote a little letter back that said,

I'm sorry.

It's not that I don't like you.

I really do like you.

It's just,

I don't like you like you.

And he sent the letter back,

But it's an example of using this kind of like,

You know,

We have a connection regret.

We would want to just avoid it and pull away and never see that girl again.

But really what we can do is move towards it and use it as information to create the repair and do the,

Do the thing that needs to be done.

And that's what gave him relief.

So he could sleep well,

The next night,

He's a much more emotionally advanced male than men 30 years as senior.

Well,

I'll tell you we did your exercise from the the masterclass on perspective taking where you write the E on your forehead.

So everyone write the E on,

Write an E on your forehead,

Right?

Does it,

Does the E face you so that you can read it or face someone else that they can,

They can read it.

That kid wrote it so that someone else could read it.

And you know,

I'm like,

Yeah,

He's got,

He's got powers and perspective taking that will do him well in life.

If he's not hobbled by guilt.

True.

So I,

Yeah,

I want to talk a bit about that.

Cause that actually leads into the last one being moral regret.

Yeah.

Moral regrets are the more regrets are the smallest category,

But it's also in some ways the most complex,

Uh,

More regrets are if only I'd done the right thing.

And,

And,

You know,

Once again,

You're at a juncture,

You can do the right thing.

You do the wrong thing.

People do the wrong thing.

And most of us regret it because I think most of us are moral.

Uh,

And most of us actually want to live by our values and feel crappy when we don't.

Um,

And now the thing about moral regrets is that we don't have a full consensus across the human population about what constitutes morality.

So there's some things that some people would consider a moral breach and other people wouldn't,

But there's also plenty of things where there is a consensus and what came out most prominently here are regrets about bullying,

Lots of them.

And then also,

Um,

Just,

I was shocked by how many regrets there were a bullying.

And then I was also maybe I'm naive.

I was shocked about how many regrets there were about,

Uh,

Uh,

Maryland fidelity.

And so,

Um,

And then,

Uh,

Sort of a more,

A scattering of other kinds of regrets.

Well,

Moral,

Moral emotions are social emotions and they're about not being kicked out of your tribe.

So it depends on what your,

What your tribe says is going to kick you out or not.

Right.

And that's very cultural and contextual.

But the interesting thing about there's,

There's a whole line of research right now in clinical psychology on moral injury and it came coming out of the VA.

Lauren Borges is doing a lot of work in the area and Robin Walzer.

And what they looked at was veterans that were coming in and telling them these stories,

These horrors of things like I witnessed a rape.

I tried to contact someone at a higher level and they told me I couldn't intervene.

And now I'm harboring this guilt and I've been harboring this guilt for years.

And that's why I drink.

And that's why I want to kill,

Kill myself.

I mean,

Veterans have super high suicide rates,

Right?

And what they've been looking at in moral injury and the intervention for moral injury really maps on to what you write about in terms of regret,

Which is it's not about trying to get them to feel better about what they did.

It's actually making contact and being able to be present with the moral injury itself,

Looking at how they've been trying to avoid it and look at the value underneath it.

Like what's the value underneath this and use that with self-compassion to guide you to do,

To live your life now that there's,

There's wisdom in the experience of the moral pain.

We don't have as many moral regrets,

But the,

The moral regrets are the ones that eat away at us.

Uh,

There,

There,

There,

There's no question about that.

And you make another good point about how,

You know,

You say,

What is the value underneath?

And I think that one of the things about regrets in general,

Moral regrets in particular is that they excavate what's underneath.

They reveal what's underneath that,

That,

That is they reveal what we value.

So if you,

I mean,

I think about it this way.

Um,

Yesterday,

I don't know how many decisions I made.

I don't remember most of them and I don't think any of them are going to bug me.

Okay.

So,

Uh,

But if I,

But when I go back to these kindness regrets that I mentioned earlier,

Those,

Those things occurred 30 years ago,

35 years ago.

Okay.

The fact that they stick with me is a signal it's excavating,

Revealing what I value.

It suggests that I,

That I value kindness.

And then,

So for these,

For the veterans you're talking about the fact that these,

Um,

Uh,

These concerns are sticking with them is,

Is,

Is,

Is revelatory.

What it's saying is,

Is like,

Okay,

You value,

Uh,

Integrity,

You value justice,

You value fairness,

Whatever it happens to be.

And so that's the other reason why we want to think about our regrets,

Not ignore them in this blithe,

No regrets philosophy,

Um,

And not wallowing them,

But actually confront them,

Use them as signals,

Use them as information,

Use them as,

As catalysts for behavior and understanding.

We shouldn't approach our regrets with,

I have no regrets,

But what is it that you're suggesting we should do?

We shouldn't say we have no regrets because everybody has regrets.

If you don't have regrets,

It's a sign that you're five years old and your brain hasn't developed,

Or it's a sign that you might have brain damage or it's a sign that you're sociopath.

So if you truly don't have regrets of any kind,

That's a warning sign right there.

Because everybody has regrets.

It's one of the most common emotions that we have.

And I think that's really important if there's any sort of mission underneath this book,

It is that I want to try to normalize this emotion of regret because it's normal.

Um,

And,

And it's ubiquitous now,

What do we do with it?

Um,

So I think it really begins with,

Uh,

How we think about ourselves and,

And,

And our,

And our regret,

How we look at things inward.

So when we talk to ourselves in the face of mistakes,

We're brutal.

Um,

We,

We lacerate ourselves.

Um,

And so the work underneath the work on self-compassion started by Kristin Neff 20 years ago is says,

Don't do that.

Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt.

Don't treat yourself better than anybody else,

But don't treat yourself worse than anybody else.

So treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt,

Recognize that your mistakes are part of the human condition.

And also recognize that any mistake,

Any regret that you have is a moment in your life,

Not the full measure of our life.

When negative things happen,

When we make a mistake,

We do something stupid.

We're willing to take that isolated moment in a long life and say that bad thing fully defines who I am.

You know,

When we do something stupid,

We take that one moment in our lives and say,

This fully represents who I am.

Uh,

And that's a bad idea.

So treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt,

Recognize that mistakes are part of the human condition and recognize it's a moment in your life,

Not the full measure of your life.

Um,

And once we do it,

I think that opens the way to make sense of regret and then extracting a lesson from it.

Self-compassion I think is,

Um,

I mean,

It's central to healing a lot of the places that we're stuck in our life.

If we start with self-compassion,

Then it opens up the door to then yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that's,

I think it's sometimes people can get self-compassion wrong.

They think of it as like,

Like fully exonerating yourself or sort of happy talk when it's not,

It's basically,

You know,

Treating yourself with kindness rather than contempt.

And again,

The way I think about it,

I,

This is not in the book,

But as I've thought about it some more is that basically what you hear from people is they feel,

They feel obliged to treat themselves worse than they treat other people.

You know?

So,

So if you were to hear myself talk,

I would never talk to anybody else the way that I talked to myself.

Um,

And,

Um,

And,

And,

And what self-compassion says is you don't,

You're not treating yourself better than other people,

But you're not treating yourself worse than other people.

You're treating yourself with the same tenderness and care and kindness that you would treat somebody else,

Not better,

Not worse,

Just the same as you would treat somebody else.

And again,

I think that that takes away some blockage and allows us to begin talking about our regret,

Writing about our regret,

Disclosing our regret,

Trying to make sense of it,

And then drawing a lesson from it.

So that,

That part that you just kind of went quickly through of disclosing and writing and trying a lesson,

I feel like if you start the self-compassion and that part is the getting your hands in it and kind of working with it so that you can create something from it.

Right?

So the,

The self-disclosure gives you a little bit of perspective,

Taking a little bit of distance from it,

Letting other people in to see it.

And there's a lot of relief in that.

Yeah.

I think that's that,

That disclosure,

I think disclosure does two big things.

Number one is an unburdening.

Um,

And you know,

As a therapist,

I don't have to tell you that,

That people just want to unburden themselves that they're,

They're carrying around this weight and they want to just remove the weight,

Even if it's temporarily removing the weight.

But I also think there's something else going on here too,

Which is that,

Uh,

Is,

Is,

Is taking something that is abstract and making it concrete.

And what I mean by that is that emotions in some motions are,

Tend to be very abstract.

Um,

So,

Um,

You know,

If I say to you squirrel,

You can picture a squirrel.

If I say to you gratitude or joy,

You know,

It's like,

It's,

It's an abstract,

It's an abstract concept.

Um,

And,

And so emotions are abstract.

That's what it makes.

Positive emotions feel good.

It makes negative,

But it's also what makes negative emotions feel bad.

And so the more we can take these negative emotions,

Whether it's regret or anything and talk about it,

Write about it,

What we do is,

Is a kind of a transmutation.

We take this thing that is abstract and by converting into language,

We make it concrete.

And those concrete words are less fearsome.

They're less fearsome.

So what we're doing is we're going from a strike to concrete that makes it from menacing to less menacing.

Um,

And I think that itself is inherently good.

And then what it does is it opens the way to make sense of it and draw a lesson from it.

To add a little bit to that.

We're also exposing ourselves to something over and over and over again for an experience period of time.

And,

You know,

When you expose yourself to something,

You,

You start to habituate more to it.

Right.

And it de-stigmatizes it.

It makes it.

Yeah.

So that's a really good point too.

I mean,

I think what we're doing is we're trying to remove the menace of it.

That is,

There's a kind of a,

You can almost see it physically.

It's like the regret is like looming over you.

It's a monster.

It's this multi tentacled thing that is threatening you.

And it's a menace and it's fearsome.

And by,

By constant repeat.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

I've seen you monster before.

I whatever you habituate to it,

But then what,

What you,

What you also do is you say is,

Is you take this,

This abstraction and you make it concrete and you and I think that any,

You know,

Something that is concrete is way less fearsome than something that is something that is abstract.

Yeah.

When you look in the closet and see what's actually in there versus just imagining what's in there,

It's easier.

Exactly.

So,

So the first step is bringing the,

The kindness,

Common humanity,

Mindfulness,

Self compassion to the regret.

The second step is to disclose,

Write about it,

Um,

Start to look at it,

Concretize it.

And then,

And then I,

And then the sort of like there's this third part of it was actually use it for something useful to you.

Totally.

And that's essential.

That is essential.

So,

So I sort of treat myself with kindness rather than contempt and that I disclose it to make sense of it that's necessary,

But it's not sufficient.

What you need to do is you need to extract a lesson from it that you apply to your future behavior.

And one of the things that we know,

And it's sort of,

In some ways it's why people,

You know,

It's a reason people go to therapy is that we are terrible at solving our own problems,

Uh,

Because we're too close to it.

We're too enmeshed in the detail.

So what you want is you want to have some distance from it.

And there are various techniques of self distancing that you can use.

You can ask yourself,

What would I tell my best friend to do?

You can ask yourself,

You know,

Um,

Um,

What would,

What would the me of 10 years from now want me to do right now?

And the more we get a distance from our,

Um,

Immediate problems,

The more we get,

We sort of zoom out,

Go away from the,

The,

The,

The,

The gory details toward a big picture.

I mean,

The metaphor that I use is,

You know,

We're too often a scuba diver in our regret.

And what we want to be is we want to be an oceanographer.

We want to actually look out like that at our regret.

We can draw a lesson from it and then,

You know,

In some ways apply the lesson next time.

Yeah.

That sort of take the moment to say,

Am I going to regret this or what would be the,

The move that would be the move I'd regret versus that would be my values move.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

If people want to participate in your survey,

Is it still open?

You said you closed it off.

No,

No,

No.

I stopped publicizing it.

I didn't take it down.

Uh,

You know,

We still have regrets coming in every single day.

So you can go to worldregretsurvey.

Com.

We have,

Well,

When the,

When the backend code is working,

We have a groovy interactive map where you can click on a country or you can click on a state or province and see the last eight regrets that have come in from that place.

That's awesome.

So,

And it'll be your first step in that self-disclosure that you're already on your way.

If you're writing it out and,

And so exactly.

I think the key thing to remember here is that truly is that everybody has regrets.

Every functioning human being has regrets.

And so the question is,

Isn't whether you have regrets or not,

It's really what you do with them.

And I don't think that we've been taught well enough how to deal with regrets or negative emotions in general,

For that matter.

So we have this tendency to ignore them and say,

I don't have any regrets.

I never looked backwards.

I'm always positive.

That's a bad idea.

Or because we're ill-equipped to deal with them,

We ended up getting captured by them.

We wallow in them.

We ruminate on them.

That's a bad idea too.

I think what we want to do is confront our regrets.

Think about them.

We use them as clues.

And when we do that,

This is a powerfully transformative emotion.

Well,

I think that's a good place to end.

Thank you,

Daniel Pink,

For being on the show.

Thanks for having me.

Very therapeutic.

Very therapeutic.

Yeah.

So today,

Daniel Pink talked about some of his research around regret and he shared these four categories of regret that I talked about on the show before.

Foundation regrets,

Boldness regrets,

Connection regrets,

And moral regrets.

And at the end,

He talked about some things you could do to apply to your regrets,

To help you use them for the good.

One of the things that he talked about is self-compassion.

A second strategy he talked about is self-disclosure.

And then third,

He talked about distancing,

Getting a little bit of perspective on your regrets.

What I would like for you to do this week is to practice the three of those in the context of psychological flexibility and in the context of a domain of your life where you may have some regrets.

Choose one domain to work on.

It could be your family.

It could be work.

It could be your health.

It could be the domain of your spirituality.

It could be the domain of the environment.

And once you choose a domain,

Consider these four categories of regret within that domain.

You could do this by thinking about it or even better is to write it down.

The first category of regret is foundational regrets,

Those regrets that have compounding effects.

They're difficult to avoid and difficult to undo.

For example,

For me in the domain of family,

I think about the many times where I put off calling my mom or giving appreciations to my dad or reaching out to my sister to go for a walk.

Those foundational compounding regrets that over time build up.

What are some of yours in the important domain for you?

And then second,

Boldness regrets.

Where did you fail to be bold and you chose to play it safe as Patricia Zorita-Onna says?

And when do you wish that you took more of a risk,

Took a chance,

Said something,

But maybe you weren't true to yourself?

What are some of your boldness regrets in this domain?

And third,

What about your connection regrets?

Where were those sliding door moments that you didn't step through?

Maybe you let a relationship drift away,

Or maybe it was even in connection with yourself.

For example,

With something like physical self-care,

We may have connection regrets where we didn't check in and tend to our own physical needs.

Finally,

In this domain,

What are some of your moral regrets?

Moral regrets include things like harming others,

Cheating,

Not being loyal or dishonoring authority.

Are there any big moral regrets within this domain?

Once you have this list of your categories of regret and your regrets,

Now you have something to work with.

The next step with it is to practice some self-compassion.

To take the perspective like I did with my little son when he told me about his big guilty thing,

The way that I felt towards him in that moment,

Could you feel towards yourself?

That it's understandable that you feel this way,

That everyone has regrets,

Everyone makes mistakes,

Everyone lets relationships slide,

Everyone does things that maybe are against their values from time to time,

And that you still deserve care and kindness and compassion,

And especially in this arena.

Because self-compassion is most effective when we have it towards the parts of ourselves that we have closed off to or shut down from.

Breathe in a little self-compassion for these areas of regret,

Allow your breath and your warm feelings of kindness towards yourself to wash around them.

The next step in this process for you to do this week is self-disclosure.

Share your regrets with someone.

You could do it by entering it into Daniel Pink's website,

You can do it by sending this podcast to somebody and doing an exchange of regrets.

Sit down,

Have a cup of tea,

And let's spill our regrets to each other,

Or you can do it by telling your therapist about it.

This would be a great thing to bring into the therapy room or for therapists to encourage their clients to listen to and bring into therapy.

The final step in regrets that Daniel Pink talked about,

Which has a lot to do with the committed action process of psychological flexibility,

Is now what do you want to do about it?

How can you take action in the here and now to repair if there's something to be repaired?

How can you take action in the here and now to act differently if this regret is telling you something about your values?

How can you act on those values today?

Use your regrets as the compost,

As the nutrient-rich soil from which you plant something new.

There's a lot of power in regret and with ACT,

We move towards discomfort because it's in the service of our values.

Moving towards your regrets with compassion,

With a little perspective taking,

A little self as context,

And with committed action to learn from them and take what you learn into your life is truly what psychological flexibility is all about.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation and please do pass it on with somebody you think it might be helpful to.

Take care.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Your Life in Process.

When you enter your life in process,

When you become psychologically flexible,

You become free.

If you like this episode or think it would be helpful to somebody,

Please leave a review over at podchaser.

Com.

And if you have any questions,

You can leave them for me by phone at 805-457-2776 or send me a voicemail by email at podcast at your life in process.

Com.

I want to thank my team,

Craig,

Angela Stubbs,

Ashley Hyatt,

Abby Deal,

And thank you to Ben Gold at Bell and Branch for his original music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatment.

Reviews

Dear Diane, thank you for this potent conversation with Daniel Pink. I am grateful for the concrete action steps recommended, thank you. Sending good wishes. 🌻

Will share with my group. You helped me realize that it's normal and everybody has some.