The Power of Regret

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

Daniel Pink, the best-selling author of the books, “Drive” and “To Sell is Human”, has come up with a new one which surely would be a best-seller too, “The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Makes Us Move Forward.”

We all have regrets according to the author.  Anyone who claims he or she has none is either lying or has some brain defect that makes them not remember their past mistakes.  Regret is something common to everyone and need not be something occupying our minds all the time but can be neutralized and normalized.

According to psychologists we either make two stories about our lives that we always tell ourselves and becomes our identity.  It’s either a contamination story or a redemption story.  In the contamination story everything was going well with our life but for some fault of ours it gradually fell apart.  In the redemption story we went from bad to good.  Something horrible happened in our life but after some hard work we got much better.  People who dwell on the contamination story are miserable and achieve very little in their careers.  But those who are living the redemption story are happy, have accomplished more in their careers and live a more meaningful life.  The good news is for those who are living the contamination story they can still make it into a redemption story by turning their regrets into resolutions to begin again and start all over with their lives.  Because if there is life there is hope as the saying goes.

Regrets can be starting points for a redemption story.  For example, if you regret smoking and not taking care of your health when you were young, you now have an excellent

opportunity to transform your health and even become a marathoner.  Or if you regret not taking your college studies seriously and got poor grades, you can craft a redemption story by taking on more responsibilities in your current job, work hard and move up the ranks.  Who knows, one day you might be invited to speak in your alma mater to talk about your success story and make up for your poor past performance in school.

Author Daniel Pink conducted a World Regret Survey and gathered 16,000 regrets from people in 105 countries. Pink found that all human regret fall into four categories: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets.

Foundation Regrets sounds like, “if only I’d done the work.”  Examples of this would be: “If only I’d drank less and maintained a disciplined diet, I wouldn’t have so many health problems today.” Or “If only I’d worked hard in my twenties, I wouldn’t be in this dead‐end job today.”

Boldness regrets is all about taking risks.  Examples would be: “If only I’d asked that girl out.” Or “If only I’d started that business.”  Moral regrets are on failing to the right thing such as, “I wish I hadn’t bullied that kid in school.” Or “I wish I’d been faithful to my wife.”  And Connection Regrets is about failures in relationships such as, “If only I’d reached out to my friend before she died of cancer.” Or “If only I’d apologized to my son and mended our relationship sooner.”

The author says many regrets are like tattoos, you can remove them with hard work, but a mark often remains.  But that does not have to be a bad thing.  We can use regret residue as motivation to anticipate future regret and build a life you’ll be proud of.  You can make resolutions based on the four kinds of regret by creating a weekly resolution template.

For example, for Foundation Regrets (neglecting your health, professional growth, or finances) your resolutions would be, “For this week to take care of my health, I will… (exercise, eat a healthy diet, avoid alcohol, etc.)” Or “For this week to advance my career, I will… (read a self-help book, attend a career growth seminar, work on my priorities, etc.) Or “For this week to increase my savings, I will… (cut on my expenses, record my expenses, open a saving account, etc.)” On Boldness Regrets (too afraid to take emotional and social risks) your resolutions would have phrases such as, “I will try… (to learn how to swim) I will start… (on my on-line business) and I will ask… (the phone number of that girl)” On Moral Regrets (not doing the right thing in difficult situations) your resolutions would be phrases such as “I will try to be more loyal to… (my spouse, friend, officemate) or I will be more kind to…I will be more helpful to…” And on Connection Regrets (letting important relationships drift) you resolve to “reach out and patch things with my classmate in high school” Or “To forgive so and so”.  Anticipating regrets will prevent small regrets from becoming big ones that can result to divorce, bankruptcy or diabetes.