Why You Carry Guilt (And How To Finally Let Go) - Daniel Pink

Key Takeaway

Research shows regret is one of the most universal human emotions - and one of the most powerful for growth. Instead of suppressing regrets with 'no regrets' positivity, treat them as data. When you name a regret, write about it for 15 minutes over 3 days, and explicitly extract lessons from it, you transform a menacing cloud into actionable wisdom. The key insight: people overwhelmingly regret inactions over actions as they age - not taking chances, not reaching out, not speaking up.

Episode Overview

Daniel Pink discusses his book 'The Power of Regret,' challenging the popular 'no regrets' philosophy. Based on a survey of 26,000+ regrets from 130+ countries, Pink identifies four universal regret categories: foundation regrets (not doing the work), boldness regrets (not taking chances), moral regrets (not doing the right thing), and connection regrets (not reaching out). He argues regret is a functional, instructive emotion that - when properly processed - improves decision-making, problem-solving, and helps us live more meaningful lives.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why You Carry Guilt (And How To Finally Let Go) - Daniel Pink from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Daniel Pink, welcome back to the show. I am so glad to be here, Dan Harris. I feel just the same way. Um I've um How many people have brought you on the show and said like, "I have no regrets about booking you on the show." I mean, how many dumb jokes along those lines have you dealt with? You know what? When you had the last name Pink for six decades, you like you get used to the dumb jokes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like like I mean I it's been 30 years since that people say to me, "Hey, did you ever see the movie Reservoir Dogs?" So So I have I have a tough skin for most things, including bad jokes.

jokes. jokes. Got it. Yeah, cuz I people I get the Oh, I'm 10% happier just seeing you. Good lord. lord. lord. Nothing but sympathy. Good lord. All right. So, uh, on the subject of regret, um, just a very basic opening question here. Why this subject for you? for you? for you? Well, for for me, it's because, um, I had regrets. I I had regrets of my own. And I if there was a moment, and I'm I'm not a person who has epiphies or pivotal moments in life, but this this one sort of came close in that a couple years a few years ago, my our elder daughter graduated from college.

And so we're at this college graduation and it's very long and you know I'm spacing out and I start thinking about my own college experience which was generally positive and but I had some regrets. I wish I had worked harder. I wish I had taken more risks. I wish I had been kinder. Um you know and I'm sort of having this out-of- body experience at this graduation anyway wondering how this kid who was just born is graduating. How it's possible for someone as youthful and vital as me to have a kid who's graduating from college, you know.

Anyway, so all all which is to say is like but I was thinking about these regrets and I came back to Washington where I live and I very sheepishly began mentioning them to people because I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regrets regrets regrets and I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about regrets that I had this kind of like you know that like you know you're a journalist it's like there are certain things where people say oh that's really interesting and there are certain things where people say oh my god I need to tell you you know and and anyway to make a long story longer, Dan.

I I um I actually threw away a book proposal. I actually stopped working on another entirely different book, wrote a new book proposal um and decided to spend a few years exploring regret. When you say you regret not working harder and not being kinder, um can you flesh I don't know how deep you want to go in this, but you willing to flesh that out a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so uh so let's let's let's say kindness um in college and even this is like one of my own big you know big regrets and I've it's something that I actually think that I have learn you know in a positive way have learned from I've extracted lessons from it and done better later on but but you know in college um sometimes people aren't nice to each other and I was in situations where people were not being treated well um and I wasn't the person bullying them I wasn't the person mistreating them in any way But I was there and I knew it was wrong and I didn't say anything and it still bugs me.

And so you know with regret the question is what do you do about that? And at one level and this is the whole way that we reckon with regret. You can say oh no no no regrets every never look never look backward. Um or I can wallow at it and say oh my god I am the worst human being there ever was. Or I can say wait a second this is a very strong signal I need to listen to and learn from and do better next time.

So that was that that's one that's one on on on kindness. Um you know there were a few I was on a trimester system. There were a few trimesters where you know I didn't go to class that often where you know I was doing other kinds of things that that 20-year-old men sometimes do. So um and you know in retrospect I might have you know during those kinds of moments worked a little harder. harder. harder. So the biggest regrets in your life come from college? from college?

from college? No not at all. Um, no, no, no. It just it just so happened that the Locust, you know, so the thing is like I'm I'm at this graduation and it's, you know, I don't know how old your kids are, but I don't they're not as old as my kids, are they? they? they? No, my kid is about to turn 11. Okay, great. All right. So, you'll get there, but but the, you know, there there are these kinds of moments in a parent's life and every and time seems to move really fast and also you're in a big auditorium and you're sitting there and it's boring and your mind starts wandering and and and that's and that's what it was.

So my regrets are not all about college. I have plenty of regrets about everything in my life. You you use this phrase a moment ago, no regrets. There's the the beginning of your book as a kind of Jeremiah against the philosophy of no regrets. Why is that a wrongheaded? I think you actually say you call it life thwarting nonsense. So what's what's the beef? First of all, I just want to acknowledge and and tip my hat to the just airdropping that 50 cent word Jeremiah into our conversation.

I do admire that. Second, so many people actually I just got to jump in. I never I never interrupt guests. I really try not to, but I have to tell you, one of the big regrets in my life is being the kind of who drops too many uh 50%. No, I disagree. I actually really I actually really like it. I don't know if I've ever said that word. But I've certainly written certainly written I've certainly written it and actually no this is completely um orthogonal to what we were talking about which is um that um it made me think that oh yeah it does that word does come from Jeremiah the way you pronounce it.

I usually see it in writing so I actually learned something here but um anyway um no regrets. Yeah. You know here's the thing. It's like there's this idea out there um I mean you you know you you've you've written about you've written about happiness. you've written about like how do we get become satisfied in life and you have obviously a nuanced understanding of that but there are other folks out there who are sort of pedalling this idea that the way to be happy the way to have a good life is to be positive all the time and never be negative and to always look forward and never look back and that's just bad advice it's unscientific advice and so um and so here's what we know we have we have 60 years of research on this emotion of regret research in many domains not only I mean we it actually started in kind of game theory and economics but move to neuroscience and cognitive science and what we know is that regret is one of the most common emotions that human beings have.

It is ubiquitous in the human experience. Everybody has regrets. The only people who don't have regrets are, you know, little kids whose brains haven't developed the capacity for counterfactual thinking, people with certain kinds of neurodeenerative disorders and sociopaths. Everybody else has regrets. And so, so we have this like so it's the I think the puzzle here is that why why would something so ubiquitous be so unpleasant? And the answer is because it's useful if you treat it right. And the way to treat it right is not to say no regrets.

Um you know I had people we'll probably talk about this later. I had people who filled out who you know I asked for people's regrets from around the world and I had people literally fill out this survey saying I don't have any regrets but 20 years ago I bullied somebody and I can't stop thinking about it you know so you have this kind of performative positivity uh that I think is is not the path to a life well-lived the idea again as I mentioned before is not to ignore your regrets put your fingers in your ears and say no regrets no regrets no regrets but it's also not to be toppled by them and wallow in them.

It's basically to look at them as information, as data. And when we do that, we have a lot of evidence that it's a transformative emotion. I want to go deeper on that, but let me just stay with the life towarding nonsense for a second. The the phrase no regrets, I've never really used it. Um, but I don't and so I don't really know what it's referring to. Is it is it basically saying it's dumb to look back at your at the dumb stuff you did in the past and regret it or is it is it about living a life where you uh live so fully that you have no regrets?

Yeah. Okay. So that's a good question. The what the what it what you typically hear is people who say oh I don't have any regrets. any regrets. I don't have any regrets. It's foolish to think about regrets. It's foolish to look backward. It's foolish to think about things you've done in the past that you regret. I'm positive all the time. I don't have any regrets. And that's just this is not true. I mean, what you know, that's not the way our brains have evolved. Our brains have evolved to experience regret because regret is useful.

And so that's what I'm that's what I think that going I mean there's some research on this as well. Prospectively, well. Prospectively, well. Prospectively, you can live your life to reduce your regrets, but I can pretty much guarantee that most human beings at the end of their lives will still have a few regrets because that's who we are. And actually, regret because of that, regret makes us better. So either way, you're using no regrets retrospectively or prospectively. I'm using it. I'm using it mostly retrospectively when you say to people, "What are your big regrets?" and they say, "I don't have any regrets because I'm positive and everything happens for a reason and it is foolish and and against my best interest to ever look backward." backward." backward." And I and I'm just saying that's unscientific.

It's it's terrible. That's a terrible way to live your life. The science contravenes that significantly. It's not only unscientific, but it's it's you know, especially, you know, uh in situations where, for example, a child is talking to a parent about some mistreatment and the parent is is refusing to take accountability because they're embracing a no regrets um uh uh uh POV. It's it's infuriating and unfair. unfair. unfair. Absolutely. It's not fair. That's a great point, too. It's not fair to the people. It's not fair to the people around you, but it's also just I mean it just not, you know, it's it's almost like we've been, as I mentioned before, it's it's we've been sold this bill of goods.

We've been sold a bill of goods that the path to a life well-lived is to always be positive and never be negative and to always look forward and never look back. And what the evidence tells us is that we should be positive a lot more than we should be negative. We our positive emotions should absolutely outnumber our negative emotions. But negative emotions are functional. They're there for a reason. And we haven't, I think, especially in America, we haven't done a good enough job equipping people to reckon with their their negative emotions, to acknowledge them, to name them, and to learn from them.

them. them. Technical question. What is a regret actually? actually? actually? Well, okay. So, a regret is when you look you look backward in your life, you look back and you wish you had done something. you wish you hadn't done something or you wish you had done something differently. It is different from sometimes people get confused with between regret and disappointment. um that and and with and I'll give you a good sort of a simple-minded example of that which is uh I mean a simple example of that I don't know if it's simpleminded which is um let's say that it is so I'm looking out my window here in Washington DC and it's actually a nice day um but let's say that it were raining um and I and I and at this time I wanted to go for a run but it's pouring rain and I couldn't go for a run I can't regret that okay I don't control the rain now let's say that I wanted to go somewhere I knew it was raining I was going to rain I didn't wearing an umbrella.

I can regret that because that's on me. So, it's you have to have there's some agency in it. It's not about external circumstances. It's about your own valition, your own choices, your own decisions, your own actions. You don't need a personal trainer to hit your 2026 goals. All you need for a personalized workout is FitBot. I just downloaded the FitBod app. It's really cool. They have this great simple onboarding process where you talk about what your goals are. You describe your gym or your home gym, the equipment you have, the equipment you can get access to, and then the app spits out a really detailed workout regimen for you.

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So what is the power? What what what are the benefits of tuning into this thing some of us try to avoid? Okay, so we have that's a great question too. And so we have so so here's the thing. We we have this emotion. We have this negative emotion. It's adaptive. It's there for a reason. All right? And it's there because it's it's an instructive emotion. And what we have is a pile of evidence mostly from social psychology showing, for instance, okay, you put people into a negotiate, here we go.

Great great long line of research. You put people into a negotiation session. All right? They negotiate. They come out of the negotiation. The researchers say, "What do you regret doing or not doing in that negotiation?" Right? You invite the negative feeling. Those folks do better in the next negotiation. It helps on problem solving. It helps on strategizing. It helps you make better decisions in the future. It helps you find more meaning in life. We have this piles and piles of evidence evidence evidence that when it's not when it's just when it's reckoned with, it's not dismissed and it's not, you know, a source of of of um of endless pain and and um and smothering.

Uh but when we actually reckon with it, it's a transformative emotion. It helps us learn. That's what it's there for. So, for example, on the decision-m, if I can keep my regrets top of mind, um not in a wallowing way, but in a a learning way. Well, then I am going to make smarter decisions and uh make smarter moves in future negotiations, etc., etc., because I'm aware of past pain points, points, points, right? And that's exactly right. And it's also but Yes. And it's also sort of again I want to go back to this idea of of um of emotions and and negative emotions like emotions are signals.

All right? They're there for a reason. And so we can either again we can either ignore them, we can feel them, or we can think about them. And so when we when we experience an emotion like regret, what we need to do is use that as a signal. Now, there's a there's a actually a good evidence-based way to reckon with that that we can talk about. We have a particular regret that involves basically treating yourself with compassion. Um, talking or writing about the regret and then explicitly extracting a lesson from it.

But at a at a at a broad level, absolutely, we should be that that that we these negative emotions are there because they're they're there. They're knocking on our door saying, "I want to teach you something." And you response too. Open the door and acknowledge it. I do want to go into that system that you just described, but let me ask one or two or two or two uh highle questions first. In the book, you lay out these four core regrets. Can you walk us through those?

Sure. Let me tell you how I got there. Um because I think it's going to be instructive. So I set up this thing called the world regret survey where um I invited people all over the world to submit their big regret and um we uh very quickly assembled a database of 26,000 regret over 26,000 regrets now from people in overund 130 countries and what I found is that when when I analyzed those those uh responses basically short paragraphs about you know paragraph from all over the world we had this in Chinese, we had it in in in Spanish as well.

Um, if I found that people ended up around the world with remarkable similarity remarkable similarity remarkable similarity like having the same four kind of regrets at a deep level and I you know and and I think that tells us something there too. I mean I can tell you what those are if you're please. please. please. Yeah. So so one regret was what I call a foundation regret. A foundation regret are small decisions that people make early in life that accumulate to terrible consequences later on. So I spent too much and saved too little.

and now I'm broke. I didn't exercise or eat right. Now I'm profoundly out of shape. Um we had a surprising number of people I I didn't study hard enough in school and now it's like I actually don't have the skills that I need to like do well in life. So that's a foundation regret. Boldness regret very interest I boldness regret is a big category. People look back on their lives and they remember being at a juncture a moment where they had two choices. They could play it safe or they could take the chance.

uh play it safe or take the chance. And what's interesting here is that the domain of life didn't really matter that much in in all these things. The domain of life didn't matter that much. What what mattered was being at that juncture and and choosing between safety and taking a chance. And overwhelmingly, people regret not taking the chance. Not all the time. Some people regret taking the chance and having it go south on them. But overwhelmingly, people regret not taking the chance. And and it manifests itself like this.

Um, I stayed in a dead-end job rather than than starting my own business. Um, I have hundreds of regrets about not asking people out on dates. Hundreds. Uh, I mean, astonishing number of those. Regrets about not speaking up for something that mattered. Regrets about not traveling. Um, basically regrets about wimping out. Um, and it really it really sticks with people. Um, third category, moral regrets. You're at a juncture in your life you can do the right thing, you can do the wrong thing. And when people do the wrong thing, most of us most of the time regret it because most of us are good and most of us want to be good and most of us feel shitty when we're not good.

Um and so the big things there were bullying, huge numbers of bullying regrets and um an enormous amount of marital infidelity. Um so that's moral regrets. And then connection regrets. The fourth category are are are um you have a relationship often not a romantic relationship but including romantic relationship but the full spectrum of relationships. It was intact or should have been intact and it comes apart. And the stories that people tell about how these relationships come apart are generally undramatic. They kind of like drift apart.

And so one person wants to reach out and they don't because it feels awkward. They think the other side's not going to care so they wait. And sometimes it's too late. So I have all kinds of stories about people who wanted to reach out to a friend they knew was not doing well and they call and they realized the friend has passed away. Um all kinds of regrets about friendships that have drifted apart and nobody wants to make the move and saying, "Hey, I'm thinking about you.

How you doing?" Um and so we have these four. So just to recap here, we've got foundation regrets. If only I'd done the work. We have boldness regrets. If only I'd taken the chance. We have more regrets. If only I'd done the right thing. And we have connection regrets are if only I'd reached out. And it's just really remarkable. If I were to show you the the the data set, um basically looks like a giant spreadsheet and show you the regrets that people expressed. I don't think that you could tell where they were from.

I don't think you could tell a regret from Milwaukee versus a regret from um Santiago, Chile. Is there one of these categories that is the most uh and this is probably the poor uh deployment of this word um the most popular? most popular? most popular? Um the biggest the biggest numbers were the connection regrets and the boldness regrets. Okay. Um now I also did again not to get in the weeds here, I also did a quantitative survey of the American population. uh basically a giant public opinion survey, a very good piece of research um looking at American attitudes about regret.

And one of the big takeaways there was and and here I can make this claim very very uh ve very strong is that one of the big takeaways there was how much over time people regret inactions over actions. That is not even close. That is a slam dunk. It is so overwhelming. I in this quantitative work I looked to see if if there were demographic differences in regret between say men and women between people of different races or even things like introversion extroversion belief in God and there weren't very many demographic differences it was kind of surprising but when it came to age huge one what we had is that people in their 20s tended to have equal numbers of regrets about action and inaction equal numbers of I regret something I did or I regret something I didn't do Over time, as people age, not even close.

Over time, people regret their inactions much more than their actions. And that's consistent with the boldness regrets. I should have taken a chance and the connection regrets. I should have reached out. reached out. reached out. Yeah. So, I guess I'm an outlier. I mean, I'm I'm older. I'm in my mid-50s. I My regrets are mostly sins of commission. Uh bullying in particular. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um or or insufficient kindness similar to yours. you know, just moments where I didn't uh speak up or or just do a little thing that would have made a big difference for somebody else.

Um I mean, both of those those are commission and omission. I mean, you have there people like me like my regrets of kindness are are inaction regrets of kindness. Fairness. Fairness. Fairness. Um and but but Dan, I mean, this bullying thing is is a big deal. I mean the um we have people who went back and I I I did it. So in this world regret survey I I did I I wanted it to be anonymous. So I asked people for their gender, for their age, for where they are and their regret, but I also gave them because I needed I wanted some texture for the writing.

I said I gave them the option of opting in to list their email address if they wanted to do a follow-up interview, if they were interested in doing a follow-up interview. Okay, so pure anonymity, but they could opt in to give me their email address. So address. So address. So figured if I got a big enough sample, two or three% would give me a lot of people to interview. 32% of people opted in. in. in. So it's like not only So that tells you like how much people like want to talk about this.

Yes. And you know, it's like, oh yeah, I'm going to share my big regret with a complete stranger and oh yeah, I'm going to give him my email address so he can talk to me some more about it. Um, so one one of the among the many follow-up interviews I did, I interviewed this woman 50 years old in Kansas, she talked about bullying a kid on the bus when she was like 9 or 10 years old. years old. years old. She was crying in this interview.

She felt so bad about about doing that. So it's a it's a big deal. We've had people go back and try to find the people they bullied, like like using Facebook or social media. And um and in in some cases, the the bully is more traumatized than the bullied. I've tried to find this one kid that I bullied. Um and I've also been approached by a kid who bullied me. Um uh um that was in person. Um but yeah, I I really resonate with that. So the the book gets very practical about how to deal with regrets.

So I'm just going to go through go through go through uh um you know some of your suggestions. You you start by talking about this pair of options undoing and at leasting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you unpack that? So that's for that's for action regrets. So um one reason that action regrets don't linger as long is we can do something about them. Okay. So so undoing would be uh I bullied somebody and then I went back and apologized to that person and made amends. like you can make somebody whole.

I heard somebody and I made them I I made them whole. Uh the other thing that happens with action regrets is there's some really fascinating research on counterfactual thinking here that undergurs this is that with action regrets you can find the silver lining. Okay. So so here's here's what that means. Regret hinges on counterfactual thinking. And there are two kinds of counterfactual thinking. You can imagine how things could have turned out better and you can imagine how things could have turned out worse. So, how things could have turned out better, that's an upward counterfactual.

How things could have turned out worse, that's a downward counterfactual. And what we know is that downward counterfactuals downward counterfactuals downward counterfactuals make us feel better. And uh they don't make us do better, but uh upward counterfactuals regret help us do better and make us feel worse. They make us feel worse and help us do better. And they make us do better because they help us because they make us feel worse. They help us do better because they make us feel worse. But at least, let me give you an example of that.

So downward counterfactual is counterfactual is counterfactual is okay from the survey. I shouldn't have married that guy, but at least I have these two great kids. I married that kid. He's I married that guy who's an idiot. That's a big mistake. I should never have married him, but at least I have these two great kids. And so you sort of make you make peace. You make peace with that. This this idea of upward and downward counterfactuals is is clear. in this like this study from about 30 years ago, 35 years ago that's been replicated several times, which is you you show people people people uh in an experiment photographs of an Olympic medal stand.

Okay, the people who are receiving medals in the Olympics and they have to simply evaluate how happy the people look. Okay, get gold, silver, bronze, how happy they look. And so invariably the person who looks the happiest is the person who won the gold medal cuz they won a gold medal at the Olympics. But the second happiest person is overwhelmingly the bronze medalist because the bronze medalist is doing a downward counterfactual saying at least I finished third not like that schmo finished fourth and doesn't have a medal.

And the the the silver medalist is the least happy person up there even though they're in second place because they're doing upward counterfactuals. Ah, if only I had pedal harder, I would have gotten to gold. And so again, so that's so regret is because our I mean, you know this, our brains are amazing. All right, our brains just do these amazing things. And one of the things they do is travel through time like change events, come back to the present, and it's just incredible. And so it's a superpower in a way.

And so again, upward counterfactuals make us feel worse, but help us do better. But downward counterfactuals are are useful. Um they make us feel better and sometimes it's good just to feel better even though it doesn't help improve our performance. performance. performance. Fair enough. Um another of your recommendations and this and this kind of hearkens back to your articulation of amazement at at the fact that so many people not only wanted to fill out your survey but um but speak to you a stranger about it.

Uh another strategy you recommend the book is disclosure. getting it off your chest 100%. We have a lot of evidence about that and let let's explain why that's the case. So, um because I think that that helped me understand this. Um so, certainly disclosure certainly disclosure certainly disclosure is there's an unburdening there. You're sort of lifting the weight from your shoulder and that's certainly true for for moral things. Um there there's a um but the other thing about the disclosure is that we have research like from Jamie Pennaker at Texas showing that when we write about these things um uh there's there's evidence that if you write about your regret for 15 minutes a day for 3 days it it helps defang it significantly.

Uh and the reason for that is that the our negative emotions are are are blobby. They're amorphous. They're vaporous and when we write about them or talk about them, when we name them, we we sort of they they become more concrete and that therefore they become less menacing. There's research out there showing that writing about like like writing about your negative emotions is helpful. Writing about your positive emotions isn't always helpful because you want to just have that general glowy amorphous, you know, amorphous thing. If I were to say, you know, or you were to say to me, list 17 specific reasons you love your wife, you know, it sort of takes some of the charm out of it, you know what I mean?

And so, um, and so, um, so, so there is a big, uh, argument for for disclosure. The other thing that we care about, what we're concerned about with disclosure is that we fear that when we admit our mistakes, when we disclose things that we're not necessarily proud of, that people will think less of us. And there's some pretty good evidence that, not all the time, but most of the time, people think more of us. They actually admire our cander. They admire our um they they admire our courage.

Uh and so there's a very strong argument for disclosure um and just wrestling these things wrestling these amorphous negative emotions to the ground. Just to say to the listener um I interviewed Jamie Pennaker um who's who's really the the granddaddy of um uh journaling uh to for dealing with difficult emotions. Um and so I'll drop a link in the show notes if people want to go deep on his work. But but Daniel, you talk not only about journaling uh for 15 minutes over three consecutive days, but but also about um about um about um you you can call somebody or you can even talk into your the the voice recorder on your phone.

There are lots of ways to unbburden. Absolutely. Absolutely. The key here is is is going through this kind of transformation process. It's basically taking something that is amorphous and blobby and making it more concrete. and words are more concrete than this kind of dull vaporous feeling. Um, this is, you know, this is one reason why like like cognitive behavior therapy is often often involves naming the emotion that you're feeling, you know, because when when we name things, we sometimes feel like we have dominion over it.

And but to me, it's like what it it it it aids in this it aids in the sense making. Absolutely. Because you take something that's it's kind of a background static of regret or shame or or um uh fear and uh you you you put a name on it, it just feels much more workable. Yeah. You can you can you can you can you can see it like like if if if you like you can hold it in your hands in a way metaphorically rather than just feel this menacing cloud uh above you.

And that sense making is that sense making is extremely important in you know looking at it and then extracting a lesson that you can apply in the future. Another recommendation in the book is to create a failure resume. What is that about? about? about? So this is an idea from Tina Celick at Stanford which I love and I've done and I'm going to I I I sort of have a refined a somewhat edited view of this now. Um uh so here's what I did uh based on this idea.

So what you do is you you you you make a resume. You make a list of all of your failures, setbacks, screw-ups, um blunders. blunders. blunders. All right? But you don't leave it there because it's not an exercise in self flagagillation. Then you say, "What lesson did I learn?" Then you have another column that says, "What lesson did I I I learned from this?" And then the third column, what am I going to do about it? And so what you do is you take you take these things that sort of linger in our head and you memorialize them.

Be specific about the lesson you're learning from them and then have a specific action you can take afterwards. Now I doing this over a lifetime. This is painful doing it over a lifetime. I don't recommend that. What I do recommend is is people to take say five failures, setbacks, screw-ups. List them. Say what you learned from them and then what are you going to do about it? For me, when I did this more massive comprehensive list, what I discovered, and it was actually super helpful to me, was that I was actually making um um um some of the same mistakes over and over and over again.

And it that helped me it helped me surface that. It really did because when you look at the lesson, it's like, "Oh, here's that lesson again. Oh, here's that lesson again." lesson again." lesson again." There's there's a reason why in the military they do after action reports. Absolutely. Exactly 100%. Um, and I'm I'm a big believer in that. I'm also a big believer in again using our brains time travel capabilities of also doing a premortem on things. Um, where you you bas again our brains are amazing.

You know that. So you you're you're planning out a product. I I do a premortem for basically every important project I do. What you do is you you um you you think about you say it's 3 years from now and this project is a complete abject disaster. What went wrong? And you literally list you get in your time machine, you go to the future, what went wrong? And then you list the things that went wrong and then because it's in many cases easy to anticipate that we didn't have enough budget, we didn't get the right people on board.

we didn't have approval from the regulators, whatever. Make that list. You get back in your time machine to the present and don't do those things, you know. Uh, and so and and so, you know, a premortem is a I I I truly do it for every single project that I do. So, it's another way to So, it's another way to sort of because we can also anticipate our regrets. That's another thing that we can do. We can anticipate our regrets and construct our present day to try to avoid them.

Yeah. So in the book you use this expression regret optimization framework. Is that what you're referring to? to? to? Yeah. I mean regret optimization framework was an idea that was u popularized by Jeff Bezos who had you know famously had a story where he was contemplating contemplating contemplating um starting Amazon. This is back you know 30 years ago close to 30 years ago. And he was working in this very lucrative finance job. And his boss said you're crazy to do this. and he as the story goes he took a walk and he thought to himself like what am I going to regret when I'm 80 and he said I'll regret not taking this shot and so so the idea was to you know optimize for avoiding future regrets there's some there's some there's a downside of that too because we there's some other research Barry Schwarz is famous for this of in decision-m about the difference between maximizers and satisficers satisficers satisficers that is maximizers try to make every decision so it's the very very best that they can do and satisficers make decisions saying okay that's that's good enough and what the research tells us is that maximizers that maximizers that maximizers do a little bit better but they're freaking miserable and so um and so you know I think what we want to do is in our optimization is we want to avoid big regrets big regrets big regrets and just satisfies and everything like that.

So, for instance, um you know, okay. Okay. True true true story. So, I was in an airport today. I was just flew in today. I was in the Albany airport. All right. It's 11:30 a.m. and I'm starving. All right. So, what do I So, I have like Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets. All right. So, I sort of regret that. Okay. Because it's not optimal nutrition and I actually don't feel great right now. All right. But you know the thing is is like if I if if at that point I said I tried to optimize for future regrets every single decision you're going to go crazy.

And what we should be doing is optimizing for the decisions for the things we know we're going to regret. And here's the thing there's a principle of social science uh minted by Dan Gilbert which is brilliant. He and he says it's hard to follow. He says most people are like most people. Okay. And most people because they're like most people don't realize they're like most people. All right. Most of us are fairly similar. And so I can make a pretty safe bet of what I'm going what I and other people will regret in the future.

And here's what it is. If only I'd done the work. If only I'd taken the shot. If only I'd done the right thing. If only I'd reached out. And so what we should be doing is is is maximizing for those and really just satisficing on a lot more stuff. Really just satisficing on a lot more stuff. Okay. So let let's go back to we've just taken a detour a good one into anticipation of regret. Yeah. Um let's talk more about um processing of existing regrets. One thing you another thing you recommend and this seems to come up in like a at least a plurality of my interviews on this show.

Uh but one of the things you recommend is self-compassion. Yes. Can you can you say a little bit more? First of all, I'm so glad that it does come up so often because I have to say when I was working on this, it was actually a new concept to me. Uh I didn't know very much about it. Um, and so for your listeners who missed the previous, uh, 37 episodes on self-compassion, the uh, it's an idea started by Kristen Nef at university, also at the University of Texas.

And, um, it has to do with, um, you know, what do we do in the face, let's take a what do we do? What do we do in the in the in the face of a regret? And what it tells us is that or in a mistake. And what it tells us is that we should treat ourselves with kindness rather than contempt. Period. I mean that's basically what it is. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Um you know a lot of people especially a lot of high achievers when they screw up when they make a mistake their self-t talk is absurd.

It's brutal. It's vicious. It's lacerating. And what Christine Nev's research tells us is don't do that. All right. We have research on self-esteem modest boost. We have research on on lacerating self-criticism does almost nothing for performance. But self-compassion does something for performance. So the key here is when you have a regret, treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Um don't treat yourself better than anybody else, but don't treat yourself worse than anybody else. Uh and also recognize that your regrets are part of the human experience.

Like like you're not that I mean at some level you're not that special. any regret. If I walk down the street here in Washington and and pull and just tap them on the shoulder and say, "What's your what's your big regret?" I can find that regret in my database in 94 seconds. Like like you're just we're just not that special. And so um so you're not that special. Everybody has regrets. Treat yourself with kindness. Treat yourself don't treat yourself worse than anybody else. And that is that is a way to begin some of this sensemaking.

this some of this sensemaking. What what's so interesting about self-compassion, I'm a major proponent of it, Kristen has been on the show many times and is a friend and I, you know, so I'm I'm I'm in the tank. Um, what's so interesting about it is it's a paradox in some ways that like you can't change until you accept yourself. Does that make sense what I'm pointing to? to? to? Absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean the um you um you um you we somehow we've gotten the belief that treating oursel treating ourselves poor that that I think there's a there's a thing with high achievers too that they think that lacerating self-criticism is somehow motivating that it's going to improve their performance that they're being that being tough on themselves in that way and there's no there's no evidence of that.

I mean there really isn't. The other thing the other way to look at this the way I look at it and believe me like I know about lasserating self-criticism. All right I'm I have like a master's you know all but dissertation on PhD in in lacerating self-criticism. And the thing is if you were to broadcast my selft talk the way I talk to myself if I were in an organization and you were to take my my selft talk the way I talk to myself and I were to talk that way to somebody else HR would be in my office in 10 minutes like and so it just it doesn't it uh somehow somehow we don't quite somehow we haven't quite gotten that we haven't quite gotten that message.

I think it's it seems maybe for certain people self-compassion seems superficially soft but the evidence is overwhelming uh that this is a it is a perform as an answer. Amen. Back at you. Um yet another thing you recommend is selfdistancing. What what does that entail? Well, here's a way to think about it sort of sequentially. So you start by like exercising some self-compassion by treating yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Then you maybe disclose. You talk about it, you write about it to make sense of it.

But what you have to do is you have to extract a lesson from it. You have to learn from it. All right? You you you can't just say, "Oh, everybody has regrets. I have a regret. End of story." No, that doesn't make you better. What what you want to do is you actually want to think about it saying, "Okay, what is what lesson am I learning from this that I can carry forward?" And here we confront, which you might have done shows on too, is Solomon's paradox.

All right? Solomon's paradox which is that this principle in psychology named after surprisingly King Solomon who was this wise and sagacious guy who totally mucked up his own life and what it tells us is that human beings are pretty good decision makers but we stink at making decisions in our own life many times um uh that we we approach our own li we're too close to things. We approach our own lives like scuba divers in the water when we should be approaching them like oceanographers. And self-distancing is a way to way to way to uh to to look at our lives in in a different way.

So there's some research some interesting research showing that in selft talk if I say to myself or if I say to myself um I need to return phone calls and emails faster or else people think I'm rude. All right you I could say you need to return phone calls and emails faster. So shift from first person to second person or Dan needs to return. So that kind of distancing. There's some other I'll give you the the single best decision making. Um I'm going to see your Jeremy ad going to I'm going to see your Jeremy ad and raise you a heristic or I'm going to the single best decision-m heristuristic that I know which is um somebody comes to you for advice and u someone oh someone I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do. Just it helps if you stroke your chin a little bit beforehand. Stroke your chin and say, "Okay, what would you tell your best friend to do?" And people immediately know. So when you have this regret, okay, you say, "Okay, what would I tell my best friend to do in the face of this regret?" Um uh uh you you can do things like what would the me of 10 years from now want me to do in this situation? Right? You get you get away from that.

Uh for all of your business listeners, Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel had a brilliant self-distancing move where he found he said that when he was facing a tough decision as an executive and he didn't know what to do, he would always ask himself, "If I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do?" And he always knew. And so again, uh we're often very close to our we're often too close to our our we know too much. we're we're too imshed in the details sometimes to make good decisions about our own lives, particularly things that are painful, that are emotionally fraught.

And so explicitly saying, "What would I tell my best friend to do? What would I do if I were replaced? What does the me of 10 years from now want me to do?" Um, that can be really, really useful. And there's some really fascinating research on that as well, showing the power of that. that. that. This is really helpful. Um just to in my mind um there are two bodies of work that um have have been on parallel paths but that and and you're probably familiar with both of these um um bodies of work uh in in the re in uh psychological research but but they they really um they meld well in my mind.

So there's self-compassion. Yeah. Um, and in in Kristine's work, she recommends often what's called this the mindful self-compassion break, which consists of three parts. The first is mindfulness, just seeing clearly this is a moment of suffering. The second is, and you referenced this, acknowledge acknowledging universality, common humanity. I'm not the only one with this problem. And then the third is to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. And and so that's self-compassion. And then there's also the work of Ethan Cross at the University of Michigan who's also been on the show a couple of times and he's the one who's really shown that if you talk to yourself using self-distancing and you referenced this, you know, using your own name um that you can uh that it can be more effective.

And so it's like the third part of the mindful self-compassion break of like talking to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend and then adding in this distant self-t talk to use the term of art seems to be like to supercharge the whole thing. I I think that they I mean, you know, I write about both u uh Nef's work and Ethan's work. Um and they're both I think they're powerful and I think they they go together well. And we haven't been, you know, I think what's interesting here is that we haven't, you know, we'll throw in Penibreaker and make it a hat-tick.

You know, we we haven't been we have a lot of research on this. I think what's what make an an observation that might be interesting. So, we have evidence of this. We have science behind these things. Um, and we know how to do this. And yet, we haven't we're not equipped to do it and we haven't been taught how to do it. But I think what's interesting is that that's in the secular world. In the religious world, there are mechanisms, rituals, practices that are rooted in these same kinds of ideas that people do.

Um, so you know, c in Catholicism, it's confessional. You know, you unbburden yourself. You tr you you transmute your your amorphous emotion to a disclosure that says what it is. You you know you get some guidance from an authority on what to do next. You Jews have a whole day of the year that is about atonement where you're forced to reckon with that. Yes. There's there are other rituals in Judaism where you take a mistake or regret. I can't think of what it's called. And you light it on fire and you throw it into the river.

Um and so we have um and and some of the you know the mindfulness stuff as you know better than anybody is rooted in some forms of Buddhism. And so you know the secular world though hasn't equipped us to deal with this universal painful emotion. U the religious world has it's developed these rituals and mechanisms things like that. But if we look to the science and I think you're exactly right, Nef Cross, you know, um, uh, Pennaker as well and many and many other people, it g it's giving us instructions about how to live our lives more fully, how to live our lives better when we know that our lives are going to have pain, they're going to have unpleasantness, we're going to make mistakes, we're going to screw up, we're going to feel bad part of the time.

And u I just feel like in in especially in America, we just h we we haven't been taught in a secular world how to reckon with that. Which is why Dan, I mean it's why, you know, your books, you know, your stuff is so popular because people need that kind of mindfulness. They need a they need a practice. They need a ritual. They need a a set of tools to make sense of a complex world and also to make sense of a flawed self. Yeah. Well, thank you.

And I also um I just do want to acknowledge and agree with your point that that um there's a lot to be learned uh even for those of us who have some weariness when it comes to organized religion. There are there's a lot to be learned and and you you described the show earlier as secular. I would say it's like um I mean to a certain extent yes, but it's like more syncric. It's like um nice. nice. nice. Uh Uh Uh okay, you're you're you're it's two to one now.

one now. one now. Yeah, that you you owe me one. Um uh it's like what works and I'll take it what works from any tradition. And I and but and here's the thing I I don't I if you look at at if like I'm doing some research now on wisdom and if you look at what psychologists and scientists have learned about wisdom and you look at some of the wisdom traditions that were that that were minted well before we had anything close to the scientific method.

There's a lot of similarities. Yes. You know, um and um and and even if you look at what um you know, if you look at some of these regrets, too. I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting about these four regrets, it took me a while to get there is that they operate, they give us instruction. Okay? So, we can have like in a in a given moment, you can have a regret. You can treat yourself with self-compassion. You can disclose it and write about it.

You can extract a lesson from it through self-distancing. But at a broad level, regret teaches us something else too. Because what I discovered in interviewing all these hundreds of people about their regrets is that when we know what people regret the most, we know what they value the most. Right? This is actually really important. So you think go back to this all the decisions we make. You know, yesterday or or today, let's take today. Today, I don't know, I probably made 70 decisions in the course of the day.

Tomorrow I'm gonna not even remember tomorrow I'm not going to remember most of them. But there's certain kinds of decisions and actions and inactions from a year ago, from five years ago, from 10 years ago, that 20 years ago that not only do you remember them, they bug us. Like that is an incredibly strong signal. And and these four regrets that we surfaced in this big world regret survey, I think they operate as a reverse image of what people want out of life. What do people want out of life?

I think foundation regrets are about stability. A good life is stable. A good life is not precarious. A good life is not, not, not, you know, wobbling underneath your feet. Um um moral regrets. A good life is good, right? a a good life is true and just uh every religious tradition teaches us that uh boldness regrets I think that boldness regrets are about mortality in a sense that we all we we know we're going to die right and you're here for this like vanish only a short amount of time like when are you going to like when are you going to step up you know like my god you're not here forever why don't you ask Shirley out on a date u you're not going to be here forever why don't you start that cake baking business whatever you know and um and then rel uh uh connection regrets are about love.

So what do we want out of life? We want some stability, we want some goodness, we want some growth and we want love. And so again these these these negative emotions particularly this kind of like apex negative emotion of regret is giving us the tools and it's giving us the insights to lead our lives uh with greater richness, with greater fullness, with greater love. Well said. I just want to touch on a few of more strategic suggestions from you before I let you go. Um you talk about starting a regret circle.

What is that? Yeah. So this is something that that um that some people have done. Um there's certain kinds of group practices that are kind of interesting in here. So what you can do is you basically you know gather your friends. Uh everybody talks about a regret that they have and um but the the key here so you have that so what you have is you have the disclosure. uh you have the sense of solidarity that you're not alone, but what you also have is you're enlisting, let's say you have six people, you're enlisting five other people to help you see what you should do.

Um so you're overcoming Solomon's paradox in in that. Um Um Um and so that that's one thing. Uh the other thing that that you sometimes see, it's it's a it's a really interesting story. There's been some few feature stories about it, but people doing obituary parties. so that they will gather with their friends and then like write their obituary and read it. So what you're doing is you are going forward in time and imagining backward. There's a famous story about about Alfred Nobel um where he woke up one morning in the late 1800s and in this French paper, you know, it's it's he saw his obituary, his obituary, his obituary, right?

and and but they mistook him for his brother Ludvig and and so so he's a little bit wigged out by reading his obituary but what he what really wigged him out was the headline which is um forgive my bad French mer all right the merchant of death is dead it's very important when I speak French to sound like Peter Sers as you can tell the the the merchant of death is dead and he's like wait a second like I'm this great industrialist I'm this great human being and they're calling to me in my obituary the merchant of death cuz he invented dynamite.

He had munition factories etc. Yeah, he had he had he had invented dynamite blasting caps. He was a great inventor, a great chemist but what he invented were things that went boom basically dynamite blasting caps. Um and um and he actually when he finally did die like 20 years later to his family surprise he changed his will uh and didn't leave any money to them but left all his money to start the Nobel prizes Nobel prizes Nobel prizes because he had that glimpse of his obituary um and he knew what people would say about him.

So people have sometimes obituary parties where they'll write their obituary and read it to other people. Um so there is a sense out there that people do want to reckon with these negative things. they just don't know how. And as you were mentioning before, some of the academic work from people like Kristen and Ethan can help really really help people do that. Last question because then we're going to run out of time. Um, one of the other things you recommend is to uh adopt a journey mindset.

What does that mean? Yeah. Yeah. There's some interesting research. Jennifer Aer has done some of this research on how um and it sounds you know basically there's a there's something called in in psychology that you know we've all confronted called the arrival fallacy arrival fallacy arrival fallacy where we think if as soon as I get I give you my own life. Okay fallacy my first book is like it's like oh my god I just I really want a book on the bestseller list. All right and once I get a book on the bestseller list I'm gonna feel great.

All right. So I get a book on the bestseller list and it feels great for a day and then I'm like, "Oh what can I do to stay on for next week?" All right. So it's like and so what you have to do is is is actually not fall for that and instead just sort of enjoy you know focus on the journey and and there's some very good re there's some research from Jennifer Oer at Stanford as I mentioned showing that people who really do say you know I'm doing this um um I'm doing this interview with Dan Harris not to try to pedal my books to try to achieve some instrumental end but because it's part of my own exploration of these ideas because it's an interesting conversation because I'm on the path to talk about things that really that really matter.

And as cheesy as that sounds, there's some very good evidence that that approach is psychologically healthy. psychologically healthy. psychologically healthy. Notwithstanding the fact that you just said what you said um as we vector toward our final um uh seconds here. Can I just get you to remind the audience of the name of your book and also your previous books uh because people may want to go deeper on this subject and others that you have touched. Um I uh the name of this book is The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.

And I I have a bunch of other books uh that I whose titles I don't really want to recite, but you can find them um uh at your favorite book seller or at dan at danpink.com. dnp.com. I've been like you. I'm in I've been like you. I'm in my mid you know I've been around for a while. I'm in my mid-50s which means that I just turned 61. The last thing I just want to say to you is first of all, it's ridiculous and this is my fault uh that I'm interviewing you about this book three years after it came out.

So I just want to um uh beg you um and this is not to shift the blame here, but just to beg you that anything you're doing anytime, you should pitch me directly or my team because you are on a short list of people that I and we always support. So kind. That's very kind of you. I appreciate I appreciate that. I'm now I'm now in my you know I'm now in my you know um I'm now in the midst of a mid I'll spare you the full detour the full contours of my midlife crisis.

But I'm now doing a bunch of different crazy things that I'm not sure where will I ever work or why I'm doing it. But that's another story. But if I have anything if I ever have any work product that's worth promoting I'll call you. I'm your boy. Hit me up. Um Daniel Pink huge pleasure. Thank you for making for this. Pleasure. Okay. I really enjoyed it Dan. Thanks so much for having me. Take care.