Quotes About Regret

Only 1 percent of our respondents said that they never engage in such behavior—and fewer than 17 percent do it rarely. Meanwhile, about 43 percent report doing it frequently or all the time. In all, a whopping 82 percent say that this activity is at least occasionally part of their lives, making Americans far more likely to experience regret than they are to floss their teeth.[17]

But the most common negative emotion—and the second most common emotion of any kind—was regret. The only emotion mentioned more often than regret was love.

If our lives are the stories we tell ourselves, regret reminds us that we have a dual role. We are both the authors and the actors. We can shape the plot but not fully. We can toss aside the script but not always. We live at the intersection of free will and circumstance.

And the most common harm was bullying. Even decades later, hundreds of respondents deeply regretted mistreating their peers.

Regret is the quintessential upward counterfactual—the ultimate If Only. The source of its power, scientists are discovering, is that it muddles the conventional pain-pleasure calculus.[10] Its very purpose is to make us feel worse—because by making us feel worse today, regret helps us do better tomorrow.

The second way to self-distance is through time. We can enlist the same capacity for time travel that gives birth to regret to analyze and strategize about learning from these regrets.

We don't always agree on the boundaries between those domains. But when we forsake what we believe is sacred for what we believe is profane, regret is the consequence.

The Regret Optimization Framework holds that we should devote time and effort to anticipate the four core regrets: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. But anticipating regrets outside these four categories is usually not worthwhile

But the truth is different. You're much more likely to have a Silver Emma moment than a Bronze Borghini one. When researchers have tracked people's thoughts by asking them to keep daily diaries or by pinging them randomly to ask what's on their mind, they've discovered that If Onlys outnumber At Leasts in people's lives—often by a wide margin.[7] One study found that 80 percent of the counterfactuals people generate are If Onlys.

Said a forty-eight-year-old Ohio man: I regret not being more adventurous . . . taking time to travel, explore, and experience more of what the world has to offer. I let the fear of disappointment rule me and allowed others' expectations to be more important than my own. I was always the "good soldier" and worked hard to please those around me. I have a good life—I just wish I had more experiences to share with others. Someday . .

Moral regrets make up the smallest of the four categories in the deep structure of regret, representing only about 10 percent of the total regrets. But for many of us, these regrets ache the most and last the longest. They are also more complex than the other core regrets.

The most telling demonstration of this point came from several dozen people from all over the world who described their regret—their failure to be bold—with the same five words: "Not being true to myself.

Take this fifty-three-year-old Californian: I regret not coming out as a gay man sooner. It definitely impacted how I showed up and my performance and connectedness with my colleagues.

Moral regrets make up the smallest of the four categories in the deep structure of regret, representing only about 10 percent of the total regrets.

THE FIVE REGRETTED SINS Deceit. Infidelity. Theft. Betrayal. Sacrilege.

Regret is a retrospective emotion. It springs into being when we look backward. But we can also use it prospectively and proactively—to gaze into the future, predict what we will regret, and then reorient our behavior based on our forecast.

Tell someone else about the regret in person or by phone. Include sufficient detail about what happened, but establish a time limit (perhaps a half hour) to avoid the possibilities of repetition and brooding.

In the American Regret Survey, twenty-year-olds had equal numbers of action and inaction regrets. But as people grew older, inaction regrets began to dominate. By age fifty, inaction regrets were twice as common as action regrets. Indeed, according to the data, age was by far the strongest predictor of regrets of inaction. When the universe of opportunities before them has dwindled (as it has with older folks), people seem to regret what they haven't done.

This is one of the central findings on regret: it can deepen persistence, which almost always elevates performance.

One of the most robust findings, in the academic research and my own, is that over time we are much more likely to regret the chances we didn't take than the chances we did.

When we behave poorly, or compromise our belief in our own goodness, regret can build and then persist.

If one person embodies this approach to work and life—the apex predator of the anticipated regret food chain—that person is Jeff Bezos. He's one of the richest people in the world, thanks to founding Amazon, one of the largest companies on the planet. He owns The Washington Post. He visits outer space. Yet in the domain of our most misunderstood emotion, he is best known for a concept that he calls the "Regret Minimization Framework.

Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Regret is also valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn't drag us down; it can lift us up.

framing regret as a judgment of our underlying character—who we are—can be destructive.