Quotes About Regret

She had shared his sheets, and, in nightmares of remorse, he had shared her body, waking with drastic regret, feeling as soiled and soilsome as the city itself.

Rather it is the result of a complex interaction among many psychological processes that permeate our culture, including rising expectations, awareness of opportunity costs, aversion to trade-offs, adaptation, regret, self-blame, the tendency to engage in social comparisons, and maximizing.

ANYTIME YOU MAKE A DECISION AND IT DOESN'T TURN OUT WELL or you find an alternative that would have turned out better, you're a candidate for regret.

Clearly, our experience of choice as a burden rather than a privilege is not a simple phenomenon. Rather it is the result of a complex interaction among many psychological processes that permeate our culture, including rising expectations, awareness of opportunity costs, aversion to trade-offs, adaptation, regret, self-blame, the tendency to engage in social comparisons, and maximizing.

This is postdecision regret, regret that occurs after we've experienced the results of a decision. But there is also something called anticipated regret, which rears its head even before a decision is made.

Postdecision regret is sometimes referred to as "buyer's remorse.

If we are responsible for an action that turns out badly and if it almost turned out well, then we are prime candidates for regret.

counterfactual thinking is usually triggered by the occurrence of something unpleasant, something that itself produces a negative emotion.

AS WE HAVE SEEN, REGRET WILL MAKE US FEEL WORSE AFTER DECISIONS—EVEN ones that work out—than we otherwise would, especially when we take opportunity costs into consideration.

it's impossible to be a maximizer about everything. The trick is to learn to embrace and appreciate satisficing, to cultivate it in more and more aspects of life, rather than merely being resigned to it. Becoming a conscious, intentional satisficer makes comparison with how other people are doing less important. It makes regret less likely. In the complex, choice-saturated world we live in, it makes peace of mind possible.

have seen that two of the factors affecting regret are Personal responsibility for the result How easily an individual can imagine a counterfactual, better alternative

We can mitigate regret by Adopting the standards of a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Reducing the number of options we consider before making a decision. Practicing gratitude for what is good in a decision rather than focusing on our disappointments with what is bad.

If people err systematically and substantially in making those predictions, it's likely that they will make some bad decisions—decisions that produce regret, even when events turn out well.

While maximizers and perfectionists both have very high standards, I think that perfectionists have very high standards that they don't expect to meet, whereas maximizers have very high standards that they do expect to meet. Which may explain why we found that those who score high on perfectionism, unlike maximizers, are not depressed, regretful, or unhappy.

The fact that counterfactual thinking seems to hone in on the controllable aspects of a situation only increases the chances that a person will experience regret when engaging in counterfactual thinking.

Do not return to what you have vomited to eat it.

thirty pieces of silver.

What sad, short lives humans live! Each life a short pamphlet written by an idiot! Tut-tut, and all that.

My heart was full of hate and love and regret-all those things that have haunted me ever since.

I tried to take it back, but it was too late.

real reason he'd gone was the one most bad decisions have in common: it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Come back here, kid! I'll blow you for free. Come back here!

I wish I had looked longer, but I don't blame myself. You never know where the trapdoors are in your life, do you?

But stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.