Daniel Pink, How to Understand Your Emotions and Live Your Best Life | Mental Health | YAPClassic

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Speaker 1 Welcome back, young improfiters, to our latest YAF Classic episode.

Speaker 1 And as we step into this new year, it is totally natural to look back on the past 12 months and consider all the choices that we've made.

Speaker 1 Regrets can often weigh heavily on our hearts, reminding us of missed opportunities or paths not taken. But what if we could transform those feelings of regret into powerful catalysts for change?

Speaker 1 That's exactly what I spoke about with best-selling author Daniel Pink in episode 189, how to stop letting regret hold you back.

Speaker 1 So many entrepreneurs and executives have a no regrets mindset, and so many of us try to bury or ignore our own regrets as much as possible.

Speaker 1 But as Daniel Pink shared with me, when we approach regret thoughtfully, it can serve as a very valuable resource. Regret highlights our values and priorities.

Speaker 1 It keeps us from making the same stupid mistakes. And it can even help us convert our past hardships into future strengths.

Speaker 1 So if you want to transform your regrets into actionable advice, you won't want to miss this interview with Daniel Pink.

Speaker 1 So last time you were on the show, it was back in December of 2019. It was for episode number 50.
It was called The Science of Perfect Timing.

Speaker 1 And that episode was actually one of my all-time favorite episodes on YAP. Everybody who listened to it loved it.

Speaker 1 And I have a feeling this conversation is going to be equally as good because in my opinion, you are the epitome of what a great podcast guest is. You're so knowledgeable.

Speaker 1 There's no fluff when you talk. Everything is backed up by science and research.
And so you are the ideal YAF guest for that reason. And here at YAF, we love to go super deep on a specific topic.

Speaker 1 Today's focus is going to be on regret. You are the author of seven books and your latest book is called The Power of Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.

Speaker 1 So let's jump right into this topic of regret. Last time you were on the show, we covered your career journey extensively.

Speaker 1 So anybody who's tuning in and interested in that can go back to episode number 50. I highly recommend that episode.
And so Daniel, I'm pretty familiar with your work.

Speaker 1 And usually you write a book because you're very curious about the topic yourself and you start to research that topic. You call this mi search.
So let's start there.

Speaker 1 What was the genesis of this book and what initially got you curious about this topic?

Speaker 2 Well, once again, I've fallen down the trap of mi search because that's what this is again. So here's what happened.

Speaker 2 In 2019, I had one of those moments in life that you get to when you get to be my age. I'm in my 50s and I had a kid graduate from college.

Speaker 2 So that's kind of a jarring experience because you wonder like, how did that kid grow up so fast? And how am I possibly old enough to have a kid who's graduating from college?

Speaker 2 And in the course of this college graduation, which was very long and lengthy, and my daughter's last name starts with P. There was a lot of waiting around.
You know, inevitably your mind wanders.

Speaker 2 And as my mind was wandering, my thoughts turned to my own college experience. And I started thinking about what I regretted.
There were a lot of things I regretted. I wish I had worked harder.

Speaker 2 I wish I had been kinder. I wish I had been a little gutsier, you know, taking more risks.
So these thoughts were kind kind of tiptoeing through my head when I came back.

Speaker 2 And I wanted to discuss them with other people, but I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regret because it's taboo.

Speaker 2 So against my better judgment, I very, very, very, very, very sheepishly mentioned a few of these regrets to a few people. And I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about regret.

Speaker 2 That it was a kind of topic that there was this kind of damn breaking that people said, oh my God, you have that regret. I have that regret too.
And they wanted to talk about it.

Speaker 2 And I think what's interesting from a writer's perspective is that sometimes I'll raise an idea or concept, and people are like, Okay, that's nice. All right, whatever.

Speaker 2 You know, what are we having for dinner? And that's that happens a lot, and that's cool. But this is one where people like literally, and I mean this literally, they leaned in.

Speaker 2 That is their bodies move forward in wanting to discuss this. And that's a very good sign.

Speaker 2 And so that took me on this two and a half year journey to try to make sense of this emotion, which I think that we've misunderstood profoundly, and that also gives us hints about how to lead a better life.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I feel like I learned so much in this book.
Like you said, regret is this like kind of misunderstood emotion.

Speaker 1 And to my surprise, it's very complex and it actually springs from an internal cognitive process.

Speaker 1 And so in the book, you talk about how humans are kind of like time travelers because our brains have the ability to revisit the past. and invent these alternative narratives and scenarios.

Speaker 1 And so I thought that was really fascinating. Can you explain that to us?

Speaker 2 So when we think about what regret is, I mean, it's certainly an emotion and it's an emotion that makes us feel bad. And we should kind of be in awe of our ability to process regret.

Speaker 2 And when you think about it cognitively, let's use my example. So if only I had taken more risks when I was in college, okay?

Speaker 2 What I do is I go back in time to when I was in college, all right? I negate what really happened, which was kind of being a little bit of a wimp, and I replace that truth with a counterfactual.

Speaker 2 So let's say that I was doing something a little, a little gutsier, like playing a club level sport rather than just wimp out. All right.
So you know what I'm going to do?

Speaker 2 I'm going to actually try to become like a very skilled basketball player and risk the injuries and risk the feelings of stupidity and not being good enough and whatnot rather than just retreat.

Speaker 2 So I go back and negate that. So not only that, but I come back to the present.
Now my present is reconfigured because I've changed the past.

Speaker 2 And now suddenly, I don't know, I'm like coaching a basketball team or I'm a better leader because I had more experience with a team sport or something like that.

Speaker 2 And so it's really this incredible process that we go through where we get in the time machine, we go backward, we negate what happened, we get back in our time machine, we go forward to the present and the present magically looks different because of what we've done in the past.

Speaker 2 This is one reason why regret is a It's a milestone in our development. That is little kids can't do this.
Five-year-olds don't experience regret because they can't think counterfactually.

Speaker 2 It's also why people with certain kinds of brain damage and brain lesions can't reason counterfactually.

Speaker 2 The more I think about what our brains can do, the more I'm kind of in awe of this lump in our head and how powerful it is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I want to dig deeper on counterfactuals because you brought it up and it was a term that I've never heard of until I started reading your book. And it's super interesting.

Speaker 1 So talk to us about counterfactuals and the main ones and maybe give us some examples.

Speaker 2 So basically what it means means is that our brains allow us to imagine a scenario that runs counter to the actual facts. There are two kinds of counterfactuals here.

Speaker 2 Okay, so I know you guys like to go deep. So there are two kinds of counterfactuals that are really important.
One of them is what you can call a downward counterfactual. Okay.

Speaker 2 So you imagine how things could have been worse.

Speaker 2 So you say, oh,

Speaker 2 I regret that I married Bob, but at least I have these two great kids. Okay.
So you find the silver lining. Okay.
It could have been worse. I could have married Bob and not had any kids.

Speaker 2 So at least, so at least make us feel better.

Speaker 2 Now, there's another kind of counterfactual, if-onlies. That's an upward counterfactual where you can imagine how things could have gotten better.
It could have been better.

Speaker 2 So you say, oh, if only I had married Fred instead of Bob, I would be living in a nicer community. I would have a happy marriage.
I would be financially secure, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 You imagine how things could have been better. Now, if-onlies make us feel worse.
But here's the dirty little secret. If-onlys make us feel worse, but they also help us do better in the future.

Speaker 2 And they make us, help us do better in the future because they make us feel worse.

Speaker 1 And regret is an if-only feeling, right?

Speaker 2 Totally. You're right.
Regret is the quintessential if-only. It makes us.
feel worse. This is why it's paradoxical, Holland.
This is why people don't like it.

Speaker 2 This is why people like to proclaim, I don't have any regrets. I never look backward.
I'm always positive. And the reason for that is that regret is unpleasant.

Speaker 2 But what we also know from, again, if you look at 50 or 60 years of research in neuroscience, in cognitive science, in developmental psychology, which I mentioned before, social psychology, a lot of experiments in social psychology as well.

Speaker 2 What it tells us is that regret is ubiquitous. It is everywhere.
Everybody experiences regret. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have.
I can't emphasize that enough.

Speaker 2 Everybody has regrets. If you don't have any regrets, it's a warning.
It's a bad sign. It means that you could be five years old, which I guess that's not a bad sign.

Speaker 2 Like you'll, you know, you got to grow up. It could mean that you have brain damage or lesions on the orbital frontal cortex of your brain or early onset Huntington's or Parkinson's.

Speaker 2 It could mean that you're a sociopath. Those are truly the only people who don't have regrets.
The rest of us have regrets. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have.

Speaker 2 And this is sort of a puzzle, right? It's like you have this thing that is widespread, but it makes us feel crappy. So you have to ask the question, well, why does it exist then?

Speaker 1 Exactly. So we obviously evolved to have regret for good reason, right? It's kind of a survival instinct, I imagine.
It makes our lives better in the end. Talk to us about that.

Speaker 1 Why do we actually need regret?

Speaker 2 Exactly. That's the point.
So we're not perfect organisms at all. We're not perfectly efficient, but there are adaptations that we've had.

Speaker 2 So you have to figure out like, why does something that make us feel bad, why is it everywhere? It must do something. It must have some benefit to us, right? And you got it exactly right.

Speaker 2 The benefit that it has, it helps that if we treat our regrets properly, it helps us do better.

Speaker 2 And not only a little bit. And not only on a few things, but a lot of bit on many things.
And here's the key. If we reckon with our regrets properly, we don't ignore them.

Speaker 2 We don't put our, when we feel a regret, we don't put our fingers in our ears and say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I don't hear anything. That's a bad idea.

Speaker 2 But also, and this is also important, Holla, we don't wallow in them. We don't ruminate on them.
We don't stew over them. We confront them.
We use them as signal, as information, as evidence, as data.

Speaker 2 When we do that, again,

Speaker 2 we have the research showing that it can help us become better negotiators. So there's a lot of experiments where you put somebody in a negotiating session, then they do their negotiation.

Speaker 2 They come out. The experimenters say, okay, I want you to think about what do you regret doing or not doing in that negotiation? So they encourage people to invite this negative feeling.

Speaker 2 What happens next? They do better in the next negotiation. It helps us become better problem solvers.

Speaker 2 It helps us avoid cognitive biases like confirmation bias and escalation of commitment to a failing course of action.

Speaker 2 There's some interesting research among executives showing that executives who actually sort of embrace and acknowledge their regrets are better strategists than those who simply try to skate past them.

Speaker 2 It helps us find greater meaning in life. And so what we have here, again, just to distill this, make it a little bit simpler, is this.
Regret makes us human and regret makes us better.

Speaker 2 Everybody has regrets. And the reason everybody has regrets is that if we treat them properly, they're incredibly useful.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I heard that one of the main reasons why you went on this journey is because you heard this like no regrets kind of philosophy and culture that was going on, how everybody just wanted to be positive.

Speaker 1 You're supposed to just accept your journey for what it is and never look back about the mistakes you made and just everything happens for a reason type mentality.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about that before we go even deeper on regrets and how to like. evaluate them right or wrong ways to do that.
But let's talk about that first. What's wrong with the no regrets worldview?

Speaker 2 Okay, there's a lot wrong with it, but I'm going to try to be kinder and gentler in how I bash it. The problem is that it is a woefully misguided philosophy for a life well-lived.

Speaker 2 And the reason for that is this. I'll give you an example of it.
So I have the people who I wrote about, you know from the book, who get these tattoos that say no regrets.

Speaker 2 So they believe in this philosophy that you should should always be positive, never be negative, always look forward, never look back.

Speaker 2 They believe in this credo, this philosophy, so ferociously, they have the message enshrined on their bodies. That's a commitment, man, all right?

Speaker 2 Like you got to believe in something to have it tattooed on your body, right? But here's the thing.

Speaker 2 If you say no regrets, you say, I never look backward, you might as well get a tattoo that says no growth, no learning, no progress. Nobody's getting tattoos like that.

Speaker 2 And so it's really, really misguided. The key here is what we do with our regrets.
And this is, I think, a bigger problem that we have, Holla, which is this.

Speaker 2 And I think it's an American problem more than others. We Americans have a problem with negative emotions.

Speaker 2 We don't know what to do with them. Here's the thing.
Just go back just again. Positive emotions are great.
I want to have a lot of positive emotions.

Speaker 2 I want you to have a lot of positive positive emotions. I want all the Yap listeners to have lots of positive emotions.
Okay. Positive emotions are great.

Speaker 2 Gratitude and joy and elation, and they're great, okay? They're part of what makes life worth living. But here's the thing.
People shouldn't have only positive emotions.

Speaker 2 That's not healthy. It goes back to what you were saying before.
We have adapted to the world. Negative emotions are adaptations.
So if you think about this, I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2 All right, let's take fear. Fear is a negative emotion.
Do I want to go, if somebody knocks at my office door, some weird person knocks at my office doors, hey, Dan, I'll give you an operation.

Speaker 2 Hey, we're going to open up your head, but it's going to be completely no pain. We're going to seal it back up perfectly.

Speaker 2 And what we're going to do is we're going to do a little tweak in your brain to ensure that you never experience fear again in your life. Do I want that operation?

Speaker 1 Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 Of course not. Because when I'm in a burning building, I want to experience fear so I get the hell out.
It's helpful. Again, I don't want to be burdened by fear.

Speaker 2 I don't want to experience fear all the time. That's debilitating.
I don't want to experience, think about an emotion like grief. The reason we experience grief is because we experience love.

Speaker 2 So I don't want to banish grief. I don't want to banish negative emotion.
I want to actually reckon with them.

Speaker 2 I like what you said at the top of the show, Holla, is that there's evidence here, okay? This is not some kind of philosophy of mine.

Speaker 2 We have 50 or 60 years of evidence telling us that when you line up the emotions, all right, when you line up our negative emotions, we're going to do a little police lineup, fear, guilt, shame, you know, but that regret ends up being the most common and the most useful if we treat it right, if we treat it right.

Speaker 2 And again, we haven't been treating it right because what's happened is we're totally over-indexed on positivity. We think we have to be positive all the time.

Speaker 2 And when we're not, not, especially younger people, when they say, when they feel negative, they feel regret, they feel bad, they say, wait a second, I'm feeling regret, I'm feeling bad.

Speaker 2 That's terrible because not only is it make me, is it inherently like unpleasant, but I look around and everybody else is perfect. There must be something wrong with me.

Speaker 2 And they get brought down by that. Rather than saying, A negative emotion is a knock at the door.
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. Someone's trying to tell me something.

Speaker 2 Let me listen, not drown it out, not get freaked out by it, but listen to it, learn from it, and do better in the future.

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Speaker 1 The link is in our show notes. Like you said, regret is so common and it's universal and it's normal, right? It's a normal feeling to have.

Speaker 1 It's just about how you manage it, how you process it, and what you do with that information.

Speaker 2 Amen.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 So in this book, you did a lot of research yourself, but there was also years of research prior to that about regrets and the common regrets that people have.

Speaker 1 So can you talk to us about the research that was available before you started and then maybe why you ended up doing more research and what you found?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I was also curious about what people regretted. I was really curious about that.

Speaker 2 And the reason I was curious is that when you looked at the existing evidence, most of it in social psychology, initially researchers said, oh, the big, this is an American sample, that Americans, oh, they have education regrets.

Speaker 2 Education is the biggest regret that Americans have. Scientists believed that for 20 years.

Speaker 2 And then somebody finally realized, like, wait a second, all these studies showing that education is the biggest regret were done on college campuses with college students.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, if you had done all this research in hospitals, maybe health would be the greatest regret. If you had done it in banks, maybe, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 So it's like, huh, maybe there's not something there. And so actually not that long ago, 16, 17 years ago, researchers started doing more systematic looks at what people regretted.

Speaker 2 And they found that people regret a lot of stuff. It was all over the place.
They have career regrets. They have romance regrets.
They have finance regrets. They have health regrets.

Speaker 2 They have family regrets. It's all over the place.
So that's the lay of the land. So I said, I'm going to try to crack the code here.

Speaker 2 And so I did something called the American Regret Project, which is the largest public opinion survey of American attitudes about regret ever conducted. We did a brilliant, gorgeous survey of over

Speaker 2 nearly 4,500 Americans modeling the sample, sort of configuring the sample so that it reflected the glorious diversity of the United States of America.

Speaker 2 And so I asked these people, tell me one of your big regrets. And then I had them put it into those categories, career, finance, romance, whatever, because I said, I'm going to figure this out.

Speaker 2 And I found after careful deliberation and data analysis that people regret a lot of stuff. It was all over the place.

Speaker 2 So now that's the bad news.

Speaker 2 The good news is that I also did another piece of my own research, something called the World Regret Survey, where I simply set up a website, worldregretsurvey.com, where I gathered regrets from around the globe.

Speaker 2 And we now have a database of over 21,000 regrets from people in 109 countries. It's incredible.

Speaker 2 And once I looked at those, okay, just basically just people offering their regrets, but by the thousands all over the world, and I didn't ask them to categorize it.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to know their age, their gender identity, and their location.

Speaker 2 When I started reading through those regrets, I didn't read through all 21,000, but I did read through the first 15,000 of them.

Speaker 2 What I discovered is that there's something else going on, that trying to understand what people regret by by those init those categories that I initially had thought is not the way to look at it, that there's something bigger and more interesting going on beneath the surface.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so let's talk about that. You say that you discovered regret has both a surface structure and a deep structure, right?

Speaker 1 So, one is really easy to see, easy to describe, and the other one is not so, so easy. So, talk to us about that.

Speaker 2 Okay, perfect. That's exactly, you got it exactly right.
So, let me be less abstract. Let me be concrete here.
Okay, here we go. Okay.

Speaker 2 We're looking at at these regrets that are coming in from all over the world. I'm reading them one by one, trying to make sense of them.

Speaker 2 It's fascinating to hear people all over the world disclose a big regret. So let me give you an example.
So I have, again, the volume here is helpful.

Speaker 2 So I have lots of regrets of people who say, I mean, here's a weird one. It's like from American college graduates.
I am stunned.

Speaker 2 by the number of regrets that American college graduates have about not studying abroad when they were in college. I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 Like, even if you Google, if you not Google, but if you go into the database and search a phrase like study abroad, you get like hundreds of hits. I couldn't, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 Okay, so that's an education regret. Okay.
People say, oh, I wish I had studied abroad. I was a little bit too scared to go away.
And, you know, I thought I would miss people.

Speaker 2 And now I wish I had taken that, you know, now I wish I had studied abroad.

Speaker 1 I've heard that so many times too, which is just so random that I've heard that regret before many times.

Speaker 2 But you know what? It's a big deal, man. I have to say, I was blown away by that.
I actually think that there is a, and this is for the entrepreneurial Yap listeners out there.

Speaker 2 I think there's a bit there's a business, a travel agency serving basically 30 somethings and 40 somethings, 20 somethings, 30 somethings, 40 somethings, who wish they had studied abroad and didn't and now have a little money in their pocket.

Speaker 2 I really think there's a, there's a viable business in there. But that's an education regret.
Okay, so then I have a lot of regrets. Okay, let's go back to entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2 I got lots of regrets, again, all over the world, where where they basically say this. I really regret staying in this lackluster job.

Speaker 2 I always wanted to start a business, but I never had the gumption to do it. Okay, that's a career regret.
Then I have, and this is again, volume, volume, volume, hundreds.

Speaker 2 And I'm not kidding around, hundreds. They basically go like this.
X years ago, there was a man slash woman who I really liked.

Speaker 2 I wanted to ask him or her out on a date, but I was too chicken to do that. And now I've regretted it 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later.
Okay, that's a romance regret.

Speaker 2 So we got an education regret. We've got a career regret.
We've got a romance regret. But here's the point I'm making in this little diatribe here.
Those are all the same regret.

Speaker 2 Those regrets, on the surface, they're in different categories, but they're the same regret. You're at a juncture in your life and you have a choice.
You can play it safe or you can take the chance.

Speaker 2 And overwhelmingly, when people don't take the chance, they regret it. And that's what I call a boldness regret.
So on the surface, it's career is different from romance, is different from education.

Speaker 2 But one layer down, it's the same regret, if only I'd taken the chance.

Speaker 2 And what I found is that that is one of boldness regrets are one of four of these deep structure core regrets that people all over the world seem to have.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I feel like it makes sense to go through all four of them.
And then I have some other questions about them individually.

Speaker 2 Yeah, rock and roll. Yeah.
Cool. One category of what I call foundation regrets.
Foundation regrets are if only, because remember, regrets, as you said earlier, regrets are if onlys, all right?

Speaker 2 So foundation regret is if only I'd done the work. If only I'd done the work.
So these are regrets that people have. Okay, a lot of regrets about I spent too much and saved too little.

Speaker 2 And now I don't have enough money and now I'm broke. A surprising number of regrets about people who didn't work hard enough in school.

Speaker 2 Oh, if only I'd listened to my parents and worked harder in school, I'd have a little bit more of a stable footing in the job market. A lot of regrets about health in this way, too.

Speaker 2 If only I had eaten better, if only I had exercised, I wouldn't be out of shape and unhealthy today. So it's small decisions early in life that accumulate to really nasty consequences later in life.

Speaker 2 Again, these small decisions, like no single one is cataclysmic. It's like, oh, I ate, you know, I ate a whole bag of Cheetos once.
All right, that's like people don't regret that.

Speaker 2 They regret eating unhealthily for a year, two years, five years, 10 years, and it adds up and it's hard to undo. So foundation regrets, if only I'd done the work.

Speaker 2 Third category, we got boldness to, we got moral regrets. Moral regrets are, if only I'd done the right thing.
Again, you're at a juncture. You can do the right thing.
You can do the wrong thing.

Speaker 2 When we do the wrong thing, most of us regret it. Because I think most of us are good and want to be good.
And when we're not good, we feel crappy about it.

Speaker 2 And so these are regrets that people have about, oh my gosh, the two big ones here, marital infidelity. Woof.
I had a lot of of people basically confessing on this world regret survey.

Speaker 2 It was like an online confessional. And then also a shocking number, shocking to me, number of people who regretted bullying other people when they were younger.

Speaker 2 So bullying and marital infidelity, if only I'd done the right thing. Finally, fourth category, connection regrets.
Connection regrets are about relationships.

Speaker 2 And not only romantic relationships and really not even mostly romantic relationships, just the full suite of relationships in our lives.

Speaker 2 And what happens is that you have a relationship that was intact or should have been intact with a parent, with a sibling, with a relative, with friends, with colleagues.

Speaker 2 It was intact and it comes apart and, or should have been intact, was intact, and it comes apart.

Speaker 2 And I think what's interesting is that, again, if you read story after story, the way a lot of these relationships come apart is not dramatic at all. There's no big fight.

Speaker 2 There's no screaming or yelling. It's just like this drift that takes place over time.
And here's what happens. Somebody wants to reach out.

Speaker 2 Okay, so let's say, you know, like, man, I was such good friends with Holla 10 years ago and I haven't talked to her for so long.

Speaker 2 I should really reach out to her. And then I say, oh man, no, but if I just reach out to her now, it's going to be so awkward because I haven't talked to her for 10 years.
It's going to be so awkward.

Speaker 2 I don't want to do that. And besides, she won't care.
So I don't do anything. And then two years from now, I say, oh man, I was such good friends with Holla 12 years ago.

Speaker 2 I really should reach out to her. But oh my God, it's even more awkward now.
And she's going to care even less. And so we don't do anything.
And sometimes it's too late. And that's a big mistake.

Speaker 2 Let me just double click on that for a moment.

Speaker 2 That's a huge mistake. We have piles of evidence showing that when people do reach out, it's way less awkward than they think.
We're completely over-indexed on awkwardness.

Speaker 2 My view in general in life, reading the research, is that if you're feeling awkward about something, something, just freaking push through it.

Speaker 2 Don't let awkwardness, feelings of awkwardness be that barrier. Awkwardness is not a strong enough signal to stop you from doing something.

Speaker 2 Second thing is that we say people, but Holla's not going to care. People almost always welcome it.
We're completely wrong on both fronts.

Speaker 2 We say, it's going to be awkward and they're not going to care. And when we do it, it's not awkward and they always care.
So connection regrets are if only I'd reached out.

Speaker 2 So let me quickly summarize those. We've got confoundation regrets, if only I'd done the work.
We've got boldness regrets if only I'd taken the chance.

Speaker 2 We've got moral regrets if only I'd done the right thing. And then we've got connection regrets if only I'd reached out.
And just remarkable universality.

Speaker 2 All over the world, these are what people regret. And it's that deep structure that really matters.
That deep structure is really universal.

Speaker 2 You see these every in every country, at every age, at every gender identity.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And if I remember correctly, connection requests are the most common regret. And I think especially in COVID, this is relevant.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of us weren't hanging out with our friends for a couple of years. A lot of our friends moved away.
I feel like this is your sign, guys.

Speaker 1 If you're thinking of an old friend that you haven't talked to in a while, make sure you reach out to them. You know, don't have any regrets about that.

Speaker 1 So I'd love to hear about inaction and action and what we need to know about that in terms of regret.

Speaker 2 Okay, really important. I'll give you a little bit of insight in how the sausage is made.
Okay.

Speaker 2 So at one point, I had a chapter called the rules of regret, where I was going to say, here's how regret works. Like we're basically pull up the hood.
These are the rules of regret.

Speaker 2 This is how regret works. Okay.
And I was like, okay, should there be five rules or seven rules or whatever? So I have this like these giant bulging folders of research.

Speaker 2 And I was like, okay, I'm going to crack the code. I'm going to figure out the rules of regret.
And I started going through the research and I'm like, oh, there's one rule.

Speaker 2 And the rule is, there's a big difference between regrets of action and regrets of inaction. Everything comes back to that difference.

Speaker 2 And the architecture of regret, the difference between regrets of action, I regret what I did, and regrets of inaction, I regret what I didn't do, is huge.

Speaker 2 And here, there is a distinct difference in age. In my American Regret Project, which is the giant public opinion poll, I put together such a large sample.

Speaker 2 in order to try to find demographic differences in what people regretted.

Speaker 2 So thinking that whites whites would have different regrets from people of color, people with lots of formal education would have different regrets from people with less education, men would have different regrets from women, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 There were very few demographic differences. I was kind of shocked by that.

Speaker 2 But the one had to do with age, and it's this: people in their 20s tended to have equal numbers of regrets of action and inaction, equal numbers of regrets about what they did and regrets about what they didn't do.

Speaker 2 But by the time you hit basically your late 20s, and certainly into your 30s, and 40s, and 50s, and beyond, it's not even close.

Speaker 2 By the time you get literally to your late 20s, the inaction regrets take over. When you get to my age, okay, and I'm basically like double the age of somebody in their mid to late 20s.

Speaker 2 When you get to my age, it's like three to one. Inaction regrets over action regrets.
Overwhelmingly, over time,

Speaker 2 we regret what we didn't do. I regret that I didn't reach out.
I regret that I didn't start that business. I regret that I didn't tell that person that I love them.

Speaker 2 I regret that I didn't stand up to an injustice. That's what we regret, inaction over action, as we get older.

Speaker 1 And I'm curious to understand, because you did all this research, you heard about so many different regrets. You really started to understand the science behind it and why we have regrets.

Speaker 1 What were some of the big life lessons that you learned about it that may not really be scientific or anything, but just life lessons that you're going to carry through?

Speaker 2 I'll tell you a few of them. I mean, you sort of, you hinted at one of them just a few moments ago, Holla, which is that let's take these connection regrets.

Speaker 2 This is my philosophy now. Okay, so let's say you're at a juncture and you're wondering, should I reach out to this person or should I not reach out to this person?

Speaker 2 If you have arrived at that juncture, you have the answer to the question. Reach out.
When in doubt, reach out. If you arrive at that juncture and you're wondering, the question is answered.

Speaker 2 Always reach out. I'm dead serious about that.
I've heard too many stories where it didn't happen and then something horrible arises and ends up not being possible. Somebody dies.

Speaker 2 I've so many stories like that. Always reach out.
I'll give you another one. And let's go back to inaction and action.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that there's a lot to be said for,

Speaker 2 in general, having a slight bias for action. That is for so for just like for trying stuff.
And again, it goes to the awkwardness. So I think that awkwardness is

Speaker 2 a weak excuse. I think fear is a stronger excuse.
I think feelings of awkwardness, do what you can to push past those. Sort of a bias for action.

Speaker 2 I'm a happily married guy from 27 years, but I'll give everybody who's listening, all the Yap listeners, some romantic advice. Okay.

Speaker 2 Ask the person out.

Speaker 2 I'm dead serious. If you're wondering whether he, she, or they, you should ask him, him, her, or them out, do it.
The worst thing that can happen is that the person says no.

Speaker 2 And you know what happens when the person says no? You're fine. Life goes on.
You're exactly where you were before you were asked. But here's the thing.
Now you know, you've taken your shot.

Speaker 2 So I think if there's one takeaway here is that ask the person out. Just a slight bias for action.
Don't take awkwardness as

Speaker 2 a meaningful signal. Always reach out.
The other thing is,

Speaker 2 I'll give you one more life lesson here too, is that I think there's something to be said for

Speaker 2 when you're making a decision to consult your future self. So if you're stuck, see if you can sort of send a text or make a phone call to the you of 10 years from now.

Speaker 2 So think about, let's say that you're 28 years old, all right? What does 38-year-old you want you to do?

Speaker 2 38-year-old wants you to put a little bit more money in your 401k and spend a little less money at Applebee's.

Speaker 2 that's what 38-year-old you wants you to do. If you're at a juncture and you think, God, should I do this unethical thing or should I not? 98% of us, 38-year-old you, want you to do the right thing.

Speaker 2 The you of 10 years from now is really looking out for your best interests. And here's the thing.

Speaker 2 Well, the other thing is also, we can make a pretty safe prediction about what the you of 10 years from now will care about. And it's not most things.

Speaker 2 The me of 10 years from now isn't going to care what I have for dinner tonight.

Speaker 2 It isn't going to care what t-shirt I wore today, but it is going to care did I do the work and build a stable foundation for myself, for my family, for my team?

Speaker 2 It is going to care of did I use my opportunity, this vanishingly short amount of time that I'm alive to like learn and grow and do something and contribute.

Speaker 2 It's going to care if I, 10 years from now, if I do the wrong thing, I have to confront the me of 2032 who's going to be wagging his finger at me saying, shame on you. Why'd you do the wrong thing?

Speaker 2 And it's going to care if I don't reach out and build relationships of love and connection and affinity and belonging.

Speaker 2 And again, it's not super complicated, but I think the cool thing is, is that this emotion that we often try to avoid is giving us this very, very clear window into what makes life worth living.

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I feel like for me, the big kind of takeaway that I'm getting from all this is having this bias for action.

Speaker 1 Because like you said, the biggest regret is inaction.

Speaker 1 And most of the time, if we do something and we find out the answer, we're not looking back and saying, if only this, if only that, you just, that's what happened.

Speaker 1 And you just get over it and move on and you don't ruminate and think about it forever. So speaking about ruminating, there's right ways and wrong ways to deal with regret.

Speaker 1 And dealing with regret is critical for us like moving in a positive way forward in our lives. So talk to us about the right way and the wrong way to deal with regret.

Speaker 2 Okay, it's a great question. So I think that the wrong way is pretty obvious.
The wrong way is to simply ignore it. That's a totally bad idea and it doesn't work over the long term.

Speaker 2 Another bad idea is to wallow in it, is to stew over it. So the right way to do it is to try to avoid, especially that second path.

Speaker 2 And the way I look at this process is inward, outward, forward, inward, outward, forward. So, the first step is to look inward.

Speaker 2 So, let's say you have a regret, or even more broadly, you make a mistake. In the face of regrets, in the face of mistakes and screw-ups, the way we talk to ourselves is incredibly harsh.

Speaker 2 If you listen to like people's self-talk, it's brutal.

Speaker 2 You listen to my self-talk, you'd think I was a lunatic. The way I talk to myself is just

Speaker 2 cruel. I would never talk to anybody else that way.
And what the science tells us is don't do that. There's very little evidence that that's effective in enhancing your performance.

Speaker 2 A better technique than self-laceration is what's called self-compassion, which is work pioneered by Kristen Neff at the University of Texas about 20 years ago. And the principle is pretty simple.

Speaker 2 Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Don't treat yourself better than anybody else.
There's no evidence, oh, I should treat myself special.

Speaker 2 I should, you know, that's not true, but don't treat yourself worse than anybody else. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt.
Recognize that regrets are part of the human condition.

Speaker 2 Any Yap listener out there who has a regret, I'll find almost the identical regret in my database in 90 seconds. Okay.
Like it's part of the human condition.

Speaker 2 And the also thing that I think is really important is that a regret is a moment in your life. It's not the full measure of your life.

Speaker 2 We sometimes will make these broad assessments of our entirety based on a single thing and a single moment, and that's unhealthy. So that's inward.
So you reframe inward. Second thing is outward.

Speaker 2 There's a strong argument to be made for disclosure. Disclosure is a form of unburdening.

Speaker 2 It's not accidental that 21,000 people around the world told a complete stranger their big regret because they wanted to talk about it. Just like what I was saying at the top of the show, Holla.

Speaker 2 It's like I mentioned my regrets very sheepishly and suddenly like this sort of uncorked this bottle where

Speaker 2 people want to talk about it.

Speaker 1 Releasing it, yeah.

Speaker 2 But the other thing I think is actually really important is that emotions, by their very nature, are abstract. They're vaporous, they're blobby.

Speaker 2 That's what makes positive emotions feel good, but it's what makes negative emotions feel bad.

Speaker 2 And so, when we talk about our negative emotions, or even when we don't have to even tell anybody else, when you write about them privately, we take this abstraction and make it concrete.

Speaker 2 We turn it from this blobby thing into concrete words, which are less menacing and helps us begin the sense-making process. So we reframe inward, we express outward, but we also have to move forward.

Speaker 2 And the way we do that is we have to extract a lesson from that regret. And we tend to be pretty bad at solving our own problems.

Speaker 2 We're good at solving other people's problems, terrible at solving our own problems. So a really good technique is essentially to, it's what's called self-distancing.

Speaker 2 It's basically get some distance from yourself. So you can do things like talk to yourself in the second person.
What should you do? Or even better, your third person,

Speaker 2 what should Holly do? I got to say, the single best decision-making tool that I know of when you're stuck is to ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend to do?

Speaker 2 I have people come to me saying, Dan, I shouldn't do this or should I do that? I'm just so torn, I don't know what to do. And I say, What would you tell your best friend to do?

Speaker 2 And they say, Oh, well, I tell her, Bob, body, baby, baby, ba. And it's like, all right, you kind of answered the question there.

Speaker 2 So, for the business people in your audience, Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, has a brilliant, had a brilliant technique where he said when he was stuck on a business decision as an executive, he would say, okay, if I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do?

Speaker 2 And he always knew. So again, so if we reframe inward, express outward, and then move forward by self-distancing, we begin to sort of develop that as a habit.

Speaker 2 And then instead of trying to bat away this negative emotion or getting brought down by it, we basically, you know, hop on it at like a surfboard and ride it into better health, higher productivity, more meaning in life, and more effectiveness, especially at work.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I'm curious, why is it so much easier to give advice to other people and to like kind of pretend that you're giving advice to your best friend?

Speaker 1 Like, why is it so hard to give advice to yourself?

Speaker 2 We're too caught up in the details of our life. And at some level, we know too much and that blinds us from the big picture.

Speaker 2 It's like trying to understand, okay, I want to study the ocean, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to become, I'm going to scuba dive to try to understand the ocean.

Speaker 2 It's like, well, now I'm immersed in everything. If you really want to understand, like, what does the ocean look like? What are its boundaries? How's it configured? You want to be an oceanographer.

Speaker 2 You want to get up like in a helicopter and go above there. And that's a better, often a better problem-solving technique.
We just know too much about ourselves.

Speaker 2 We're too caught up in the gory details, where with other people, we see the big picture.

Speaker 2 we see what's really going on. Yeah.
And I really think that's it.

Speaker 2 Now, we can bring those techniques to bear on our own problems, but we have to be deliberate and intentional about that by doing these kinds of sort of like Jedi mind tricks to self-distance.

Speaker 2 Again, talking to yourself in the third person, even that thing that I suggested before about talking to yourself 10 years from now, that's a form of self-distancing.

Speaker 2 And again, truly, two takeaways from this for your listeners: one, ask them out. Two, if you're stuck on a decision, ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend to do? And then do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's really good advice. And so regret is a very negative emotion.
People don't like to feel that way. Sometimes they wallow in their regret.

Speaker 1 And you talk about something called mental subtraction that can help us feel better in the moment when we're having a regret. Could you explain that to us?

Speaker 2 Sure. That's another really good point.
There's a technique, some good research on this called mental subtraction of mental subtraction of positive events.

Speaker 2 It allows us to feel a greater sense of gratitude. It's also a way to reckon with regret.

Speaker 2 I give you an education regret of mine, which is that I regret having gone to law school in general and probably gone to law school when I did. Okay, that's not like, that's not a cataclysmic regret.

Speaker 2 It's not my biggest regret, but it's illustrative here. But here's the thing.
I met my wife in law school. So what I can do is I can say, well,

Speaker 2 let me mentally subtract that event. Imagine a world where I didn't go to law school.
That's a world where I never would have met my wife. I don't want to live in that world.

Speaker 2 With action regrets, we can find the silver lining. We can at least them.
We can see a benefit in them, which is why we can process them and make sense of them. Some action regrets, we can also undo.

Speaker 2 All those people who have bullying regrets, more regrets, it's an action. I bullied somebody.
Many of them go back 20 years later. and apologize to the people they bullied.

Speaker 2 And so they're trying to undo that kind of regret. I have a guy guy in the book who has a no regrets tattoo, and he goes to get it removed.

Speaker 2 So with action regrets, we can mentally subtract certain positive elements of them. We can at least them.
We can undo them. And therefore, we can tamp down how much they bug us.

Speaker 2 That's why over time, action regrets recede, inaction regrets dominate.

Speaker 1 This is so interesting, Daniel. So let's wrap up the conversation.

Speaker 1 And I feel like a good way to round this out is to talk about the benefits of dealing with our regrets and the benefits of regrets in general.

Speaker 1 How can us doing what you just mentioned, you know, self-distancing, analyzing, trying to change our behaviors based on our regrets, how can that actually help us in life?

Speaker 2 On a number of different dimensions. Number one is that we know from these four regrets, if we know what people regret the most, we know what they value the most.

Speaker 2 So regrets are a negative, a reverse image of a life well lived, of a good life. What people want out of life in general is they want a degree of stability.
A good life is not precarious.

Speaker 2 Boldness is about the chance to learn and grow and do something and not like waste your time here and just do something. Moral regrets are about goodness.
Connection regrets are ultimately about love.

Speaker 2 And so as you think through your decisions, you can anticipate your future regrets.

Speaker 2 And the way to do that is to is to really maximize on things that, you know, if you're making a decision, it's like, is this going to to build my foundation? Is this going to help me learn and grow?

Speaker 2 Is this the right thing to do? Is this going to help me build connections and affinity with people I care about? Those kinds of things you should really like maximize on.

Speaker 2 But the other stuff, good enough is good enough. I know we're not supposed to say good enough is good enough, but good enough is good enough for a heck of a lot of things.

Speaker 2 So again, let's go back to future you.

Speaker 2 Future you. is not going to care this year whether you bought a blue car or a gray car.

Speaker 2 Future me, as I said earlier, is not going to care whether I wore that blue shirt today or I wore a yellow shirt today.

Speaker 2 There's so many decisions that we make that we don't even remember, we don't even care about, but there's some that stick with us. And we have a sense of the things that matter most.

Speaker 2 And so if we really focus our efforts and our attention on these kinds of things, on building a solid foundation, on learning and growing, being good and moral and truthful and doing the right thing and on building relationships of love and belonging, I think that regret gives us this path to do things better.

Speaker 2 I give you one other tip here that I think is useful because, again, less abstract and more practical.

Speaker 2 One of the most useful things to do is to do what I did a couple of years ago, which is that push past the awkwardness.

Speaker 2 And if you have a team that you work with or a group of friends, tell people about one regret that you have. Tell them what you learned from it.
Tell them what you're going to do about it.

Speaker 2 And I can almost guarantee that you will have one of the richest, most interesting conversations you've had this year because I was wrong. I thought nobody wanted to talk about regret.

Speaker 2 And I discovered, as I said at the very beginning of our conversation, that everybody wants to talk about regret because as you said, it's normal. It's universal.
It's part of the human being.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And Young and Profiters, I loved his book, The Power of Regret.
So make sure you guys go get that. There's lots of exercises that you can do to understand.

Speaker 1 what your regrets are, how to deal with them. So I highly recommend that.
I'll put that in the show notes. Daniel, I always ask the same two questions at the end of the show for all of our guests.

Speaker 1 Then we do something fun at the end of the year. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing that our young and profiters can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

Speaker 2 Listen more and talk less. Oh, why?

Speaker 2 I feel like so much of the work that we do obviously involves groups and other people. And most of us are not very good listeners.
We don't actually work hard at listening.

Speaker 2 We, no one has ever taught us how to listen.

Speaker 2 You know, when we're in elementary school, they teach us how to read and that, you know, they teach us how to write, but no one ever teaches us how to listen.

Speaker 2 They think because we have ears, we know how to listen. And most of us are not very good listeners.
And so one way to listen better is seriously is to is, and I say this after an hour yapping,

Speaker 2 is to talk less and listen more.

Speaker 1 I love that. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And profiting does not need to be related to finances.

Speaker 2 It's going to sound strange, but I think it's to be generous, generous, to help other people, to use a Boy Scout thing, to

Speaker 2 leave the campsite better than you found it. I really think that that is the way to live a good life.
It allows you to profit in all senses of the word.

Speaker 2 I think it has a professional benefit over time, certainly not in the short term. Over time, it has a professional benefit.

Speaker 2 But more than anything else, it allows you to look at your life on a day, on a week, and say, I did something. I contributed.
I I made the world a little bit better.

Speaker 1 I love that. And where can our listeners go learn more about you and everything that you do?

Speaker 2 You can go to my website, which is danielpink.com, D-A-N-I-E-L-P-I-N-K dot com. I've got a free newsletter.
I've got free resources. I've got all kinds of groovy stuff.

Speaker 1 Amazing. We're going to link all that in the show notes.
Dan, thank you again for coming on Young and Profiting Podcast.