YAPClassic: Daniel Pink, How to Understand Your Emotions and Live Your Best Life

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0:01:10 (upbeat music)
0:01:20 Welcome back, Young and Profiters,
0:01:23 to our latest Yap Classic episode.
0:01:25 And as we step into this new year,
0:01:28 it is totally natural to look back on the past 12 months
0:01:31 and consider all the choices that we’ve made.
0:01:34 Regrets can often weigh heavily on our hearts,
0:01:39 reminding us of missed opportunities or paths not taken.
0:01:41 But what if we could transform those feelings of regret
0:01:44 into powerful catalysts for change?
0:01:46 That’s exactly what I spoke about
0:01:50 with bestselling author Daniel Pink in episode 189,
0:01:53 how to stop letting regret hold you back.
0:01:55 So many entrepreneurs and executives
0:01:57 have a no regrets mindset.
0:02:01 And so many of us try to bury or ignore our own regrets
0:02:02 as much as possible.
0:02:04 But as Daniel Pink shared with me,
0:02:07 when we approach regret thoughtfully,
0:02:09 it can serve as a very valuable resource.
0:02:12 Regret highlights our values and priorities.
0:02:15 It keeps us from making the same stupid mistakes.
0:02:17 And it can even help us convert our past hardships
0:02:19 into future strengths.
0:02:21 So if you wanna transform your regrets
0:02:23 into actionable advice,
0:02:26 you won’t wanna miss this interview with Daniel Pink.
0:02:29 (air whooshes)
0:02:30 So last time we were on the show,
0:02:32 it was back in December of 2019.
0:02:33 It was for episode number 50.
0:02:36 It was called “The Science of Perfect Timing.”
0:02:37 And that episode was actually
0:02:39 one of my all-time favorite episodes on YAP.
0:02:41 Everybody who listened to it loved it.
0:02:43 And I have a feeling this conversation
0:02:44 is gonna be equally as good,
0:02:47 because in my opinion, you are the epitome
0:02:48 of what a great podcast guest is.
0:02:50 You’re so knowledgeable.
0:02:51 There’s no fluff when you talk.
0:02:53 Everything is backed up by science and research.
0:02:57 And so you are the ideal YAP guest for that reason.
0:02:59 And here at YAP, we love to go super deep
0:03:00 on a specific topic.
0:03:03 Today’s focus is gonna be on regrets.
0:03:04 You are the author of seven books.
0:03:07 And your latest book is called “The Power of Regret,
0:03:09 How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.”
0:03:11 So let’s jump right into this topic of regret.
0:03:12 Last time you were on the show,
0:03:14 we covered your career journey extensively.
0:03:17 So anybody who’s tuning in and interested in that
0:03:18 can go back to episode number 50.
0:03:20 I highly recommend that episode.
0:03:22 And so Daniel, I’m pretty familiar with your work.
0:03:23 And usually you write a book
0:03:27 because you’re very curious about the topic yourself.
0:03:28 And you start to research that topic.
0:03:29 You call this me search.
0:03:31 So let’s start there.
0:03:33 What was the genesis of this book?
0:03:36 And what initially got you curious about this topic?
0:03:41 – Well, once again, I’ve fallen down the trap of me search
0:03:43 because that’s what this is again.
0:03:45 So here’s what happened.
0:03:48 In 2019, I had one of those moments in life
0:03:50 that you get to when you get to be my age.
0:03:52 I’m in my 50s and I had a kid graduate from college.
0:03:54 So that’s kind of a jarring experience
0:03:55 because you wonder like,
0:03:57 how did that kid grow up so fast?
0:03:58 And how am I possibly old enough
0:04:01 to have a kid who’s graduating from college?
0:04:03 And in the course of this college graduation,
0:04:05 which was very long and lengthy
0:04:08 and my daughter’s last name starts with P.
0:04:10 There was a lot of waiting around,
0:04:11 inevitably your mind wanders.
0:04:13 And as my mind was wandering,
0:04:16 my thoughts turned to my own college experience.
0:04:18 And I started thinking about what I regretted.
0:04:19 There were a lot of things I regretted.
0:04:20 I wish I had worked harder.
0:04:22 I wish I had been kinder.
0:04:27 I wish I had been a little gutsy or taking more risks.
0:04:29 So these thoughts were kind of tiptoeing through my head
0:04:30 when I came back.
0:04:33 And I wanted to discuss them with other people,
0:04:36 but I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regret
0:04:37 ’cause it’s taboo.
0:04:39 So against my better judgment,
0:04:42 I very, very, very, very, very sheepishly mentioned
0:04:45 a few of these regrets to a few people.
0:04:50 And I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about a regret
0:04:51 that it was a kind of topic
0:04:54 that there was this kind of damn breaking
0:04:56 that people said, “Oh my God, you have that regret.
0:04:57 “I have that regret too.”
0:04:58 And they wanted to talk about it.
0:05:01 And I think what’s interesting from a writer’s perspective
0:05:03 is that sometimes I’ll raise an idea or a concept
0:05:05 and people are like, “Okay, that’s nice.
0:05:07 “All right, whatever, what are we having for dinner?”
0:05:09 And that happens a lot and that’s cool.
0:05:12 But this is one where people like literally,
0:05:13 and I mean this literally,
0:05:16 they leaned in that is their bodies move forward
0:05:17 and wanting to discuss this.
0:05:19 And that’s a very good sign.
0:05:22 And so that took me on this two and a half year journey
0:05:24 to try to make sense of this emotion,
0:05:26 which I think that we’ve misunderstood profoundly
0:05:29 and that also gives us hints
0:05:31 about how to lead a better life.
0:05:35 – Yeah, and I feel like I learned so much in this book.
0:05:40 Like you said, regret is this kind of misunderstood emotion.
0:05:42 And to my surprise, it’s very complex
0:05:45 and it actually springs from an internal cognitive process.
0:05:46 And so in the book,
0:05:50 you talk about how humans are kind of like time travelers
0:05:53 because our brains have the ability to revisit the past
0:05:56 and invent these alternative narratives and scenarios.
0:05:58 And so I thought that was really fascinating.
0:06:00 Can you explain that to us?
0:06:02 – So when we think about what regret is,
0:06:03 I mean, it’s certainly an emotion
0:06:05 and it’s emotion that makes us feel bad.
0:06:07 And we should kind of be in awe
0:06:09 of our ability to process regret.
0:06:11 When you think about it cognitively,
0:06:12 let’s use my example.
0:06:17 So if only I had taken more risks when I was in college, okay?
0:06:20 What I do is I go back in time
0:06:22 to when I was in college, all right?
0:06:24 I negate what really happened,
0:06:26 which was kind of being a little bit of a wimp
0:06:30 and I replaced that truth with a counterfactual.
0:06:34 So let’s say that I was doing something a little gutsy
0:06:37 or like playing a club level sport
0:06:38 rather than just wimp out, all right?
0:06:39 So you know what I’m gonna do?
0:06:41 I’m gonna actually try to become
0:06:43 like a very skilled basketball player
0:06:47 and risk the injuries and risk the feelings of stupidity
0:06:49 and not being good enough and whatnot
0:06:50 rather than just retreat.
0:06:52 So I go back and negate that.
0:06:54 So not only that, but I come back to the present.
0:06:56 Now my present is reconfigured
0:06:57 because I’ve changed the past.
0:06:58 And now suddenly, I don’t know,
0:07:01 I’m like coaching a basketball team
0:07:02 or I’m a better leader
0:07:04 because I had more experience with a team sport
0:07:06 or something like that.
0:07:08 And so it’s really this incredible process
0:07:11 that we go through where we get in the time machine,
0:07:13 we go backward, we negate what happened,
0:07:14 we get back in our time machine,
0:07:16 we go forward to the present
0:07:18 and the present magically looks different
0:07:19 because of what we’ve done in the past.
0:07:22 This is one reason why regret is a,
0:07:24 it’s a milestone in our development.
0:07:26 That is little kids can’t do this.
0:07:28 Five-year-olds don’t experience regret
0:07:30 ’cause they can’t think counterfactually.
0:07:33 It’s also why people with certain kinds of brain damage
0:07:36 and brain lesions can’t reason counterfactually.
0:07:38 The more I think about what our brains can do,
0:07:42 the more I’m kind of in awe of this lump in our head
0:07:44 and how powerful it is.
0:07:47 – Yeah, and I wanna dig deeper on counterfactuals
0:07:48 ’cause you brought it up
0:07:49 and it was a term that I’ve never heard of
0:07:51 until I started reading your book
0:07:52 and it’s super interesting.
0:07:54 So talk to us about counterfactuals
0:07:57 and the main ones and maybe give us some examples.
0:07:59 – So basically what it means is that our brains allow us
0:08:03 to imagine a scenario that runs counter to the actual facts.
0:08:05 There are two kinds of counterfactuals here.
0:08:07 Okay, so I know you guys like to go deep.
0:08:09 So there are two kinds of counterfactuals
0:08:11 that are really important.
0:08:13 One of them is what would you can call
0:08:15 a downward counterfactual, okay?
0:08:18 So you imagine how things could have been worse.
0:08:23 So you say, oh, I regret that I married Bob,
0:08:27 but at least I have these two great kids, okay?
0:08:29 So you find the silver lining, okay?
0:08:29 It could have been worse.
0:08:32 I could have married Bob and not had any kids.
0:08:36 So at least make us feel better.
0:08:39 Now there’s another kind of counterfactual, if onlys.
0:08:41 That’s an upward counterfactual
0:08:43 where you can imagine how things could have gotten better.
0:08:44 It could have been better.
0:08:48 So you say, oh, if only I had married Fred instead of Bob,
0:08:51 I would be living in a nicer community.
0:08:53 I would have a happy marriage.
0:08:56 I would be financially secure, et cetera, et cetera.
0:08:58 You imagine how things could have been better.
0:09:01 Now, if onlys make us feel worse.
0:09:03 But here’s the dirty little secret.
0:09:05 If onlys make us feel worse,
0:09:08 but they also help us do better in the future.
0:09:10 And they help us do better in the future
0:09:13 because they make us feel worse.
0:09:16 – And regret isn’t if only feeling, right?
0:09:17 – Totally, right.
0:09:19 Regret is the quintessential if only.
0:09:21 It makes us feel worse.
0:09:23 This is why it’s paradoxical, Holly.
0:09:25 This is why people don’t like it.
0:09:26 This is why people like to proclaim,
0:09:28 I don’t have any regrets.
0:09:29 I never look backward.
0:09:30 I’m always positive.
0:09:34 And the reason for that is that regret is unpleasant.
0:09:38 But what we also know from, again,
0:09:41 if you look at 50 or 60 years of research in neuroscience,
0:09:44 in cognitive science, in developmental psychology,
0:09:47 which I mentioned before, social psychology,
0:09:49 a lot of experiments in social psychology as well,
0:09:53 what it tells us is that regret is ubiquitous.
0:09:55 It is everywhere.
0:09:58 Everybody experiences regret.
0:09:59 It’s one of the most common emotions
0:10:01 that human beings have.
0:10:03 I can’t emphasize that enough.
0:10:05 Everybody has regrets.
0:10:08 If you don’t have any regrets, it’s a warning.
0:10:09 It’s a bad sign.
0:10:11 It means that you could be five years old,
0:10:13 which I guess that’s not a bad sign.
0:10:14 Like, you know, you gotta grow up.
0:10:17 It could mean that you have brain damage
0:10:20 or lesions on the orbital frontal cortex of your brain
0:10:22 or early onset hunting tins or Parkinson’s.
0:10:25 It could mean that you’re a sociopath.
0:10:27 Those are truly the only people who don’t have regrets.
0:10:28 The rest of us have regrets.
0:10:30 It’s one of the most common emotions
0:10:31 that human beings have.
0:10:32 And this is sort of a puzzle, right?
0:10:35 It’s like you have this thing that is widespread,
0:10:36 but it makes us feel crappy.
0:10:37 So you have to ask the question,
0:10:39 well, why does it exist then?
0:10:40 – Exactly.
0:10:44 So we obviously evolved to have regret for good reason, right?
0:10:46 It’s kind of a survival instinct, I imagine.
0:10:49 It makes our lives better in the end.
0:10:50 Talk to us about that.
0:10:52 Why do we actually need regret?
0:10:53 – Exactly.
0:10:54 That’s the point.
0:10:57 So we’re not perfect organisms at all.
0:10:58 We’re not perfectly efficient,
0:11:01 but there are adaptations that we’ve had.
0:11:02 So you have to figure like,
0:11:04 why does something that make us feel bad?
0:11:06 Why is it everywhere?
0:11:07 It must do something.
0:11:10 It must have some benefit to us, right?
0:11:11 And you got it exactly right.
0:11:13 The benefit that it has,
0:11:16 it helps that if we treat our regrets properly,
0:11:19 it helps us do better.
0:11:23 And not only a little bit and not only on a few things,
0:11:26 but a lot of it on many things.
0:11:27 And here’s the key.
0:11:30 If we reckon with our regrets properly,
0:11:32 we don’t ignore them.
0:11:33 We don’t put our, when we feel a regret,
0:11:35 we don’t put our fingers in our ears and say,
0:11:36 “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
0:11:37 I don’t hear anything.
0:11:38 That’s a bad idea.
0:11:40 But also, and this is also important, Hala,
0:11:43 we don’t wallow in them.
0:11:45 We don’t ruminate on them.
0:11:46 We don’t stew over them.
0:11:48 We confront them.
0:11:52 We use them as signal, as information, as evidence, as data.
0:11:55 When we do that, again,
0:11:57 we have the research showing
0:11:59 that it can help us become better negotiators.
0:12:01 So there’s a lot of experiments
0:12:04 where you put somebody in a negotiating session,
0:12:06 then they do their negotiation.
0:12:08 They come out, the experimenter say,
0:12:11 “Okay, I want you to think about what do you regret
0:12:13 “doing or not doing in that negotiation?”
0:12:16 So they encourage people to invite this negative feeling.
0:12:18 What happens next?
0:12:20 They do better in the next negotiation.
0:12:22 It helps us become better problem solvers.
0:12:26 It helps us avoid cognitive biases like confirmation bias
0:12:29 and escalation of commitment to a failing course of action.
0:12:31 There’s some interesting research among executives
0:12:35 showing that executives who actually sort of embrace
0:12:37 and acknowledge their regrets
0:12:39 are better strategists
0:12:42 than those who simply try to skate past them.
0:12:44 It helps us find greater meaning in life.
0:12:46 And so what we have here, again,
0:12:48 just to distill this, make it a little bit simpler is this.
0:12:51 Regret makes us human and regret makes us better.
0:12:52 Everybody has regrets.
0:12:54 And the reason everybody has regrets
0:12:56 is that if we treat them properly,
0:12:58 they’re incredibly useful.
0:13:00 – Yeah, I heard that one of the main reasons
0:13:02 why you went on this journey
0:13:04 is because you heard this like no regrets
0:13:06 kind of philosophy and culture that was going on,
0:13:09 how everybody just wanted to be positive.
0:13:10 You’re supposed to just accept your journey
0:13:12 for what it is and never look back
0:13:13 about the mistakes you made
0:13:16 and just everything happens for a reason type mentality.
0:13:20 So let’s talk about that before we go even deeper on regrets
0:13:24 and how to evaluate them right or wrong ways to do that.
0:13:25 But let’s talk about that first.
0:13:28 What’s wrong with the no regrets world view?
0:13:30 – Okay, there’s a lot wrong with it,
0:13:33 but I’m gonna try to be kinder and gentler
0:13:36 in how I bash it.
0:13:41 The problem is that it is a woefully misguided philosophy
0:13:46 for a life well lived.
0:13:48 And the reason for that is this,
0:13:50 I’ll give you an example of it.
0:13:51 So I have the people who I wrote about,
0:13:52 you know from the book,
0:13:55 who get these tattoos that say no regrets.
0:13:57 So they believe in this philosophy
0:13:59 that you should always be positive,
0:14:02 never be negative, always look forward, never look back.
0:14:05 They believe in this credo, this philosophy
0:14:10 so ferociously they have the message enshrined
0:14:11 on their bodies.
0:14:13 That’s a commitment, man, all right?
0:14:15 Like you gotta believe in something
0:14:17 to have a tattooed on your body, right?
0:14:19 But here’s the thing, if you say no regrets,
0:14:21 you say I never look backward.
0:14:25 You might as well get a tattoo that says no growth,
0:14:27 no learning, no progress.
0:14:28 Nobody’s getting tattoos like that.
0:14:30 And so it’s really, really misguided.
0:14:34 The key here is what we do with our regrets.
0:14:37 And this is, I think, a bigger problem that we have,
0:14:38 Hala, which is this.
0:14:41 And I think it’s an American problem more than others.
0:14:46 We Americans have a problem with negative emotions.
0:14:49 We don’t know what to do with them.
0:14:52 Here’s the thing, just go back, just again.
0:14:54 Positive emotions are great.
0:14:56 I wanna have a lot of positive emotions.
0:14:58 I want you to have a lot of positive emotions.
0:15:00 I want all the yep listeners
0:15:01 to have lots of positive emotions, okay?
0:15:03 Positive emotions are great.
0:15:07 Gratitude and joy and elation, they’re great, okay?
0:15:10 They’re part of what makes life worth living.
0:15:11 But here’s the thing,
0:15:15 people shouldn’t have only positive emotions.
0:15:18 That’s not healthy.
0:15:20 It goes back to what you were saying before.
0:15:22 We have adapted to the world.
0:15:24 Negative emotions are adaptations.
0:15:27 So if you think about this, I’ll give you an example.
0:15:28 All right, let’s take fear.
0:15:29 Fear is a negative emotion.
0:15:33 Do I wanna go, if somebody knocks at my office door,
0:15:34 some weird person knocks at my office door,
0:15:37 hey, Dan, I’ll give you an operation.
0:15:38 Okay, we’re gonna open up your head,
0:15:40 but it’s gonna be completely no pain.
0:15:42 We’re gonna seal it back up perfectly.
0:15:43 And what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna do
0:15:44 a little tweak in your brain
0:15:47 to ensure that you never experience fear
0:15:48 again in your life.
0:15:50 Do I want that operation?
0:15:52 – Absolutely not.
0:15:53 – Of course not.
0:15:55 ‘Cause when I’m in a burning building,
0:15:58 I wanna experience fear so I get the hell out.
0:16:00 It’s helpful.
0:16:02 Again, I don’t wanna be burdened by fear.
0:16:04 I don’t wanna experience fear all the time.
0:16:05 That’s debilitating.
0:16:07 I don’t wanna experience,
0:16:08 think about an emotionally grief.
0:16:11 The reason we experience grief
0:16:13 is because we experience love.
0:16:15 So I don’t wanna banish grief.
0:16:17 I don’t wanna banish negative emotion.
0:16:20 I want to actually reckon with them.
0:16:22 I like what you said at the top of the show, Hala,
0:16:24 is that there’s evidence here, okay?
0:16:27 This is not some kind of philosophy of mine.
0:16:31 We have 50 or 60 years of evidence telling us
0:16:34 that when you line up the emotions, all right?
0:16:36 When you line up our negative emotions,
0:16:38 we’re gonna do a little police line up.
0:16:39 Fear, guilt, shame, you know,
0:16:43 but that regret ends up being the most common
0:16:47 and the most useful if we treat it right,
0:16:48 if we treat it right.
0:16:51 And again, we haven’t been treating it right
0:16:53 because what’s happened is we’re totally
0:16:54 over index and positivity.
0:16:57 We think we have to be positive all the time.
0:17:00 And when we’re not, especially younger people,
0:17:04 when they feel negative, they feel regret,
0:17:06 they feel bad, they say, wait a second,
0:17:09 I’m feeling regret, I’m feeling bad.
0:17:12 That’s terrible because not only is it making me,
0:17:15 isn’t inherently unpleasant, but I look around
0:17:17 and everybody else is perfect,
0:17:19 there must be something wrong with me
0:17:20 and they get brought down by that.
0:17:24 Rather than saying a negative emotion is a knock at the door,
0:17:26 clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk,
0:17:27 someone’s trying to tell me something,
0:17:29 let me listen, not drown it out,
0:17:32 not get freaked out by it, but listen to it,
0:17:34 learn from it and do better in the future.
0:17:39 – We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:22:31 Like you said, regret is so common and it’s universal
0:22:32 and it’s normal, right?
0:22:34 It’s a normal feeling to have.
0:22:36 It’s just about how you manage it, how you process it
0:22:38 and what you do with that information.
0:22:39 – Amen.
0:22:40 – Yes.
0:22:43 Okay, so in this book, you did a lot of research yourself,
0:22:46 but there was also years of research prior to that
0:22:49 about regrets and the common regrets that people have.
0:22:50 So can you talk to us about the research
0:22:52 that was available before you started
0:22:55 and then maybe why you ended up doing more research
0:22:56 and what you found?
0:23:01 – Yeah, so I was also curious about what people regretted.
0:23:03 I was really curious about that.
0:23:06 And the reason I was curious is that when you looked
0:23:09 at the existing evidence, most of it in social psychology,
0:23:13 initially researchers said, oh, this is an American sample,
0:23:15 that Americans, oh, they have education regrets.
0:23:17 Education is the biggest regret that Americans have.
0:23:20 Scientists believe that for 20 years.
0:23:23 And then somebody finally realized like, wait a second,
0:23:25 all these studies showing that education
0:23:26 is the biggest regret.
0:23:29 We’re done on college campuses with college students.
0:23:33 And so, if you had done all this research in hospitals,
0:23:34 maybe health would be the greatest regret.
0:23:37 If you had done it in banks, maybe you know, whatever.
0:23:39 So it’s like, huh, maybe there’s not something there.
0:23:43 And so actually not that long ago, 16, 17 years ago,
0:23:47 researchers started doing more systematic looks
0:23:48 at what people regretted.
0:23:51 And they found that people regret a lot of stuff.
0:23:52 It was all over the place.
0:23:53 They have career regrets.
0:23:54 They have romance regrets.
0:23:55 They have finance regrets.
0:23:56 They have health regrets.
0:23:57 They have family regrets.
0:23:58 It’s all over the place.
0:24:00 So that’s the lay of the land.
0:24:03 So I said, I’m gonna try to crack the code here.
0:24:06 And so I did something called the American Regret Project,
0:24:09 which is the largest public opinion survey
0:24:11 of American attitudes about regret ever conducted.
0:24:14 We did a brilliant, gorgeous survey
0:24:19 of nearly 4,500 Americans modeling the sample,
0:24:23 configuring the sample so that it reflected
0:24:27 the glorious diversity of the United States of America.
0:24:28 And so I asked these people,
0:24:30 tell me one of your big regrets.
0:24:32 And then I had them put it into those categories,
0:24:35 career, finance, romance, whatever.
0:24:37 Because I said, I’m gonna figure this out.
0:24:41 And I found after careful deliberation and data analysis
0:24:43 that people regret a lot of stuff.
0:24:45 It was all over the place.
0:24:48 So now that’s the bad news.
0:24:50 The good news is that I also did another piece
0:24:52 of my own research, something called
0:24:57 the World Regret Survey where I simply set up a website,
0:25:01 worldregretsurvey.com, where I gathered regrets
0:25:03 from around the globe.
0:25:07 And we now have a database of over 21,000 regrets
0:25:09 from people in 109 countries.
0:25:10 It’s incredible.
0:25:13 And once I looked at those, okay,
0:25:15 we just basically just people offering their regrets,
0:25:19 but by the thousands all over the world.
0:25:21 And I didn’t ask them to categorize it.
0:25:22 I just wanted to know their age,
0:25:25 their gender identity and their location.
0:25:27 When I started reading through those regrets,
0:25:28 I didn’t read through all 21,000,
0:25:31 but I did read through the first 15,000 of them.
0:25:36 What I discovered is that there’s something else going on
0:25:39 that trying to understand what people regret
0:25:42 by those categories that I initially had thought
0:25:43 is not the way to look at it,
0:25:45 that there’s something bigger and more interesting
0:25:48 going on beneath the surface.
0:25:49 – Yeah, so let’s talk about that.
0:25:51 You say that you discovered regret
0:25:55 has both a surface structure and a deep structure, right?
0:25:57 So one is really easy to see, easy to describe,
0:26:00 and the other one is not so easy.
0:26:01 So talk to us about that.
0:26:03 – Okay, perfect, you got it exactly right.
0:26:06 So let me be less abstract, let me be concrete here.
0:26:08 Okay, here we go.
0:26:10 We’re looking at these regrets
0:26:12 that are coming in from all over the world.
0:26:15 I’m reading them one by one, trying to make sense of them.
0:26:18 It’s fascinating to hear people all over the world
0:26:19 disclose a big regret.
0:26:20 So let me give you an example.
0:26:23 So I have, again, the volume here is helpful.
0:26:27 So I have lots of regrets of people who say,
0:26:28 I mean, here’s a weird one.
0:26:31 It’s like, from American college graduates,
0:26:34 I am stunned by the number of regrets
0:26:35 that American college graduates have
0:26:38 about not studying abroad when they were in college.
0:26:40 I couldn’t believe it.
0:26:41 Like even if you Google, not Google,
0:26:43 but you go into the database and search for a phrase
0:26:46 like study abroad, you get like hundreds of hits.
0:26:47 I couldn’t, it’s crazy.
0:26:49 Okay, so that’s an education regret, okay?
0:26:52 People say, oh, I wish I had studied abroad.
0:26:54 I was a little bit too scared to go away.
0:26:57 And I thought I would miss people and da-da-da-da-da-da.
0:26:58 And now I wish I had taken that.
0:27:00 Now I wish I had studied abroad.
0:27:02 – I’ve heard that so many times too,
0:27:03 which is just so random
0:27:06 that I’ve heard that regret before many times.
0:27:08 – But you know what, it’s a big deal, man.
0:27:10 I have to say, I was blown away by that.
0:27:12 I actually think that there is a,
0:27:14 and this is for the entrepreneurial
0:27:15 gap listeners out there.
0:27:19 I think there’s a business, a travel agency,
0:27:23 serving basically 30-somethings and 40-somethings,
0:27:25 20-somethings, 30-somethings, 40-somethings,
0:27:28 who wish they had studied abroad and didn’t
0:27:29 and now have a little money in their pocket.
0:27:32 I really think there’s a viable business in there.
0:27:33 But that’s an education regret, okay?
0:27:34 So then I have a lot of regrets.
0:27:36 Okay, let’s go back to entrepreneurship.
0:27:39 I got lots of regrets, again, all over the world.
0:27:40 We basically say this.
0:27:43 I really regret staying in this lackluster job.
0:27:44 I always wanted to start a business,
0:27:46 but I never had the gumption to do it.
0:27:48 Okay, that’s a career regret.
0:27:50 Then I have, and this is again,
0:27:52 volume, volume, volume, hundreds,
0:27:53 and I’m not kidding around, hundreds,
0:27:55 that basically go like this.
0:28:00 X years ago, there was a man/woman who I really liked.
0:28:02 I wanted to ask him or her out on a date,
0:28:04 but I was too chicken to do that,
0:28:06 and now I’ve regretted it 10 years later,
0:28:07 20 years later, 30 years later.
0:28:09 Okay, that’s a romance regret.
0:28:11 So we got an education regret.
0:28:13 We’ve got a career regret.
0:28:15 We’ve got a romance regret,
0:28:19 but here’s the point I’m making in this little diatribe here.
0:28:22 Those are all the same regret.
0:28:24 Those regrets on the surface,
0:28:25 they’re in different categories,
0:28:28 but they’re the same regret.
0:28:31 You’re at a juncture in your life, and you have a choice.
0:28:34 You can play it safe, or you can take the chance.
0:28:38 And overwhelmingly, when people don’t take the chance,
0:28:40 they regret it.
0:28:42 And that’s what I call a boldness regret.
0:28:43 So on the surface,
0:28:45 it’s career is different from romance,
0:28:48 it’s different from education,
0:28:51 but one layer down, it’s the same regret.
0:28:53 If only I’d taken the chance.
0:28:55 And what I found is that that is one of boldness regrets,
0:28:59 or one of four of these deep structure core regrets
0:29:01 that people all over the world seem to have.
0:29:03 – Yeah, and I feel like it makes sense
0:29:05 to go through all four of them,
0:29:08 and then I have some other questions about them individually.
0:29:09 – Yeah, rock and roll. – Yeah.
0:29:10 – Cool.
0:29:11 One category of what I call foundation regrets.
0:29:13 Foundation regrets are if only,
0:29:15 ’cause remember, regrets, as you said earlier,
0:29:16 regrets are if onlys, all right?
0:29:20 So foundation regret is if only I’d done the work,
0:29:21 if only I’d done the work.
0:29:23 So these are regrets that people have.
0:29:25 Okay, a lot of regrets about,
0:29:26 I spent too much and saved too little,
0:29:29 and now I don’t have enough money or now I’m broke.
0:29:31 A surprising number of regrets about people
0:29:32 who didn’t work hard enough in school.
0:29:33 Ugh, if only I’d listened to my parents
0:29:35 and worked harder in school,
0:29:37 I’d have a little bit more of a stable footing
0:29:39 in the job market.
0:29:41 A lot of regrets about health in this way, too.
0:29:43 If only I had eaten better.
0:29:44 If only I had exercised,
0:29:46 I wouldn’t be out of shape and unhealthy today.
0:29:49 So it’s small decisions early in life
0:29:52 that accumulate to really nasty consequences later in life.
0:29:54 Again, these small decisions,
0:29:56 like no single one is cataclysmic.
0:29:59 It’s like, oh, I ate a whole bag of Cheetos once, all right?
0:30:01 That’s like, people don’t regret that.
0:30:03 They regret eating unhealthily for a year,
0:30:05 two years, five years, 10 years,
0:30:07 and it adds up and it’s hard to undo.
0:30:10 So foundation regrets, if only I’d done the work.
0:30:12 Third category, we got boldness, too.
0:30:13 We got moral regrets.
0:30:17 Moral regrets are, if only I’d done the right thing.
0:30:18 Again, you’re at a juncture.
0:30:19 You can do the right thing.
0:30:21 You can do the wrong thing.
0:30:25 When we do the wrong thing, most of us regret it
0:30:28 ’cause I think most of us are good and want to be good.
0:30:31 And when we’re not good, we feel crappy about it.
0:30:33 And so these are regrets that people have about,
0:30:36 oh my gosh, the two bigger ones here,
0:30:38 marital infidelity, woof.
0:30:41 I had a lot of people like basically confessing
0:30:42 on this world regret survey.
0:30:44 It was like an online confessional.
0:30:47 And then also a shocking number, shocking to me,
0:30:51 number of people who regretted bullying other people
0:30:52 when they were younger.
0:30:54 So bullying and marital infidelity,
0:30:56 if only I’d done the right thing.
0:30:59 Finally, fourth category, connection regrets.
0:31:02 Connection regrets are about relationships
0:31:03 and not only romantic relationships
0:31:06 and really not even mostly romantic relationships,
0:31:10 just the full suite of relationships in our lives.
0:31:14 And what happens is that you have a relationship
0:31:16 that wasn’t attacked or should have been intact
0:31:18 with a parent, with a sibling, with a relative,
0:31:20 with friends, with colleagues.
0:31:23 It wasn’t attacked and it comes apart
0:31:26 and or should have been intact, wasn’t attacked
0:31:27 and it comes apart.
0:31:29 And I think what’s interesting is that,
0:31:32 again, if you read story after story,
0:31:34 the way a lot of these relationships come apart
0:31:37 is not dramatic at all.
0:31:39 There’s no big fight.
0:31:40 There’s no screaming or yelling.
0:31:45 It’s just like this drift that takes place over time.
0:31:46 And here’s what happens.
0:31:47 Somebody wants to reach out.
0:31:49 Okay, so let’s say, you know, like,
0:31:52 man, I was such good friends with Holla 10 years ago,
0:31:54 I haven’t talked to her for so long.
0:31:56 I should really reach out to her.
0:31:59 And then I say, oh man, no, but if I just reach out
0:32:01 to her now, it’s gonna be so awkward
0:32:02 ’cause I haven’t talked to her for 10 years.
0:32:03 It’s gonna be so awkward.
0:32:04 I don’t wanna do that.
0:32:06 Besides, she won’t care.
0:32:07 So I don’t do anything.
0:32:09 And then two years from now, I say, oh man,
0:32:11 I was such good friends with Holla 12 years ago.
0:32:13 I really should reach out to her.
0:32:15 But oh my God, it’s even more awkward now
0:32:16 and she’s gonna carry even less.
0:32:19 And so we don’t do anything and sometimes it’s too late.
0:32:20 And that’s a big mistake.
0:32:24 Let me just double click on that for a moment.
0:32:25 That’s a huge mistake.
0:32:27 We have piles of evidence showing
0:32:29 that when people do reach out,
0:32:31 it’s way less awkward than they think.
0:32:35 We’re completely over-indexed on awkwardness.
0:32:37 My view in general in life, reading the research,
0:32:39 is that if you’re feeling awkward about something,
0:32:41 just frickin’ push through it.
0:32:43 Don’t let awkwardness, feelings of awkwardness,
0:32:45 be that barrier.
0:32:47 Awkwardness is not a strong enough signal
0:32:49 to stop you from doing something.
0:32:51 Second thing is that we say people,
0:32:53 but Holla’s not gonna care.
0:32:55 People almost always welcome it.
0:32:57 We’re completely wrong on both fronts.
0:32:59 We think it’s gonna be awkward and they’re not gonna care.
0:33:01 And when we do it, it’s not awkward and they always care.
0:33:03 So connection regrets are if only I’d reached out.
0:33:06 So let me quickly summarize those.
0:33:07 We’ve got confoundation regrets,
0:33:09 if only I’d done the work.
0:33:12 We’ve got boldness regrets, if only I’d taken the chance.
0:33:15 We’ve got moral regrets, if only I’d done the right thing.
0:33:16 And then we’ve got connection regrets,
0:33:17 if only I’d reached out.
0:33:20 And just remarkable universality.
0:33:24 All over the world, these are what people regret.
0:33:27 And it’s that deep structure that really matters.
0:33:31 That deep structure is really universal.
0:33:35 You see these in every country, at every age,
0:33:36 at every gender identity.
0:33:39 – Yeah, and if I remember correctly,
0:33:43 connection requests are the most common regret.
0:33:45 And I think especially in COVID, this is relevant.
0:33:47 I think a lot of us weren’t hanging out
0:33:49 with our friends for a couple of years.
0:33:50 A lot of our friends moved away.
0:33:52 I feel like this is your sign, guys.
0:33:54 If you’re thinking of an old friend
0:33:55 that you haven’t talked to in a while,
0:33:57 make sure you reach out to them.
0:33:59 Don’t have any regrets about that.
0:34:03 – So I’d love to hear about inaction and action
0:34:06 and what we need to know about that in terms of regret.
0:34:08 – Okay, really important.
0:34:09 I’ll give you a little bit of insight
0:34:11 in how the sausage is made.
0:34:12 – Okay.
0:34:15 – So at one point, I had a chapter called
0:34:17 the rules of regret.
0:34:20 Where I was gonna say, here’s how regret works.
0:34:22 Like it works to basically pull up the hood.
0:34:23 These are the rules of regret.
0:34:24 This is how regret works, okay?
0:34:26 And I was like, okay, should there be five rules
0:34:27 or seven rules or whatever?
0:34:30 So I have this like, these giant bulging folders
0:34:32 of research and it’s like, okay, I’m gonna crack the code.
0:34:34 I’m gonna figure out the rules of regret.
0:34:35 And I started going through the research
0:34:38 and I’m like, oh, there’s one rule.
0:34:40 And the rule is, there’s a big difference
0:34:43 between regrets of action and regrets of inaction.
0:34:44 Everything comes back to that difference.
0:34:47 And the architecture of regret,
0:34:49 the difference between regrets of action,
0:34:52 I regret what I did, and regrets of inaction,
0:34:54 I regret what I didn’t do, is huge.
0:34:58 And here there is a distinct difference in age.
0:35:00 In my American regret project,
0:35:02 which is the giant public opinion poll,
0:35:04 I put together such a large sample
0:35:06 in order to try to find demographic differences
0:35:08 in what people regret it.
0:35:10 So thinking that whites would have different regrets
0:35:13 from people of color, people with lots of formal education
0:35:14 would have different regrets from people
0:35:16 with less education, men would have different regrets
0:35:18 from women, blah, blah, blah.
0:35:20 There were very few demographic differences.
0:35:21 I was kind of shocked by that.
0:35:24 But the one had to do with age and it’s this.
0:35:27 People in their 20s tended to have equal numbers
0:35:29 of regrets of action and inaction,
0:35:31 equal numbers of regrets about what they did
0:35:33 and regrets about what they didn’t do.
0:35:36 But by the time you hit basically your late 20s,
0:35:40 and certainly into your 30s and 40s and 50s and beyond,
0:35:42 it’s not even close.
0:35:45 By the time you get literally to your late 20s,
0:35:47 the inaction regrets take over.
0:35:50 When you get to my age, okay?
0:35:53 And I’m basically like double the age of somebody
0:35:54 in their mid to late 20s.
0:35:58 When you get to my age, it’s like three to one.
0:36:00 Inaction regrets over action regrets.
0:36:05 Overwhelmingly, over time, we regret what we didn’t do.
0:36:07 I regret that I didn’t reach out.
0:36:09 I regret that I didn’t start that business.
0:36:12 I regret that I didn’t tell that person that I loved them.
0:36:16 I regret that I didn’t stand up to an injustice.
0:36:18 That’s what we regret.
0:36:21 Inaction over action as we get older.
0:36:23 And I’m curious to understand because you did all this
0:36:26 research, you heard about so many different regrets.
0:36:29 You really started to understand the science behind it
0:36:30 and why we have regrets.
0:36:32 What were some of the big life lessons
0:36:36 that you learned about it that may not really be scientific
0:36:38 or anything, but just life lessons
0:36:39 that you’re gonna carry through?
0:36:40 – I’ll tell you a few of them.
0:36:44 I mean, you hinted at one of them just a few moments ago,
0:36:47 Hala, which is that let’s take these connection regrets.
0:36:49 This is my philosophy now, okay?
0:36:51 So let’s say you’re at a juncture
0:36:53 and you’re wondering, should I reach out to this person
0:36:55 or should I not reach out to this person?
0:36:57 If you have arrived at that juncture,
0:36:58 you have the answer to the question.
0:37:00 Reach out, when in doubt, reach out.
0:37:03 If you arrive at that juncture and you’re wondering,
0:37:05 the question is answered, always reach out.
0:37:08 I’m dead serious about that.
0:37:11 I’ve heard too many stories where it didn’t happen
0:37:13 and then something horrible arises
0:37:16 and ends up not being possible, somebody dies.
0:37:19 I’ve so many stories like that, always reach out.
0:37:20 I’ll give you another one.
0:37:22 And let’s go back to inaction and action.
0:37:23 – Yeah.
0:37:28 – I think that there’s a lot to be said for in general,
0:37:31 having a slight bias for action.
0:37:36 That is for so for just like for trying stuff.
0:37:37 And again, it goes to the awkwardness.
0:37:42 So I think that awkwardness is a weak excuse.
0:37:43 I think fear is a stronger excuse.
0:37:45 I think feelings of awkwardness,
0:37:47 do what you can to push past those.
0:37:49 It’s sort of a bias for action.
0:37:52 I’m a happily married guy from of 27 years,
0:37:54 but I’ll give everybody who’s listening
0:37:57 all the Yap listeners some romantic advice, okay?
0:37:59 Ask the person out.
0:38:02 I’m dead serious.
0:38:05 If you’re wondering whether he, she or they,
0:38:08 you should ask him, him, her or them out.
0:38:09 Do it.
0:38:10 The worst thing that can happen
0:38:13 is that the person says no.
0:38:16 And you know what happens when the person says no?
0:38:17 You’re fine.
0:38:18 Life goes on.
0:38:21 You’re exactly where you were before you were asked.
0:38:22 But here’s the thing.
0:38:24 Now you know, you’ve taken your shot.
0:38:27 So I think if there’s one takeaway here
0:38:28 is that ask the person out.
0:38:30 Just slight bias for action.
0:38:34 Don’t take awkwardness as a meaningful signal.
0:38:35 Always reach out.
0:38:37 The other thing is, I’ll give you one,
0:38:38 I’ll give you one more life lesson here too,
0:38:41 is that I think there’s something to be said
0:38:44 for when you’re making a decision
0:38:46 to consult your future self.
0:38:49 So if you’re stuck, see if you can sort of send a text
0:38:53 or make a phone call to the you of 10 years from now.
0:38:57 So think about, let’s say that you’re 28 years old, all right?
0:39:00 What does 38-year-old you want you to do?
0:39:04 38-year-old wants you to put a little bit more money
0:39:08 in your 401k and spend a little less money at Applebeast.
0:39:09 That’s what you’re,
0:39:13 that’s what 38-year-old you wants you to do.
0:39:14 If you’re at a juncture and you’re saying,
0:39:16 God, should I do this unethical thing
0:39:17 or should I not?
0:39:21 98% of us, 38-year-old you, want you to do the right thing.
0:39:22 The you of 10 years from now
0:39:23 is really looking out for your best interest.
0:39:25 And here’s the thing, well, the other thing is also,
0:39:27 we can make a pretty safe prediction
0:39:30 about what the you of 10 years from now will care about.
0:39:31 And it’s not most things.
0:39:32 The me of 10 years from now
0:39:34 isn’t gonna care what I have for dinner tonight.
0:39:37 It isn’t gonna care what t-shirt I wore today.
0:39:40 But it is gonna care, did I do the work
0:39:42 and build a stable foundation for myself,
0:39:43 for my family, for my team?
0:39:48 It is gonna care of did I use my opportunity,
0:39:51 this vanishingly short amount of time that I’m alive
0:39:53 to like learn and grow and do something and contribute.
0:39:56 It’s gonna care if I, 10 years from now,
0:39:57 if I do the wrong thing,
0:40:00 I have to confront the me of 2032,
0:40:01 who’s gonna be wagging his finger at me saying,
0:40:03 shame on you, why’d you do the wrong thing?
0:40:05 And it’s gonna care if I don’t reach out
0:40:08 and build relationships of love and connection
0:40:09 and affinity and belonging.
0:40:11 And again, it’s not super complicated,
0:40:13 but I think the cool thing is,
0:40:17 is that this emotion that we often try to avoid
0:40:22 is giving us this very, very clear window
0:40:25 into what makes life worth living.
0:40:26 – Let’s hold that thought
0:40:28 and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:42:05 – I feel like for me,
0:42:08 the big kind of takeaway that I’m getting from all this
0:42:10 is having this bias for action.
0:42:10 Because like you said,
0:42:13 the biggest regret is inaction.
0:42:14 And most of the time,
0:42:16 if we do something and we find out the answer,
0:42:18 we’re not looking back and saying,
0:42:19 if only this, if only that,
0:42:20 you just, that’s what happened.
0:42:22 And you just get over it and move on
0:42:25 and you don’t ruminate and think about it forever.
0:42:27 So speaking about ruminating,
0:42:29 there’s right ways and wrong ways to deal with regret.
0:42:32 And dealing with regret is critical for us,
0:42:35 like moving in a positive way forward in our lives.
0:42:37 So talk to us about the right way
0:42:38 and the wrong way to deal with regret.
0:42:40 – Okay, that’s a great question.
0:42:43 So I think that the wrong way is pretty obvious.
0:42:46 The wrong way is to simply ignore it.
0:42:48 That’s a totally bad idea.
0:42:50 And it doesn’t work over the long term.
0:42:53 Another bad idea is to wallow in it,
0:42:54 is to stew over it.
0:42:56 So the right way to do it is to try to avoid,
0:42:57 especially that second path.
0:43:00 And the way I look at this process
0:43:03 is inward, outward, forward, inward, outward, forward.
0:43:05 Because the first step is to look inward.
0:43:06 So let’s say you have a regret
0:43:09 or even more broadly, you make a mistake.
0:43:10 In the face of regrets,
0:43:11 in the face of mistakes and screw-ups,
0:43:14 the way we talk to ourselves is incredibly harsh.
0:43:17 If you listen to people self-talk, it’s brutal.
0:43:20 Listen to myself talk, you think I was a lunatic.
0:43:23 The way I talk to myself is just cruel.
0:43:25 I would never talk to anybody else that way.
0:43:29 And what the science tells us is, don’t do that.
0:43:31 There’s very little evidence
0:43:35 that that’s effective in enhancing your performance.
0:43:37 A better technique than self-laceration
0:43:39 is what’s called self-compassion,
0:43:41 which is work pioneered by Kristen Neff
0:43:44 at the University of Texas about 20 years ago.
0:43:45 And the principle is pretty simple.
0:43:48 Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt.
0:43:50 Don’t treat yourself better than anybody else.
0:43:53 There’s no evidence, oh, I should treat myself special.
0:43:54 I should, you know, that’s not true.
0:43:56 But don’t treat yourself worse than anybody else.
0:43:58 Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt.
0:44:02 Recognize that regrets are part of the human condition.
0:44:04 Any app listener out there who has a regret,
0:44:06 I’ll find almost the identical regret
0:44:09 on my database in 90 seconds, okay?
0:44:11 Like it’s part of the human condition.
0:44:13 And the also thing that I think is really important
0:44:16 is that a regret is a moment in your life.
0:44:18 It’s not the full measure of your life.
0:44:20 We sometimes will make these broad assessments
0:44:23 of our entirety based on a single thing
0:44:25 in a single moment, and that’s unhealthy.
0:44:27 So that’s inward, so you reframe, inward.
0:44:29 Second thing is outward.
0:44:32 There’s a strong argument to be made for disclosure.
0:44:34 Disclosure is a form of unburdening.
0:44:37 It’s not accidental that 21,000 people around the world
0:44:40 told a complete stranger their big regret
0:44:41 ’cause they wanted to talk about it.
0:44:42 It’s just like what I was saying
0:44:44 at the top of the show, Hala.
0:44:46 It’s like, I mentioned that my regrets very sheepishly
0:44:50 and suddenly like this sort of uncorked this bottle
0:44:52 where people wanna talk about it.
0:44:54 – Releasing it, yeah.
0:44:56 – But the other thing I think is actually really important
0:45:00 is that emotions by their very nature are abstract.
0:45:02 They’re vaporous, they’re blobby.
0:45:04 That’s what makes positive emotions feel good,
0:45:07 but it’s what makes negative emotions feel bad.
0:45:10 And so when we talk about our negative emotions,
0:45:12 or even when we don’t have to even tell anybody else,
0:45:15 when you write about them privately,
0:45:18 we take this abstraction and make it concrete.
0:45:22 We turn it from these blobby thing into concrete words,
0:45:25 which are less menacing and helps us begin
0:45:26 the sense-making process.
0:45:29 So we reframe inward, we express outward,
0:45:31 but we also have to move forward
0:45:35 and the way we do that is we have to extract a lesson
0:45:36 from that regret.
0:45:39 And we tend to be pretty bad at solving our own problems.
0:45:42 We’re good at solving other people’s problems,
0:45:43 terrible at solving our own problems.
0:45:48 So a really good technique is essentially to,
0:45:50 it’s what’s called self-distancing.
0:45:53 It’s basically get some distance from yourself.
0:45:54 So you can do things like talk to yourself
0:45:57 in the second person, what should you do?
0:46:00 Or even better, your third person, what should Hala do?
0:46:04 I gotta say the single best decision-making tool
0:46:08 that I know of when you’re stuck is to ask yourself,
0:46:10 what would I tell my best friend to do?
0:46:11 I have people come to me saying,
0:46:13 “Dan, I should do this or should I do that?
0:46:14 I’m just so torn, I don’t know what to do.”
0:46:16 And I said, “What would you tell your best friend to do?”
0:46:17 And they say, “Oh, well, I tell her.
0:46:18 Babity, babity, babity.”
0:46:19 And it’s like, all right,
0:46:20 you kind of answered the question there.
0:46:24 So for the business people in your audience,
0:46:29 Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel has a brilliant,
0:46:31 had a brilliant technique where he said,
0:46:35 when he was stuck on a business decision as an executive,
0:46:39 he would say, “Okay, if I were replaced tomorrow,
0:46:41 what would my successor do?”
0:46:42 Andy always knew.
0:46:46 So again, so if we reframe inward, express outward,
0:46:48 and then move forward by self-dismissing,
0:46:51 we begin to sort of develop that as a habit.
0:46:54 And then, instead of trying to bat away
0:46:56 this negative emotion or getting brought down by it,
0:46:58 we basically hop on it at like a surfboard
0:47:03 and ride it into better health, higher productivity,
0:47:06 more meaning in life, and more effectiveness,
0:47:07 especially at work.
0:47:09 – Yeah, I’m curious.
0:47:12 Why is it so much easier to give advice to other people
0:47:14 and to like kind of pretend
0:47:15 that you’re giving advice to your best friend?
0:47:19 Like, why is it so hard to give advice to yourself?
0:47:21 – We’re too caught up in the details of our life.
0:47:23 We, at some level, we know too much
0:47:25 and that blinds us from the big picture.
0:47:27 It’s like trying to understand,
0:47:28 okay, I wanna study the ocean
0:47:31 and what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna scuba dive
0:47:33 to try to understand the ocean.
0:47:35 And it’s like, well, not only I’m immersed in everything,
0:47:37 if you really wanna understand like,
0:47:38 what does the ocean look like?
0:47:39 What are its boundaries?
0:47:40 How’s it configured?
0:47:41 You wanna be an oceanographer.
0:47:45 You wanna get up like in a helicopter and go above there.
0:47:48 And that’s often a better problem-solving technique.
0:47:50 We just know too much about ourselves.
0:47:53 We’re too caught up in the gory details
0:47:56 where with other people, we see the big picture,
0:47:58 we see what’s really going on.
0:47:59 – Yeah.
0:48:00 – And I really think that’s it.
0:48:02 Now, we can bring those techniques
0:48:03 to bear on our own problems,
0:48:06 but we have to be deliberate and intentional about that
0:48:10 by doing these kinds of sort of like Jedi mind tricks
0:48:11 to self-distance.
0:48:13 Again, talking to yourself in the third person,
0:48:15 even that thing that I suggested before
0:48:18 about talking to yourself 10 years from now,
0:48:20 that’s a form of self-distancing.
0:48:24 And again, truly, two takeaways from this
0:48:25 for your listeners.
0:48:27 One, ask them out.
0:48:30 Two, if you’re stuck on a decision,
0:48:33 ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend to do?
0:48:34 And then do that.
0:48:36 – Yeah, I think that’s really good advice.
0:48:38 And so, regret is a very negative emotion.
0:48:40 People don’t like to feel that way.
0:48:42 Sometimes they wallow in their regret.
0:48:45 And you talk about something called mental subtraction
0:48:47 that can help us feel better in the moment
0:48:48 when we’re having a regret.
0:48:50 Could you explain that to us?
0:48:51 – Sure.
0:48:52 That’s another really good point.
0:48:54 Is it technique, some good research on this
0:48:57 called mental subtraction of positive events.
0:48:59 It allows us to feel a greater sense of gratitude.
0:49:01 It’s also a way to reckon with regret.
0:49:03 I give you an education regret of mine,
0:49:08 which is that I regret having gone to law school
0:49:11 in general and probably gone to law school when I did.
0:49:13 Okay, that’s not a cataclysmic regret.
0:49:16 It’s not my biggest regret, but it’s illustrative here.
0:49:17 But here’s the thing.
0:49:18 I met my wife in law school.
0:49:20 So what I can do is I can say,
0:49:24 well, let me mentally subtract that event.
0:49:26 Imagine a word where I didn’t go to law school.
0:49:28 That’s a world where I never would have met my wife.
0:49:29 I don’t wanna live in that world.
0:49:33 With action regrets, we can find the silver lining.
0:49:34 We can at least them.
0:49:36 We can see a benefit in them,
0:49:39 which is why we can process them and make sense of them.
0:49:41 Some action regrets, we can also undo.
0:49:43 All those people who have bullying regrets,
0:49:46 more regrets, it’s an action I bullied somebody.
0:49:50 Many of them go back 20 years later
0:49:53 and apologize to the people they bullied.
0:49:55 And so they’re trying to undo that kind of regret.
0:49:59 I have a guy in the book who has a no regrets tattoo
0:50:00 and he goes to get it removed.
0:50:02 So with action regrets,
0:50:06 we can mentally subtract certain positive elements of them.
0:50:08 We can at least them.
0:50:09 We can undo them.
0:50:14 And therefore we can tamp down how much they bug us.
0:50:18 That’s why over time, action regrets proceed
0:50:21 in action regrets dominate.
0:50:22 – This is so interesting, Danielle.
0:50:24 So let’s wrap up the conversation.
0:50:26 And I feel like a good way to round this out
0:50:29 is to talk about the benefits of dealing with our regrets
0:50:32 and the benefits of regrets in general.
0:50:35 How can us doing what you just mentioned,
0:50:37 self distancing, analyzing,
0:50:39 trying to change our behaviors based on our regrets.
0:50:42 How can that actually help us in life?
0:50:43 – On a number of different dimensions.
0:50:46 Number one is that we know from these four regrets,
0:50:47 if we know what people regret the most,
0:50:49 we know what they value the most.
0:50:51 So regrets are a negative, a reverse image
0:50:54 of a life well lived of a good life.
0:50:57 What people want out of life in general
0:50:59 is they want a degree of stability.
0:51:01 A good life is not precarious.
0:51:03 Boldness is about the chance to learn and grow
0:51:06 and do something and not like waste your time here
0:51:08 and just do something.
0:51:09 Moral regrets are about goodness.
0:51:12 Connection regrets are ultimately about love.
0:51:15 And so as you think through your decisions,
0:51:18 you can anticipate your future regrets.
0:51:22 And the way to do that is to really maximize
0:51:25 on things that, if you’re making a decision,
0:51:27 is this gonna build my foundation?
0:51:29 Is this gonna help me learn and grow?
0:51:31 Is this the right thing to do?
0:51:32 Is this gonna help me build connections
0:51:34 and affinity with people I care about?
0:51:38 Those kinds of things you should really maximize on.
0:51:41 But the other stuff, good enough is good enough.
0:51:43 I know we’re not supposed to say good enough is good enough,
0:51:46 but good enough is good enough for a heck of a lot of things.
0:51:48 So again, let’s go back to future you.
0:51:51 Future you is not gonna care this year
0:51:54 whether you bought a blue car or a gray car.
0:51:56 Future me, as I said earlier, is not gonna care
0:51:57 whether I wore that blue shirt today
0:51:59 or I wore a yellow shirt today.
0:52:01 There’s so many decisions that we make
0:52:02 that we don’t even remember, we don’t even care about.
0:52:04 But there’s some that stick with us
0:52:08 and we have a sense of the things that matter most.
0:52:11 And so if we really focus our efforts and our attention
0:52:13 on these kinds of things,
0:52:15 on building a solid foundation,
0:52:17 on learning and growing,
0:52:19 being good and moral and truthful
0:52:20 and doing the right thing
0:52:25 and on building relationships of love and belonging,
0:52:28 I think that regret gives us this path to do things better.
0:52:31 I’ll give you one other tip here that I think is useful
0:52:34 because again, less abstract and more practical.
0:52:36 One of the most useful things to do
0:52:39 is to do what I did a couple of years ago,
0:52:42 which is that push past the awkwardness
0:52:44 and if you have a team that you work with
0:52:45 or a group of friends,
0:52:48 tell people about one regret that you have,
0:52:49 tell them what you learned from it,
0:52:51 tell them what you’re gonna do about it.
0:52:53 And I can almost guarantee that you will have
0:52:55 one of the richest, most interesting conversations
0:52:58 you’ve had this year because I was wrong.
0:53:00 I thought nobody wanted to talk about regret
0:53:02 and I discovered, as I said at the very beginning
0:53:04 of our conversation, that everybody wants to talk
0:53:07 about regret because as you said, it’s normal,
0:53:10 it’s universal, it’s part of the human being.
0:53:12 – Yeah, and Young and Profiters,
0:53:14 I loved his book, The Power of Regrets,
0:53:15 so make sure you guys go get that.
0:53:17 There’s lots of exercises that you can do
0:53:19 to understand what your regrets are,
0:53:20 how to deal with them.
0:53:22 So I highly recommend that,
0:53:23 I’ll put that in the show notes.
0:53:25 Daniel, I always ask the same two questions
0:53:27 at the end of the show for all of our guests,
0:53:29 then we do something fun at the end of the year.
0:53:30 So the first one is,
0:53:33 what is one actionable thing that our Young and Profiters
0:53:37 can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?
0:53:39 – Listen more and talk less.
0:53:40 – Oh, why?
0:53:44 I feel like so much of the work that we do
0:53:46 obviously involves groups and other people
0:53:49 and most of us are not very good listeners.
0:53:52 We don’t actually work hard at listening.
0:53:55 We, no one has ever taught us how to listen.
0:53:57 You know, when we’re in elementary school,
0:53:58 they teach us how to read
0:54:00 and that, you know, they teach us how to write,
0:54:01 but no one ever teaches us how to listen.
0:54:03 They think ’cause we have ears, we know how to listen
0:54:05 and most of us are not very good listeners.
0:54:09 And so one way to listen better is, seriously,
0:54:12 I’m gonna say this after an hour yapping,
0:54:16 is to talk less and listen more.
0:54:17 – I love that.
0:54:19 And what is your secret to profiting in life
0:54:23 and profiting does not need to be related to finances?
0:54:24 – It’s gonna sound strange,
0:54:28 but I think it’s to be generous, to help other people,
0:54:32 to use a Boy Scout thing to leave the campsite
0:54:34 better than you found it.
0:54:38 I really think that that is the way to live a good life.
0:54:41 It allows you to profit in all senses of the word.
0:54:44 I think it has a professional benefit over time,
0:54:46 certainly not in the short term.
0:54:48 Over time, it has a professional benefit,
0:54:50 but more than anything else,
0:54:53 it allows you to look at your life on a day, on a week
0:54:56 and say, I did something, I contributed,
0:54:58 I made the world a little bit better.
0:54:59 – I love that.
0:55:01 And where can our listeners go learn more about you
0:55:02 and everything that you do?
0:55:06 – You can go to my website, which is danielpink.com,
0:55:09 P-A-N-I-E-L-P-I-N-K.com.
0:55:13 I’ve got a free newsletter, I’ve got free resources,
0:55:15 I got all kinds of groovy stuff.
0:55:18 – Amazing, we’re gonna link all that in the show notes.
0:55:21 Dan, thank you again for coming on Young and Profiting Podcast.
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