Word Meaning Repeat the Same Mistake Over and Over Again
How to live with your regrets
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Regret is often seen as undesirable, merely it's a crucial emotion in helping u.s.a. develop. How do nosotros harness its powerful lessons?
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It sounds like a scene from a great romance.
In 1981, a young American man named Bruce was on a train journey through northern French republic when a pretty brunette called Sandra boarded at Paris and sat adjacent to him. Chat came easily, and they were soon laughing and holding hands.
When they reached her destination – a station in Belgium – they kissed, and on an impulse, Bruce considered jumping off the train with her to encounter where life may lead him. Instead, he speedily scribbled his proper noun and parents' address on a flake of paper.
Almost as soon as the doors had closed, Bruce regretted not having gone with his gut feeling. After his return to the U.s.a., he received a alphabetic character from Sandra. "Maybe it's crazy, but when I think about you, I'm smiling," information technology said, but – mysteriously – independent no return address. In the decades since that encounter, Bruce has never stopped wondering what might take happened if he'd stepped down onto that platform.
The chestnut is just one of 16,000 accounts the author Daniel Pink has nerveless in his World Regret Survey. Analysing this data and cartoon on the latest scientific experiments, Pink has been able to identify four different types of regret and the kinds of events that are almost probable to lead to each ane.
This research, outlined in Pink's new book, The Power of Regret, helps u.s.a. to understand the crucial role that regret plays in our lives, from nurturing friendships and taking responsible decisions to weighing up hazard. Information technology also highlights which kind of regret bites deepest – and suggests many ways for united states to make peace with our own disappointments and mistakes.
Je ne regrette rien?
Like many negative emotions, regret is oft seen as a purely undesirable feeling – one that nosotros should quash whenever possible. Just consider Edith Piaf's most famous song, or the many other artists – from Emmylou Harris to Robbie Williams – who have sung virtually the philosophy of living with "no regrets".
Psychologists, even so, have shown that information technology can be an eminently useful emotion. "It would be a very, very bad idea, I think, to eliminate regrets in your life," says Aidan Feeney, a professor of psychology at Queen's University Belfast. "It'due south ane mechanism for learning how to better your controlling – a signal that perchance you need to rethink your strategy."
Regret is "one mechanism for learning how to ameliorate your controlling – a signal that maybe you need to rethink your strategy" – Aidan Feeney (Credit: Getty Images)
Regret is a complex emotion, since information technology involves counter-factual thinking, he points out. It requires the capacity to imagine alternative courses for events that have already happened and the capacity to compare and contrast those different outcomes to decide which you would have preferred. Due to this complexity, young children are often unable to experience regret, and the emotion tends to sally around age half dozen or seven.
Feeney's own research has tested how the emotion is essential for developing an understanding of delayed gratification – our ability to put off a small reward now for a greater reward afterwards. Working with Teresa McCormack, he presented a group of six-to-vii year-olds with two boxes. The boxes were equipped with a timed lock, with ane fix to open up after 30 seconds and the other after x minutes. (Sand timers placed abreast each box showed the children how long they would have to await for it to unlock.) The children were told they could choose to pick 1 box to gain their prize.
This task was a bit unfair, since the children didn't know what each box independent, meaning that almost opted for the one that opened starting time, which contained ii candies. Only after they had made their determination were they told that if they had waited for the other box to open, they could have had 4 candies instead – doubling their prize.
After the children had learnt this fact, the team tested whether they felt whatever regret for having made the wrong conclusion. The following day, the psychologists then presented the children with the same task again. They institute that the children who had adult a sense of regret were much more than likely to wait for the bigger reward, compared to the children who did not yet entertain the emotion.
Regret, it seems, helped them to become more patient so they could subdue the temptation to go with the immediate pleasure. Delayed gratification of this kind is an essential form cocky-control, and is thought exist very important for people's success in life. If you lot tin put off the pleasance of playing a computer game to study for exams, for case, you lot are more probable to get a identify at a proficient university, which will in plough pb to more stable finances for the future.
The psychological literature abounds with many other examples of regret's benefits. Regret over a poor concern negotiation helps people to secure better deals in the futurity, for case. And if we made one decision in haste, the feeling of regret ensures that nosotros consider wider range of information in the time to come.
Such findings should help us to reframe the emotion more than positively, says Pink. "We should encounter regret as a teacher, trying to tell us something important."
The four flavours of regret
Regret'due south fundamental role in our cognition may explicate why and then many people experience information technology and then frequently. Pinkish points to one report, from 1984, that examined the conversations of undergraduate and married couples. Within these recordings, regret was the 2d about discussed emotion after love. The finding fits with 1 of Pink'due south own questionnaires, which asked how ofttimes people feel regret. Around 20% of the respondents claimed to feel the emotion "all the time".
Analysing the specific contents of his World Regret Survey, Pink found that near people's biggest regrets fall into ane of four unlike camps:
- Foundation regrets revolve effectually a failure to be responsible, which has betrayed our need for stability. This would include regrets about skipping schoolhouse, overspending or neglecting your health – bad habits that had negative long-term consequences for life.
- Boldness regrets come from being over cautious. Every bit Bruce establish on that train through France and Belgium, nosotros are sometimes presented with potentially life-changing opportunities.
- Moral regrets are centred on other people, who nosotros have injure through our own failings. Cheating on a partner is ane of the most obvious and common examples.
- Connection regrets concern lost relationships with family members, friends or colleagues, often through simple neglect.
"These four [classes of] regret are expressed over and over again across the globe," says Pink.
How to avoid hereafter regrets
Interestingly, connection regrets turned out to be the virtually mutual feel in Pink's survey. In his opinion, we should always reconnect when we sense a altitude is building. "If you're wondering whether or not to reach out to someone – just being at that juncture has answered the question," he says. "That, for me personally, has been the biggest lesson of this."
Similarly, the prevalence of boldness regrets shows the states the danger of being too risk averse; sometimes information technology's right to be impulsive. That doesn't mean that nosotros should actively embrace danger on a whim – but in many cases "people see more peril than actually exists", Pinkish says. This may be particularly true for cases where shyness or timidity stop us from going for a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity or approaching a potential dear interest. We may promise to escape thwarting or embarrassment, but in return, we will be left forever wondering 'what if?'.
When we keep painful feelings bottled up, they can fester, but talking through the situation helps u.s.a. to view it more than analytically (Credit: Getty Images)
1 general strategy to avert future regret is use a "pre-mortem" – in which y'all deliberately imagine the worst potential outcomes before making a decision, suggests Pink. This technique could exist particularly useful to avoid the moral and foundation regrets, when you neglect to act in a way that respects your values and preserves your future health and happiness.
…and how to cope with the regrets we have
Pink'due south research likewise offers means for united states to cope with the regrets that we already have. Given its benefits, we certainly don't want to suppress the feeling entirely, but certain strategies can help usa to regulate the emotion, so that we heed to its bulletin without wallowing in the sadness of our past mistakes.
Pink says the first step is disclosure. When nosotros keep painful feelings bottled up, they can fester, but talking through the situation helps us to view information technology more than analytically. If you don't experience like sharing your regret with another human, the research shows that writing a private essay can exist just as productive. It's putting the emotion into words that seems to help us procedure our feelings more constructively.
Secondly, you can practise self-compassion, rather than descending into toxic self-criticism. To practice and then, y'all should stop beating yourself upwards with statements like "I'1000 such a loser" that frame your mistake as a sign of an innate, unfixable flaw. Instead, you can endeavor to identify the contextual factors that might have pushed you to brand the wrong decision, and remember that y'all are not lonely in your pain. "Sometimes we believe that our experience is more unique than it actually is; you lot might think that you lot are the only person who's ever had that regret," says Pink. "But believe me, you're non that special."
Research by Kristin Neff, an acquaintance professor at the Academy of Texas, Austin, shows people who cultivate self-compassion tend to recover from stress and sadness more quickly, and – crucially – they are besides more probable to alter their behaviour in the future than people who are self-critical, and so they do not make the same mistakes twice. In other words, once you lot accept recognised your mistake, it'southward more than than OK to cut yourself some slack.
Finally, Pink advocates a psychological strategy known equally cocky-distancing – in which you try to take some kind of outside perspective on your problems. You might imagine advising a friend with a similar problem, for example. Repeated studies have shown that, like the do of self-compassion, this can help us to view our state of affairs more philosophically without our thinking becoming overwhelmed by emotion.
It may never be too late to first healing. For his book, Pink interviewed some of the participants in the World Regret Survey. Through these conversations, he has heard that some are now trying to make up for their past betrayals, while others have suddenly decided to make contact with lost friends. It seems that the survey helped them to come to terms with their feelings and prompted them into activeness.
Bruce, for 1, is trying to make peace with his biggest regret. More forty years since he and Sandra lost impact, he'south recently posted a message in the "missed connections" section of Craigslist Paris in the promise that they may finally see each other over again. He cannot alter the by, simply – having come to terms with his regret – he tin try to brand up for all that lost time.
Daniel Pink's book The Power of Regret is out now. David Robson is a science writer and author based in London, Britain. His latest volume,
Source: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220207-how-to-live-with-your-regrets
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