Living life without regrets is impossible, says bestselling author Daniel Pink.
Regrets are a fundamental part of life, and instead of running from or avoiding them, you should optimize them — using your mistakes as opportunities to learn, grow and teach others, Pink recently told “The Oprah Podcast.”
“Everybody has regrets. It’s one of the most common emotions that human beings have,” said Pink, in a podcast episode that published last month. “And yet, we’ve been sold such a bill of goods about positivity and being positive all the time that when we feel regret, we think we’re the only one.”
Pink combed through decades of research and surveyed more than 26,000 people from 130 countries about their biggest regrets for his 2022 book, “The Power of Regret,” according to his website. Most of those people struggled with four core regrets:
- Foundation regrets are “small decisions people make early in life that accumulate to terrible consequences later on,” Pink said. For example: You didn’t contribute regularly to your 401(k), and now you don’t have as much in retirement savings as you’d hoped.
- Boldness regrets are born from opportunities when you didn’t take a risk, and later on, you wish you did. For example: You wanted to start a business, but were scared it wouldn’t work. Now, you’re unfulfilled in your corporate role.
- Moral regrets are the result of consciously making a bad decision instead of a good one. For example: You were mean to someone in college, and still feel guilty about it years later.
- Connection regrets occur when you lose a close connection with someone, either platonically or romantically. For example: You lose touch with your best friend, because your hectic career makes it hard to spend time together.
The key is to not be stuck in regret,” said Pink, adding that ignoring these feelings or living in “seething denial” of the mistakes you’ve made is a “bad idea,” potentially leading to poor mental health and stagnancy in life.
Instead, you can turn these negative emotions into something meaningful, Pink said. Discuss them casually with other people, relieving the pent up guilt you’ve been holding on to. Teach someone else about your missteps so they can avoid them, or find a way to undo your misstep.
If you forgot your friend’s birthday, you could get them a thoughtful gift and card expressing your apologies, and make sure to log their birthday in your calendar. Other regrets are more complicated, like wishing you’d told a deceased loved one how much you appreciated them when they were alive. You can’t undo that, but you can always help the people around you avoid making that same mistake.
As people near the ends of their lives, they frequently say they wished they’d navigated their relationships better, showed more gratitude for small things or appreciated their health when they had it, hospice nurse and author Julie McFadden told CNBC Make It last year.
Getting ahead of those types of regrets takes some self-awareness — recognizing and reflecting on your past actions — and self-compassion, Pink said.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt.”
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