The Power of Regret

The Power of Regret is a deep dive into an emotion we all experience, outlining in three parts why regret makes us more human, not less, which four core regrets plague us all, and how we can accept and reshape our mistakes into better futures instead of keeping them as skeletons in our closets.

When I was 16, I was in love with my best friend. For the better part of three years, I lamented countless of our interactions — but I also never told her how I actually felt. “Why didn’t I take her hand here? What if I had…?” According to Pink, the problem with all these regrets is not that I had them. It’s that I allowed them to remain unproductive.

There are two kinds of regret, Pink says:

Unproductive regret, which paralyzes us. All we do is wallow in our misery and imagine how things could have been different. Productive regret, which catalyzes us. This happens when we accept our regret, reflect on it, and use it as a springboard for change.

Some regrets are so strong, it is almost impossible not to act on them. If your house burns down because you left a lit cigar on your dining table, there’s a bih chance you’ll buy fire insurance next time. Other regrets, however, just feel painful. When we can’t bring ourselves to face that pain, we allow regret to hold us down by keeping us in place.

It is only when we analyze and learn from the regret that we make it productive. That choice is up to us, and we can make it at any time. In my case, I eventually vowed to always share my feelings openly and honestly, even if it feels like it’s “too soon.” That behavior has helped me a lot since then.

So even years later, we can still turn unproductive regret into productive regret — it’s never too late to learn from your mistakes.

You’ve heard it a million times: “No regrets!” It’s a slogan printed on t-shirts, the title of self-help books, and a YOLO-esque battle cry of friends on the prowl, usually followed by doing something stupid. According to Daniel Pink, rather than decry regret as the devil, we should think of it as just one “stock” in our well-diversified portfolio of various emotions, he suggests. When it comes to stocks, you don’t want just one kind. If you only have tech stocks, you’re vulnerable in a recession. But if you balance them with staples and commodities, one part of your portfolio will be winning in every market. Just like “boring” stocks still have their place in an innovation-focused portfolio, negative emotions help us balance the…