The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

What are feelings for?

When we handle it properly, regret can make us better. Understanding its effects hones our decisions, boosts our performance, and bestows a deeper sense of meaning. The problem, though, is that we often don't handle it properly.

At some point in its pages, nearly every popular book about human behavior wheels out William James, the nineteenth-century American polymath and Harvard professor who wrote the first psychology textbook, taught the first psychology course, and is widely considered to be the founding parent of the field. This book will now honor that tradition.

In chapter 22 of his 1890 masterwork The Principles of Psychology, James contemplated the purpose of the human ability to think. He proposed that how we think, even what we think, depends on our situation. "Now that I am writing, it is essential that I conceive my paper as a surface for inscription," he wrote. "If I failed to do that I should have to stop my work." But in other situations—suppose he needed to light a fire and nothing else was available—he'd think of the paper differently. The paper itself has infinite variations—"a combustible, a writing surface, a thin thing, a hydrocarbonaceous thing, a thing eight inches one way and ten another, a thing just one furlong east of a certain stone in my neighbor's field, an American thing, etc., etc., ad infinitum."

Then he dropped an intellectual grenade that reverberates still today: "My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing."20

Modern psychologists have affirmed James's observation, while shaving off ten words in the service of pith: Thinking is for doing.21 We act in order to survive. We think in order to act.

But feelings are more complicated. What is the purpose of emotions—especially unpleasant emotions like regret? If thinking is for doing, what is feeling for?

One view: Feeling is for ignoring. Emotions aren't significant, this perspective holds. They're mere annoyances, distractions from serious matters. Better to bat them away or cast them into oblivion. Focus on the hardheaded, eschew the softhearted, and you'll be fine.

Alas, stashing negativity in your emotional basement merely delays the moment when you must open the door and face the mess you've stored inside. Blocked emotions, writes one therapist, can even lead to "physical problems like heart disease, intestinal problems, headaches, insomnia and autoimmune disorders."22 Burying negative emotions doesn't dissipate them. It intensifies them, and the contaminants leach into the ground soil of our lives. Consistently diminishing negative emotions isn't a sound strategy either. It risks turning you into Professor Pangloss from Candide, who when dealt one catastrophe after another simply declares, "All for the best in the best of all possible worlds." Minimizing techniques like At Least counterfactuals do have their place, as I'll explain in Chapter 12. They can soothe us, and sometimes we need soothing. But they can also supply us with false comfort and strip us of the tools to address cold reality, becoming a downward-facing dogma that undermines decisions and blunts growth.

Another view: Feeling is for feeling. According to this position, emotions are the essence of our being. Talk about them. Vent about them. Luxuriate in them. "Always trust your feelings," this perspective says.23 They are to be honored—sat upon a throne and revered. Emotions are the one real truth. They are all there is; all the rest is commentary.

For negative emotions, especially regret, this approach is even more perilous than the Panglossian strategy of delusion-through-elusion. Too much regret is dangerous, sometimes devastating. It can lead to rumination, which severely degrades well-being, and to the regurgitation of past mistakes, which can inhibit forward progress. Excessive regret is linked to an array of mental health problems—most prominently depression and anxiety, but also post-traumatic stress disorder.24 "Individuals who ruminate on their regrets are more likely to report reduced life satisfaction and to experience difficulty coping with negative life events," concludes one paper.<sup>25 This is especially true when regrets become repetitive. Repetitive thought can worsen regret, and regret can exacerbate repetitive thought, creating a descending spiral of pain.26 Rumination doesn't clarify and instruct. It muddies and distracts. When feeling is only for feeling, we build a chamber from which it's difficult to escape.

When it comes to regret, a third view is healthier: Feeling is for thinking. Don't dodge emotions. Don't wallow in them either. Confront them. Use them as a catalyst for future behavior. If thinking is for doing, feeling can help us think.27

This approach to regret is akin to the modern science of stress.

Stress. It sounds bad. But stress, we now know, is not a single, unmalleable entity. Much of how it affects us, even what it fundamentally is, depends on our individual mindset.28 If we think of stress as permanent and debilitating, that tugs us in one direction. If we think of it as temporary and enhancing, that leads us in a different direction. Chronic, omnipresent stress is poisonous. But occasional, acute stress is helpful, even essential.

Regret can work in a similar way. For example, framing regret as a judgment of our underlying character—who we are—can be destructive. Framing it as an evaluation of a particular behavior in a particular situation—what we did—can be instructive. Suppose you forgot a loved one's birthday. A regret about being a clueless, uncaring person won't help. A regret about not keeping important dates in one's computer calendar or not regularly expressing gratitude to relatives is useful. Ample research shows that people who accept, rather than judge, their negative experiences end up faring better.29

Likewise, framing regret as an opportunity rather than a threat helps us transform it—so that it operates as a sharp stick rather than a leaden blanket. Regrets that hurt deeply but dissolve quickly lead to more effective problem solving and sturdier emotional health.30 When regret smothers, it can weigh us down. But when it pokes, it can lift us up.

The key is to use regret to catalyze a chain reaction: the heart signals the head, the head initiates action. All regrets aggravate. Productive regrets aggravate, then activate. The chart on the next page explains the process. It also demonstrates the key point: your response determines your result. When you feel the spear of regret, you have three possible responses. You can conclude that feeling is for ignoring—and bury or minimize it. That leads to delusion. You can conclude that feeling is for feeling—and wallow in it. That leads to despair. Or you can conclude that feeling is for thinking—and address it. What does this regret tell you? What instructions does it offer for making better decisions? For improving your performance? For deepening your sense of meaning?

When feeling is for thinking, and thinking is for doing, regret is for making us better.</sup>