Seven ways to use regrets to your advantage

Regrets can motivate us to change our behaviour and improve our lives, after we simmer in the uncomfortable awareness of 'what could have been' if we'd only made a way better decision. Oh, the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. 

Regret actually wins the Best of the Worst award; studies (e.g. Saffrey et al., 2008) show we value regret more than any of the negative emotionsout there, because we accept its functional value to help shepherd our decisions. Let's dive into seven ways regrets (*sigh*) make play an important role in an astonishing life.

Improved decision hygiene

Regrets can spiff up our future decisions because of the 'once bitten, twice shy' effect; being burned from a previous regret slows us down and broadens our perspectives, so we don't make the same mistake twice.

What regrets from your past can you learn from today, to help steer your decisions in a healthier and happier direction?

Common regret danger zone: social relationships

Regrets surrounding personal relationships cut deeper than other types of regrets because they rankle our perception of belonging – something our species has been wired for centuries to value quite heartily, lest we be cast aside as dinner for the hyenas. We tend to have a tough time when our connections to others feel at risk in some way, even if we've contributed to the disconnection.

A vast majority of the people I work with are in the messy middle of a burgeoning regret known as Not Making Time for People Who Matter. This might sound familiar to you? 'People Who Matter' could include daughters, sons, partners, friends, moms, dads, mentors, and the list goes on. Do we always have to hurt the ones we love, as the saying goes? Do we always have to take them for granted?

Performance booster

'If only' thinking often leads to the wistful feeling of regret, which typically leads to reflection, then some kind of revised strategy, and then – voila – improved performance and results. The path isn't always direct, but it's fairly clear when we're willing to tune into regret's possibilities in disguise.

One of my CEO clients missed the boat on hiring a fabulous team member. "She's the one that got away," he'd moan (until I encouraged him to stop talking about her in thwarted romance and/or fishing derby terms). After wallowing in his mistake, he worked with his HR team to come up with a more efficient hiring process and credits his lost fish VP of Operations for upping their game.

Are there lessons you've learned in the past that have improved the way you live your life now? If you've been beating yourself up for a transgression or mistake from days gone by, it might be time to reframe it as a helpful tutorial in what not to do / what to do moving forward. You're doing the best you can.

Closed vs. open doors

I regret not reaching out more regularly to a dear mentor who recently passed away. That's a "closed door" regret because there's not a darned thing I can do about it (short of arranging some kind of seance . . . "Barry, are you out there?").

An "open door" regret, in contrast, still offers the chance to take action – like tracking down your old college roommate after years of zero communication. Open-door regrets sound lovely, but we need to be honest that they can feel bothersome because they require effort. We're not always up to the task.

Is it worth the effort for you to take action on one of your open-door regrets? For some regrets, it might not be – we only have so many Mondays left, and you might be just fine not going back for your black belt or visiting that cool ice hotel or taking a stab at turducken. We must be judicious with our time, and we can't do it all. And yet . . . only you know, deep down, which open-door regrets doors are worth walking through to live like you mean it.

Mustering up bravery

It takes the strength of courage to live like we mean it with zest, it can take courage to come to terms with regret-soaked dreams that died on the vine, and it can take courage to back up from the pre-gret path we're on to forge a new regret-free path forward.

"I wish I had the courage to be bold, to be more spontaneous with my schedule," whispered a lovely woman on a break at one of my workshops. This woman didn't know it, but she echoed the voice of scads of other highly successful, organized, "in control" types. Spontaneity can be scary for those of us who like the trains to run on time, for those of us who like things "just so." Boldly busting a schedule can feel reckless and out of bounds . . . yet also a little alluring and alive, no? If this sounds like you, make sure you're alert in our next chapter when we talk about the art and science of shaking your life up (in a gentle, mostly in-control fashion).

Summoning up the conviction to color outside the lines of life might be the best regret you never had.

Regrets run out of time

Research (Neimeyer et al., 2011) highlights how hospice patients are often preoccupied by missed chances, with little or no time left to course-correct their mis- steps. It's tough to make that oft-thought-about trip to New Zealand, learn how to play the pan flute, or make amends with your cousin when you've got one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel. Are there things you long to do yet keep deferring for "later"? Are there goals you've been telling people about, maybe for years and years, that you haven't taken action on? If so, what is stopping you from taking a step in the direction of that dream? Would anyone shake their head at your funeral, grieving not just for you but also for your dreams that were buried right along with you?

Avoiding despair – and regret – at the end

Our eighth and final stage of being alive, according to Erik Erikson's stages of development, is known as the Ego Integrity vs. Despair stage.

Ego integrity is full of fabulous feelings of fulfillment, the pursuit of wisdom, and rocking-chair contentment. Check, check, and check. This special flavor of maturity is the reward for those who believe they've lived their lives well, minus a list of "coulda shoulda wouldas." Erikson believed that despair is inevitable for those who feel disappointed about their past, for those who look back with the melancholic belief that they didn't reach the goals they had fathomed for themselves. Anyone smell a bunch of pre-grets turned into deathbed regrets?

My friend Dana told me how struck she was by something her dad said after he was diagnosed with a terminal illness: "I've lived the life I wanted to live." He had spent time golfing and with his girls during his life wind down and possessed a calm clarity that he had lived a full-blown life. It might not have been full-length, but it was full. If you breathed your last breath during your sleep tonight, would you say with conviction that you'd lived your life well? That you'd reached ego integrity, instead of despair?

- Jodi Wellman has gone 'from corporate executive to executive coach to stop-squandering-your-life speaker and author'. She is a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. This excerpt is from You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets (Voracious – Little, Brown, and Company), reproduced with kind permission.

References

Neimeyer, R. A., Currier, J. M., Coleman, R., Tomer, A., & Samuel, E. (2011). Confronting suffering and death at the end of life: The impact of religiosity, psychosocial factors, and life regret among hospice patients. Death Studies, 35(9), 777–800.

Saffrey, C., Summerville, A., & Roese, N. J. (2008). Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions. Motivation and Emotion, 32(1), 46–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-008-9082-4