30 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
The regrettable rise of
the ‘no regrets’ philosophy
BY BELINDA LUSCOMBE
And it hurts for a reason. It makes it
much more likely that I’m going to be
awake to the possibility of learning
from that mistake.Can regret make you a better leader?
If you deal with it right. Ignoring re-
gret is a really bad idea for leaders, be-
cause they’re not going to learn. But
wallowing in it, in some ways, is even
worse because it hobbles them. What
I’d like for leaders is not to proclaim
“no regrets” as this sign
of courage, but actu-
ally to show courage
by staring their own
regrets in the eye and
doing something about
them, and having hon-
est, authentic conversa-
tions with their team.
There’s evidence show-
ing that confronting
your regrets can make
you a better negotiator,
a better strategist, and
a better problem solver.
There’s even evidence
that disclosing regrets
and mistakes strength-
ens your standing and builds affinity
rather than the reverse.Your steps for dealing with regret
seem similar to the way people
who have faith deal with what
they call sins. You confess, you
repent, you make amends, and
you live differently. Would not
your process be a very familiar one
to, say, Catholics? Our brains are
programmed for positive emotions and
negative emotions, because negative
emotions are functional. And our most
common negative emotion is regret,
because it’s also the most instructive
and clarifying. So the fact that religious
traditions have figured this out and
tried to reckon with it is a great sign.
And the fact that their steps are similar
to the steps science suggests is also a
great sign. What’s not a great sign is
the utter capture of kind of broader
cultural philosophy that suggests that
you shouldn’t have regrets, you should
never look backward, and that if
you have a negative feeling, it should
be banished. Daniel Pink is The auThor of several besT-selling
books that probe human behavior. He’s written on the im-
portance of timing, the mechanism behind motivation, and
the sociology of selling things. His new book, The Power of
Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, is about
the wrongheadedness of the “no regrets” credo.
Why write a book on regret? The
external reason is that we’ve gotten
it profoundly wrong. If we do not un-
derstand this emotion, then we are
leaving its capability on the table.
For me personally, it’s largely because
I have regrets of my own. I can’t
imagine having written this book
in my 30s. But in my 50s, it felt kind
of inevitable.
You write about four core catego-
ries of regret: foundation regrets,
boldness regrets, moral regrets,
and connection regrets. Can you ex-
plain the differences? Foundation
regrets are about stability: finances,
health, about studying in school and university. Boldness
regrets are about “if only I’d taken the chance,” a very large
category of regrets. Moral regrets are complicated; it gets
super interesting in the very small category of things.
To most people around the world and of different political
perspectives, bullying and infidelity are bad things. But
I told a left-leaning American of a regret a lot of people had
about not serving in the military and he said, “That’s not
a regret.” If you believe in a sense of duty, that’s a different
moral code. It’s not wrong; it’s not better or worse.
And connection regrets are about losing touch with
somebody because of a schism? These are often about
relationships that come apart in profoundly undramatic
ways. It’s not people throwing plates at each other; it’s a
slow drift. Then one person doesn’t want to reach out be-
cause they think it’s going to feel awkward and they think
the other side’s not going to care. And they’re wrong.
Which is the largest category? Connection regrets. Moral
is the smallest, but there’s something about those that
really stick with people. There’s somebody in my book who
stole candy from a grocery store when she was 10. And at
age 70, she’s still bugged about that.
Is there a difference between using regret and learning
from our mistakes? They’re related. Mistake is an action;
regret is a feeling. The thing about regret is that it hurts.
‘The thing
about
regret
is that it
hurts. And
it hurts for
a reason.’
—DANIEL PINK