Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Hey, it's friend Mel, and welcome to the Mal Robins podcast Today, you and I are talking about a global study that completely changed the way I think about my entire life. This study is called the Global reggret Survey, and it analyzed more than twenty six thousand regrets from people in one hundred and thirty four countries Now, when I read this research It stopped me. in my tracks. You know what it made me realize I need to call my dad I need to take my health more seriously. I need to stop beating myself up over the stupid things that I did in my twenties, my thirties, my forties Just move on. I was so moved by what I learned that I invited the director of that study, Daniel Pink. to be here in Boston for a life changing conversation about regret. Daniel Pink is going to teach you. after analyzing regrets from all over the world There are four types of regrets and based on what kind of regret you're dealing with There's very specific strategies that you can use based on the research to process the regret, to learn from it, and more importantly Move Forward Second We're gonna talk about three steps based on research that you and your loved ones need that are proven to help you break free of that heavy judgment, that weight that you feel when you regret something This isn't going to be depressing It's going to be liberating becausecause Dan Pink and I are going to go toe to toe and teach you How to use this groundbreaking research so you can free yourself of the weight of regret and turn toward your future. and create a better life. Did you know skincare starts in the laundry room? For real. The first step in any sensitive skincare routine is not a serum, it's your detergent. 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Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. I never thought I'd say I was excited to have a conversation about regret, but I am. You know, it's an honor to be together and to spend this time with you. And I also want to take a moment in case you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. You have picked a winner I cannot wait for you to meet and learn from today's extraordinary guest, Daniel Pink. who is here to share all kinds of mind blowing insights from the Global Regret sururvey, which is the largest study ever done on regrets. Daniel Pink is one of the most influential thinkers of our time He's a multiple New York Times bestselling author His TEed talkal has been viewed more than twelve million times Dan Pink has spent decades translating behavioral science into tools that work in real life. But today, you and I are diving into what is his most powerful and personal work yet Daniel Pink led one of the largest studies ever conducted on the topic of regret He and his team collected more than twenty six thousand regrets from people in one hundred and thirty four countries creating one of the most comprehensive emotional databases ever assembled. And what he discovered is extraordinary. What Daniel will teach you today about regrets is going to help you move on from the past and live a better life Please help me welcome the brilliant Daniel Pink to the Mel Robbins podcast Thank you, than you, thank you. It's great to be with you. It's so great to see you. So I have here in my hands a huge stack of regrets. That is a huge stack. But we polled our global audience I want to read some of these to you. Okay Here we go. I'm just turning to a page, not talking to my father before he passed. We weren't on speaking terms for over two years. Quitting my career due to burnout instead of asking my family for help. Okay Oh, not being more patient with my kids when they were younger, why was I always rushing? Not standing up for myself or listening to myself, allowing others to influence my choices, not prioritizing my children choosing relationship over my kids. Not believing in myself when I was younger, not going to medical school. I regret not realizing my worth and allowing disrespect because of it Wishing I did better in high school, dating the wrong men. I always sort of knew it I didn't have therapy sooner. The career I loved I wanted to pursue. I didn't. It just goes on and on and on And where I want to start is If I take everything to heart that you are about to share with us that you have researched regarding regret, what it can teach us How might my life change? Well, first of all, you're going know what to do with that kind of emotion You're gonna to take that emotion, which feels bad. You're going be able to take that negative sentiment and turn it into something positive. And when you do that, you do some other things. You actually understand what you value in life you actually find more meaning in life. but wait, there's more for some of those. There's actually some evidence out there in the research that says that you can become better at your job You can become a better negotiator, you can become a better problem solver, you can become a better thinker. So the key here is to look those regrets in the eye, not to flinch from them, not to ignore them, not to wallow in them, but to look them in the eye And those that pile there, Mel. Yes. This is heavy, Dan. But you know what? it's heavy, but it's also positive. Let me tell you why. because what we think is we think that and this is how I got into this topic. We think that nobody wants to talk about regrets. That's proof that's wrong. People do want to talk about regts. Everybody, I think wants to talk about regrets. We quietly carry them with us and I just want to hover on something that you just said, that we can't avoid it, we can't run from it. We need to face it and that there is something that regret is trying to teach us. about how we should be living our life. And I love that, but when I read something like marrying my first husband after he cheated on me, I really regret that. not talking to my mother and then she died, you know, just all this wishing I should have, can you really flip this weight and turn it into something that makes your life better? Yes, you can Regret clarifies what we value and points us how to do better in the future. This emotion that these people are expressing herees is one of the most common emotions that human beings have. Regret. Yes. It is ubiquitous in the human experience, right People talk about say, o, I don't have any regrets. E everythingthing happens for reasons. That's utter BS. The only people who don't have regrets are little kids because their brains haven't developed the gnitive capacity to do it, peoplee with certain kinds of neurodegenerative disorders and sociopaths. Otherwise, everybody has regrets So the question is why Why would something that makes us feel so bad be so widespread? And the answer is 'cause it's useful. If we treat it right and here's the problem. hereere's here's the here's the heart of it No one ever taught us how to do that So what happens is is that we basically plug our ears and say, bl, bl, bl, blah, blah, blah, regre orr we get buried by it What we want to do is Chill out L at it. stared in the ey When we do that, it's transformative. I believe you. When you read these, you feel the weight letting my best friend and I drift apart, not taking chances, playing secure, not staying longer and holding my dying grandma's hand, securing financial freedom for my future, wishing I got a lump in my breasts checked out sooner instead of feeling like I was just overthinking it, staying in a relationship longer than I wanted, not having more kids and my husband rubs my face in it And I want you as you're listening to Dan or you're watching right now to think about some regret that you have. and we're going to get into these frameworks and this research. And I want you to be selfish right now. I want you to really Hold on to that regret that you've not wanted to talk about You tryed to push off in the past And I want you to use this conversation to set yourself free Dan, what made you want to lean into and do the biggest research project ever done on regrets Becauseuse I had regrets Kiley? Yeah. And I had a moment, this is I've lived you know six decades without epiphanies except for one case, onene time where sort of I felt like the universe was opening up to me. And that was a few years ago at my elder daughter's college graduation. Okay. So it's a long day. It's graduating from college, and I'm sort of having an out of body experience and watching her in the cap and gown. And I started thinking about my own college experience, which was actually quite positive, but I had some regrets. I wish I were kinder to people, big time I wish I had taken more risks. I actually wish I' worked a little harder And so it sort of stuck with me. I came back to Washington where I live And I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regret. And I was like very sheepishly said, Hi, you know what? I just went to Sophia's graduation and I was thinking about my own college. and You know, I kind of regret this, I kind of regret that. And I realized that everybody wanted to talk about it, that once I sort of let loose they let loose and you ended up having these very rich generative conversations that people were bottling these things up. so To make a long story longer, I actually was working on an entirely different book at the time. And so I took this other book put it aside, spent a month like just doing the basic research on regret, Sent another month writing an entirely new book proposal, which I sent to my very surprised editor who thought I was working on this one book and said, Hey I think I want to write I think I want to write this book. Now there's also a personal side side of this. Not only was the Impulse, me. Also, There's a stage of life thing going on here. You know, I am sixty one years old. I am in The to use a golf term, the back nine of life All right. I got more of my life behind me ahe So there's more to look back and regret, but also there's a sense of urgency going forward. And so this is not a book I would have written when I was Thirty one But At this stage of my life, there's something about it that felt kind of inevitable because I'm at the perfect point because I got a lot of room to look back knockwood room to look forward and do better I love this. First of all, he's the perfect guy to talk about this because even in the example that you just sort of dropped in there about sitting at a graduation and automatically Time shrinks. Yes. You start to look at time through a different lens. I'm sure as you were listening, you were thinking back to moments in your past where you wish you wouldn't have wasted time, or you wish you would have been kinder, or you wish I felt the same thing about college. I drank too much. I didn't like take advantage of the opportunity. I didn't seek help for the mental health issues because I didn't know what they were Like just the way I treated people on and on and on and on, I also loved and I want to make sure you caught it, whether you're in your twenties or your sixties or seventies or forties. We're going to benefit from what Dan's talking about, which is There's something funny about what happens when you get older. the aperture of what you're looking ahead at suddenly comes into focus and all of the crap that you put up with, the things you wasted time on also come into focus and you say, well, if I only have ten years or twenty or heck you know even another fifty I want to do it differently. And so if I'm hearing you correctly The first thing to really embrace is that as much as regret may be crushing you or you're dragging it around Like a twenty year old suitcase that it has something to teach you that can put more life into the years ahead. Absolutely. Open the suitcase because there's a gift inside You're freaked out by that suitcase but open it up. It's less menacing than you think. And that's true at any stage of our lives. So let's start with what the heck is reg. And what's the difference between something you wrote? versus something that you kind of feel sad about and kind of wish didn't happen or are those the same things? They're not the same thing. So reg regret is a terrible feeling. It's a feeling. This is really important. It's an emotion. It's a feeling we have when we look I wish we had done something different which we hadn't done something, which we had done something in a different way. all right? So we look backward and we think about a decision or an action and it makes us feel R? That's what regret is. now It is very different from other kinds of emotions. So you can have an emotion like disappointment U you wish something didn't happen So u was I was on a trip last week and they were on the east coast. There was a massive snowstorm and I basically had to leave early and I can't regret that. I didn't make it snow, you know, but I can be disappointed. And so regret has to have agency. It's something that you did. You can't regret something someone else did. It's all about agency. That's why it feels so bad because we know deep down, it's your fault It's on you. That's why it feels so bad. And so but what that bad feeling is a signal. It's data, it's information. It is it iss a knock at the door clun, cl, clun, clun, cl, clun, clunk. Okay. so what do we do when there's a knock on the door You can say I don't hear anything What knock, All right? O you can say, oh my God a knock on the door and you can dive under the couch Or you can say, huh, I wonder who's there. Clint. Oh, it's a regret. What do you got to tell me? And so that's how we have to start that's how we have to start thinking about it. The other thing that comes out in these regrets though Mel, which is interesting. is people sort of between the lines, you almost hear them saying or feeling that there's something wrong with them because they have that. And that's that's that is that's a huge mistake. because Everybody has regrets Everybody has regrets. It doesn't make you bad, it doesn't make you weak, It doesn't make you broken. It makes you human I want to just talk first about this research that you did because you've done the biggest research study on regrets, twenty six thousand regrets, one hundred thirty four countries. What shocked you the most when you dug into the research? Yeah we started something called the World Regret sururvey, where we invited people around the world to submit their big regret. As you say, we have a very, very large database of regret. And I think the most surprising thing about it is how They sound exactly like the regrets that you got and exactly like the regrets that other people got. If I were to say to you mail One of these regrets is from Milwaukee Another one is from Copenhagen And this one is from Taipei, which is which? You wouldn't know. If I say, I had a chance to take a really challenging, demanding job, but I didn't believe in myself. I regret not taking the shot. And I say to you, is this person a man or a woman You don't know. And so it's the universality of it that surprised me the most. What were some other things that popped up to you other than the fact that we all live with and feel burdened by regret and none of us have been taught how to flip regret. a very universal experience being human into something that can change our lives for the better. I'll give you one smallall example of this, which is that similar to your pile right there. as I mentioned, I wanted to give people anonymity because I felt like they were going to be more forthright about it all But I also said, if you're interested in doing a follow up interview Leave your email address. I figured wed get maybe five percent of people. We had nearly a third of people leave their email address and say, yeah, it's like not only do I want to tell you as a complete stranger my big regret, but here is my email address so you can talk to me some more about it Why did that surprise you so much? There is this kind of yearning to unburden yourself, to make sense of it Talk about it. to to you know, to I like your metaphor to open up that suitcase Yeah and actually see what's in it. And when people do open that up opening it makes it less menacing. You know, Given that you are the director of the world's largest study and database on regret is regret for teaching? What is it for exactly? It is for understanding what we care about and telling us how to do better in the future. You know, this is not only research that I've done. Social psychologists and neuroscientists and other cognitive scientists have been studying regret for sixty years. And they found, again, regret is one of the most ubiquitous emotions that human beings have, but we also have data showing that when you actually systematically interrogate your regrets, think about your regrets, try to learn from your regrets. It makes you better at stuff. I mean, at the very least, we have all kinds of evidence from negotiation Youre go into a negotiation session. U peopleople come out, the researchers say, tellell me what you regret doing or not doing in that negotiation. So they invite the bad motion, then they go to a next negotiation, they do better. And so So this is actually regret is actually a tool. And it goes back to the idea that neegative emotions have they're there for a reason. And if we try to extinguish them forget about them, we're making a colossal mistake. and I don't think we would do with other negative I don't like feeling sad. I don't like feeling frustrated or pissed off or disappointed. I definitely do not like feeling regret at all? Nobody does. I don't like you're supposed to like it. Yeah That's what the hell are? Okay, so what is the point of a negative emotion? You don't like, okay, here we go. hereere we go because we're gonna we're gonna do a little experiment here. Let's do.. don't you don't like your negative emotions. okay? No, I don't. Okaykay. you don't like feeling sad. No Do you like feeling grief Well, no, but I o Tal to Do you like I don't like feeling grief, but if I don't feel grief, then I'm not like like that's part of loving somebody that's gone. I guess. Oh, there you go. How about that? All right. So so I could I could say we could say we could bring in like, you know, some neuroscientist down the road at MIT and say, we're going to give you a magic pill and it's going to extinguish your ability to feel grief Would you want that? I don't think so. I don't think I haven't thought about that. I don't think you would. I don't think you would because grief is that grief feels terrible. Grief is a terrible emotion, right? It makes you feel bad. But it's there because it reminds us That we love and why we love. Let's take fear, another negative emotion. Yeah. I don't like being scared But you know what I don't want that MIT magic pill. sayay, oh, take this pill You'll never feel fear the rest of your life. You know what's going to happen? I'm going to be in a burning building and everyone else is going to get out because I'm not scared. These negative emotions are there for a reason. They're adaptive. They helped us evolve. You don't want a lot of negative All right, but you want some. You want more lots and lots of positive emotions. You want to feel love and awe and excitement and growth. and you want to have a lot of those and you actually want decent amount of regret because regret helps you Well, I'll give you one that can prove this. L I was ridiculously irresponsible with money You know, you and I went to college when you would check into registration and there were tables with credit card companies just passing them out. and I just spent money. Yeah. And then I developed a habit where I just spent money that I didn't have. and I entered my marriage with like twenty thousand dollars in secret credit card debt that I couldn't pay off. Yeah. And it became this thing that I deeply regret And when I listen to you now, I'm realizing I hid in shame and embarrassment For probably twenty years through my twenties and thirties and continued to make stupid decisions which ultimately led me to being in a situation where my husband and I were eight hundred thousand dollars in debt in our early forties. with liens on the house. That was so painful. that it fundamentally altered the way I approach money because I didn't want to feel that bad anymore There you go, but I dragged it around for probably two to three decades, Dan, before I unpacked that and said, okay, it's gotten painful enough. I can let it get worse. before it gets better I mean, we can analogize to going to the doctor You know, you say, oh, I got I've had a really bad headache for three weeks, or do you wait till you're two years from now when you're doubled over and can't breathe? No, you address it then because that's becauses like a headache a headache is a signal, Hey, something's off. We have a lot of regrets, you know in the database that are very much that are very much like that. And I think that part of it in your case and in the case of these other folks is that When we don't talk about it when we don't share them when we don't ively try to make sense of them We feel like we're the only one That's the thing. Remember, it's universal. Can you talk to the person listening who just heard you say we feel like we're the only one. and it's they're saying themself, The thing that I did is really bad, Dan. This is, I am a horrible person. What does your data say? And what do you want to say to them? Okay, so what I want tona say to them is practice self compassion. This is actually there's a powerful strand of research on the need to be compassionate to ourselves. This is not some kind of gooey woo woo kind of thing. Essentially, here's what I would tell you yourself with kindness rather than contempt. The way we talk to ourselves internally You idiot, you know, swearing at ourselves internally is lacerating and mean spirited Don't do that There's no evidence easier said than done. What would you say to a friend in that situation and said, wouldould you say, you fricaking idiot, you're a moron. You don't know what you're doing. You're a terrible person. You wouldn't say that. I mean, it's preposterous. You wouldn't say that to a friend. So treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Treat yourself the way you would treat a friend. Second thing is often happens is that when we make a mistake, when we screw up, when we do something that feels shameful, we think that it constitutes the full measure of our life And it's It's a moment in your life It's not the full measure of your life. If you think about this timeline, it's like, okay, during this period, you messed up. But this rest of the stuff, you're a decent person. It's a scene in the movie. Yeah, it's a scene It's a scene in a Deade long movie And it doesn't fully it doesn't fully define unless you keep replaying the scene. Yeah Exactly. the biggest mistake keep rewinding and watching that scene over and over and over again. Well, Dan, I'm just gonna to keep on dragging around the suitcase. I cheated. I squandered my finances. I was a jerk to people. I was unkind. I I was too if I just shown up earlier, I regret not showing up earlier or picking up the phone because then the person died. I've been dragging this or I just keep replaying the scene. Is that the biggest mistake that we're making? swallowing in it and replaying it? Absolutely. We make two different different kinds of mistakes. We ignore it or we wallow it Both are really bad. What we should be doing is like, oh, wow, this feels crappy What is this regret telling me And if we treat ourselves, you know, the other thing that I would say with a little bit of tough love on this Yes is hit me Let's go. You gota like any of these regrets? I mean, I'll be a compassionate person, but you're not that special I mean You know, it's like, you tell me about give me one of these regrets It's like, Ohh wow, you're the only person in the world who spnded their money. Oh, wow, you're the only person the world who cheated on the world. It's like guy like you're not that special It's part of the human experience. You're a human being And it's not like you're like know the narcissists believe they're singularly excellent, but some of these people are almost reverse narcissists feeling like they're singularly bad. It's like, you're not that special. You're a human being who's living in experience. and at a moment, you have a scene where things went off the rails. All right, that feels terrible. I get it. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt Treat yourself like you would a friend and recognize it's a moment in your life rather than full measure of your life. And when we do that, We can begin to make sense of a regt and we can begin to draw lessons from it I love that because it doesn't it certainly defines how you handled yourself in that moment. But if you really are willing to use the research that you're about to unpack with us. you can allow it to teach you to become who you want to become in the future I'd love to hear more about this huge research study, rather that you did on regret.. Dan, what's the most common type of regret that you found when you dug into the research? What we've discovered is that around the world, people seem to have the same four kinds of regrets. So these fall in buckets. Right. So there' four categories all over the world. Foundation regrets, if only had done the work Bldness regrets if only I have taken the chance. M regrets if only I had done the right thing and connection regrets if only I had reached out. The most common regret was a regret of connection All right. And so typically the story was this, you had a relationship or should have had a relationship D it should have been intact and it comes apart usually in under drramatic ways There's very little there's like less drama than you would think. Hey, I hey I went to college with my friend Mel and we were really tight and then, but I haven't seen her for ten years. I should really give her a call See how she's doing Oh no going to be so awkward and she's not going to care. So I don't do it. And sometimes it's too late. There's a one woman I interviewed who had a friend was who was deeply ill and She hemed and hw about reaching out to her because she thought it was going to be awkward. And when she finally did call, the friend had died that morning A morning morning Oh who One woman named Cheryl who I interviewed had this great friend from college actually, who she drifted apart from and she for twenty years, twenty five years, and she didn't call her. She wanted to call her, but she didn't call her. And what happened next? I got kind of frustrated with her because it was a classic example of a connection regret. But as I have these interviews, I getting to know this person better. and I'm thinking to myself, Cheryl You know what to do here. And so finally I get an email maybe five days later. I sent an email to her her friend's name was Jen. I sent an email to Jen and she was so happy to hear from me. And then they ended up having a phone conversation and then they ended up meeting up. and now I swear I get a photograph every six months of, Hey, I just saw Jen. Here's a photo of us together And so You know, that that's that's what happens. And this woman was like living with this regret for twenty years and all she had to do was reach out. And whence she did, things were better So I've got a story like this. So when you and I were in elementary school and high school, we're talking seventies and earlyies. You got it? No social media, no cell phonees. Absolutely not. I went east for college. I grew up in the Midwest. My best friend, Jodi Bricken. stayed in the Midwest are two pasts separated. Okay And I stayed out east She moved to Chicago She then moved out west. We spent the next twenty, some years not talking. for no reason. R for no reason We just had no cell phones. like you know, I didn't even think to follow her because once I got social media, we hadn't talked in like ten years, just because we didn't see each other again 'cause I moved far away, she moved far away And then we ended up bumping into each other one summer in I think my mid forties And I immediately was flooded with how much I missed her And we started making these dates, Dan, that whenever we would both travel for work, we would try to line up our calendars and then we'd stay in a hotel room together, and she'd be at her business conference, I'd be at mine. It's one of the greatest joys of my life. It just took a second, Dan It takes a second to reconnect and what I have found in interviewing people like this is that the relelationship restarts Almost instantly. Oh my God, We text every week. I talk to her on the phone. We see each other many times a year, even though we live nowhere we live completely different parts of the country. I'm in Vermont. She's in Arizona, but it has brought so much joy to my life And that's that's how a lot of these relationships come apart. There's like, you know, it's like we think that relationships come apart because there's some kind of explosion. And in this case, and in many cases, just ad drift. That was the case with Cheryl and Jen. That was the case with you and Jodie It just drifts and all you have to do Reach out I cannot tell you. how much joy it will bring you If there's somebody on your mind that you're thinking about as I tell you the story of Jie them Text seend them this episode and say you just listened to this episode with Mel and Dan and you were the first person that popped into my mind and I would have and I just had to reach out to you I miss you. I just was thinking about you. It's a life lesson. When in doubt reach out. When in doubt reach out Let's hit the pause button. I want to give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I also want to give you a chance to share this with people in your life. I am sure there is somebody that has popped up into your mind because I promise you When you reach out to somebody based on what you're learning, you're going to feel better in your relationship too. And while you do that, don't go anywhere because Daniel Pink is just getting started. and as you can tell, he has so much more to teach you and me about this topic, so stay with me You want another hardest part of strength training? It's not the workout It's figuring out what workout to do What weights? what movements? leg day, arm day? What the heck am I doing today? 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And you can feel confident knowing Better Help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully qualified Take a pause with therapy. Better Help can help life feel manageable again. Sign up and get ten percent off at betterhelp dot com slash Mel Robins. That's betterterhlp dot com slash Mel Robins Welcome back and your friend, Mel Robins. Today, you and I are here with Daniel Pink. He's a New York Times bestlling author, and he's the author of this global study on regret that fundamentally changed how I think about my life, the past, future, things I've done. I know it's really making you think differently. Here's my next question. Why Are we so hesitant. Like whyy do we wait so long to reconnect Anne becausecause we are ere go I'm going I'm going to just drop another nugget of tough love here because we think we're more special than we really are Okay. So here's what I mean by that All right. We think it's going to be awkward and we think the other side's not going to care.s that's the most important thing. And then but if we if you give it the reverse, you would say Suppose that my old friend Mel called me after fifteen years Would you say that's really weird? I can't believe she did that I was thrilled. Exactly So why wouldn't the other person be thrilled? We think somehow like we're entirely different from everybody else. Of course we'd be thrilled if somebody reached out, but no one else would because we're so special. And so and so there there is a great degree, particularly on connection regrets This is actually a big lesson for me personally about feelings of awkwardness as a barrier to doing things Oord this is the most papery of paper tigers Awkwardness. I mean it I'm I love the papery of paper tigers. Awkward. Well, it's a paper t. It's not real tiger. It's aaper ter. but it's really paper you go You go right through it. It's like those things in like those it's like in those those cartoons where somebody comes and sees this giant shadow and the person looks like huge and then you realize there's just this little bitty thing right there. Yeah. That's that's what that is. So so So there's awkwardness in thinking about the reconnection and we over What am I What am I going to say? It's going I haven't talked to them. I don't know what they're like We over index on the words we use and don't realize that simply the warmth and the overture was what matters. There's research on this. Vanessa Bonz and Cornell has done a lot of this research on compliments, which's the same thing with compliments. We don't give enough compliments And the reason we don't give compliments is we say, o, it's going to be really awkward if I give a compliment because I'm not going to say it right or and the other side's not going to care. when in fact It's not awkward And they do care So Let's passast that. So awkwardness is not cringe is not an excuse. Call whatever you want, guys. It is not an excuse So I think that's the reason why. Well, I love this topic and let me tell you why as you are just talking and I'm sure as you're listening or watching You're probably thinking about people that you really miss or you haven't thought of and you just kind of are thinking, well, maybe I should reach out. Like I have a friend that I regret. having a falling out with in college, right after college. It was due to my mental health issues and a like lie that I it wasn't a lie, It was gossip that I engaged in And I really regret it And it's the awkwardness and the cringe and also this fear of rejection. keeps me from reaching out What I'm getting in the middle of this conversation is I need to because I know I value connection. I know I value acceptance. I know I value these things And I too, am guilty. We're talking thirty plus years. of missing that connection or at least just not ever checking back in. Can we unpack this regret of not saying I love you? Yeah. It's very striking to me How many people have either never heard one of their parents tell them they love them. Yeah or you hear it on the deskbed. Yeah Or you're waiting for somebody to say it to you. Yeah. Can you? a little bit about this particular regret because I see it a lot. I didn't tell my mom or dad how they felt or my brother or my sister and then they died The solution is very, very simple Say it now Pull stop That's all that it is. And if it feels a little awkward, fine past that awkwardness. The feeling of awkwardness you're experiencing now is nothing compared to the feeling of regret you might feel five years from now, ten years from now and just and just say it. And the thing is like this is also learned behavior because once you do it, the next one becomes easier. Once you do that It becomes easier and easier and easier and easier Listen, this is not natural be, I'm like a straight white man in my early sixties. It's not natural for me text a buddy of mine and say, Hey, I'm thinking of you. all right? That is not That is learned behavior. That is not natural behavior. But you know what? when you do that the second time It's not as awkward And there's not been a single time I've done something like that where someone said, ooh, that's weird Inead it's the exact opposite. Oh my God, it's so nice of you. Fantastic Get a hate house,on and I you a text like what's going on with I love that. One of the other buckets is foundation threreatts. What are those Your regret about deb is a foundation regret Meaning I was like spending too much, I was very irresponsible with money, spent money that I didn't have racked up That's a foundation regret. Yeah I'll tell you why because Each individual act of spending was not itself Cataclysmic. It's small decisions that You make early in life that accumulate terrible consequences later on. So I spent too much and saved too little and now I'm broke. hugely common regret. I didn't exercise or eat right. now I'm profoundly unhealthy. You smoke one cigarette, it's fine You do it for twenty years It's not so fine And so these are regrets that accumulate and then have terrible consequences. And that's how these things Catch up on us. I had a guy who talk about this this guy, lovely guy from Tennessee who had a tough background but did very well in his career but never saved money because he ate out all the time and he good about taking people out to dinner, picking up the check all the time. and you go out to eat, you know, five times a week for ten years, It's going to add up, man. And so you know, suddenly he's like, oh my God, I'm forty years old. I have no savings and I'm like living paycheck to paycheck, even though I have a good job So it's those kinds of things. So that one time you go out to dinner and treat your friends, it's all cool. It's the accumulation of it all that really that really does it. So and again, it erodes the foundation of our lives. And one of the things about regret is that regret is telling us what constitutes a good life. Okay? So these four regrets are telling us what makes a good life And one of the things that makes a good life that I think sometimes gets short shrift is that a good life has some stability. A good life has a foundation to it. A good life is not precarious You know, we can talk about self actualizing and feeling a sense of purpose and meaning and d d, d d. But if like you can't pay your rent Y life is less good. So it sounds like foundational regrets, these things that sneak up on us and then all of a sudden we've fallen off a cliff and our health is terrible. We have no money.. We're addicted to alcohol or smoking. We've been a workaholic and never made time for friends and now have no idea where all our friends are Yeah. that these are kind of like the little daily habits that either lead you to building the foundation of a good life or that have you constantly putting it off for a rainy day. you know in that famous fable, you had the grasshopper who was spending all summer know, playing the fiddle and dancing around or you had the aunt who was assiduously gathering food for the dark winter. And here's the thing. It's like you don't want to live your entire life as an annt. You don't want to always prepare for gloom or doom, but you want to be a little ant like because your life is going to be better if you take responsibility, if you build that foundation Let's talk about one of the other categories of regrets, which is boldness. Yes. What does that mean? Okay, This is a really big category and It spreads throughout all of our lives, and I think it tells us something really, really important. Bold's regrets are this back on your life and you had two choices. You play it safe takeake the chance. Pate safe Take the chance. Hey, I can study abroad even though I've never been out of the country or I can just go and do my thing for another semester. Hey, this person is I'm really attracted to I want to ask him or her out on a date or I can just wimp out and not do it. You know what I'm so. deeadened by this job I can either stay in it and continue the debiting or I can take a risk and start a business Overwhelmingly Don't take the shot. they regret it overwhelmingly and it doesn't matter the domain of life. It's like when we look back on our lives, what really bums us out is not taking the chance, not speaking up for something we care about, not standing up for ourselves, not starting that business. I got Hundreds of regrets about dating. It's like, oh my God, there was this guy or this gal and I really liked him. And you know, this was thirty years ago and I really wish I hadd asked them out on a date So regrets of boldness, if only I taken the shot I'm so happy that you said it was overwhelmingly focused on things that you didn't do because I do believe there's kind of two ways to go through life. You either are going to be saying Boy, I wish I had, or boy, I'm so glad I did. And as I went through even our own like thousands and thousands didn't really see a lot of regret saying, I really regret quitting that job and starting the business even though it failed. I really regret You know, like selling everything and figuring out how to travel full time. I really regret moving. I didn't see Really anybody reporting that boldness, when it was a decision aligned with something that they yearn for ended up being a regret. Amen on that one, man. Can we talk about a common phrase that we saw and I know it showed up profoundly in this massive research study that you did on regrets, which is I wish I had done this sooner Yeah. So it's almost like this two pronged regret where you regretted something and then you have the double regret of wishing once you caught it that you caught it sooner keeps people in this waiting period because I do feel like there is At least in the I wish I'd gotten out of the relationship sooner. I wish I would have quit this fr. I wish I would have gone back to nursing school sooner. I wish I would have almost an admission to yourself Those years you spent talking yourself out of it, you knew the truth all the time You might have, but sometimes timing isn't right, I give yourself a lot of grace on that because you did something You took the action. You know, you took the action. There's this old Chinese proverb, which is, you know, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. Second best time is now And so that's what you just have to think about it that way. So if you stopp smoking, that's fantastic. Yeah, maybe you should have stopped five years ago, but you didn't. And so give yourself some grace because you did something really hard that is actually valuable for yourself and your family I really think you got to treat yourself with grace and not obsess over doing something sooner. A lot of us are like kind of risk averse and Daniel Cconnom and the great noobelist. has he has research basically distilling to this. quitting at the right time always feels like quitting too early. That's just the way that it is. I think it's really helpelful to hear that When it's time to quit You're typically not going to feel ready Exactly. So if it o, this's too early for me to quit. Oh, it might be signaling that's the right time. It's almost how we gain surety in the decision is by Kind of knowing, okay, it's time. but you build up a little bit more friction and then just say, now it's time. Right, right. Here here's how I kind of think about it. If I'm trying to extend myself some grace is that when we look back on decisions that we've made and then we regret not making them sooner We forget that we're looking back from our future self We did not have the information that we have as we're looking at the past. What I know about myself and what I'm capable of is a fifty seven year old woman. is very different than what I knew about myself and the resources and understanding that I had when I was in my twenties, thirties, forties And it's not very fair to hold the fifty seven year old version of me by the way is different because of the things I regret. Good point. And hold that knowledge over myself twenty years ago. Right. And so when we scrutinize our past behavior, we have to think about that person Not this person today, but what did that what what did that person know? Daniel, these four categories that regrets fall into are so helpful to understand, and it's also helpful to understand that this is universal. We all experience regrets and we can learn from them. It's helping me see that I'm not alone And it's also giving me this sense that there's something you can do And I'm sure as you're listening right now or you're watching, there's something in this conversation that's just making you feel lighter You're nodding your head, or perhaps you're thinking about people in your life who really need these tools and these frameworks I want you to take a minute and share this episode with them. Drop it in your family group chat. Send it in an email to a bunch of colleagues. seend it to that friend of yours that's constantly beating herself up because I'm going to tell you something This research could fundamentally change how they see their entire life and don't go anywhere Because Daniel Pink has specific recommendations for how to turn regret into your biggest teacher when we return, stay with me. Again and again, there's this common thread. Women are busy. There's never enough time in a day. We're doing it all Enter AG onene, the daily health drink that makes your morning routine simple in just one step If you're tired of feeling like you're running on empty, tired of the bloating, the brain fog, the crash that hits right when you need to be at your best. AG one is for you. AG one gives your body the foundational nutrition it actually needs to keep up with your life. 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It's like having your own personersal assistant That's why Microsoft C pilot is my favorite AI tool Last week, I had to send this long, overly complicated email about scheduling and travel, the kind of thing that takes up way too much energy for what it is. I open Copilot, talk to it out loud while I was walking around my kitchen and coopilot turned it into a clean professional draft. It was amazing. And because my brain wasn't fried, I had the energy to sit down and eat dinner with Chris. without feeling mentally wiped That's the whole point for me. Microsoft C pilot clears the clutter So I can be more present for the moments that matter That's why I'm using it. If you want to try it for yourself, visit microsoft. com backslash Mel Robins to download the Copilot app. Get started with Copilot today for free, and see how handing off the small stuff gives you more energy for the moments that matter. That's microsoft. com backslash Mel Robins. 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It's your friend Mell. and today you and I are diving into one of the most powerful studies I've ever read. it's all about regret. and how you can use regret to be a signal and a teacher that improves your life and who you become in the future Daniel, here's my next question. One thing that really strikes me is how many people talked about how they stayed in relationships too long or stayed in relationships with somebody that was disrespectful or abusive or treating them poorly and When you are in a relationship where you're being disrespected or worse abused, Oh my God. yeah you don't feel safe. You don't have the perspective that you will be able to leave it, which explains why you hedge on the decision to do so at the time. And so I love that piece of this, Dan to help relieve you of continuing to make yourself wrong for not being ready or able, time that you now think you should have been. Absolutely right Be of what you know now. Yes. and Remember, regret requires agency And what does that mean? Aency means you have control over what you do. Okay. right. I can't regret that it's raining outside. I can be disappointed if I want to go outside. I can't regret that because I don't but don't have I don't have control over that. But if I go outside in the rain and don't bring my umbrella, I can regret that. And there are people in relationships out there who actually don't have agency. Yeah And so you can't beat yourself up for not making decisions when you didn't have the agency. It'd be like beating yourself up for runanning outside. So you have to scrutinize the person that you were at that time and treat that person again not better than anybody else. not worse than anybody else. This is the thing that this is the mistake that we make. We treat ourselves worse than we treat other people and we shouldn't do that. Let's talk about the big regret of worrying too much about what other people are. Oh Lord, have mercy. We have so many of those. Let's talk about that. There are a lot of people who have those kinds of regrets and it is another case where our view of the world is distorted. I actually, when I was younger cared whether people thought in a way that was probably not particularly healthy and then I actually discovered what people thought about me And it was this Nobody was thinking about me They were thinking about themselves. No one was thinking about me And it's like it's like it's like what's in socialschology is called the spotlight effect. We think that we're constantly in the spotlight. Everybody's watching us. And they're not So go do your thing. Go do your thing. And the other thing, Okaykay here me I'll give you something else. I'll give it.ll see you and raise you If They do care. There's a two word answer let them. what you can't control. It's been very liberating to create that theory and use it and recognize How much time and energy I've wasted and how much power I gave away to worrying about what other people were thinking and how that held me back from doing things that I wish I had done sooner Absolutely. and it's true for Most human beings who walk planet that is true of. And if we can get people past that, People are going to act more boldly. They're going speak up for things that they care about. Why do we regret the things we didn't do rather than the things we did? Hugely important question. and this is a big, big deal. We There' there's a lot of existing research on this. In the architecture of regret, there are two kinds of regrets. There arere regrets of action and regrets of inaction. I regret something I did, I regret something I didn't do. What you see over and over again is that with action regrets, I regret something I did. If only I had married Fred instead of Ed, I would be much happier So we say we say if only. So that's what's called in the literature. and wor counterfactual, we think about how things could have been better. And that's the dating one That's the well ye Yeah, that's's if that's if if only I had married, if only I had married Fred instead of instead of Ed. But with action regrets, we can do what's called a downward counterfactual We imagine how things could have turned out worse. and there's some really super cool research on this. but here's where it comes up in the database Legions of people, all women saying such I should' have marryed that idot But at least I have these two great kids There's a famous piece of research. I love it. They showed photographs of three medalists on the Olympic Medal stand in a number of different situations. But they didn't show what metal they got and they ask people based on their facial expressions, how happy are they And so not surprisingly, the happiest looking people where're the gold medalist. Second happiest people Bonze Medalus Not the silmedaless The silver Medalists were doing Upward counterfactual Only I had pedalled four tenths of a second faster, I'd have the gold bronze medalists were doing a downward counterfactual At least I have a bronze not like this Shmo who's fourth, tenths of a second behind me who's like doesn't get a medal at all And so action regrets, we can at least them. So I marry the wrong person and I regret doing that, but least great kids. Okay. All right. so it's so it makes us feel better. Do doesnes't necessarily do better, but it makes us feel better And action regrets, we can't do that stuff That's true. because you't do it. didn't do it. You can't undo something you didn't do You know, it's metaphysically impossible. you can't do it. Let's say the person who's listening or watching right now is sitting on a big decision Maybe it's about their career, Mbe it's about a big move. Yeah. And they're stuck in that overthinking. quite sure what to do in terms of taking this risk or making this decision What does your research suggest? So if you're if you're thinking about that, you're not sure what to do, you can have imagine having a conversation with someone who you haven't met yet who cares deeply about you.. And that is the you of ten years from now. So ten years from now. So imagine you're having a conversation with the U of twenty thirty six. Okay What does that person want you to do pretty freaking clear to me what that person's going to want you to do. because what all the people in your list and all the people in my database want you to do. They want you to build a solid foundation for yourself and for your family. They want you to take that shot. They want you to do the right thing and they want you to reach out. And it's pretty clear. And so have that conversation. you know what that person ten years from now wants you to do. And you don't want to have the conversation where ten years from now, you have to tell the you of twenty thirty six, Hey. I wimped out. I blew it. I blew it. I chickened out. I love that Let's move on to the final bucket of regrets that you found in your research. We We have talked about connection, foundation, boldness. The fourth one is moral. What is moral regret? You're at a juncture in your life, you have two choices can you can take the high road, you can take the low road and takeake the low road when you do the wrong thing Most of us Most of the time, And in this category, it was the smallest category, but very, very, very deeply held. And this is sort of the weird thing about this topic of regret is that The more you go into it At least for me better I feel about human beings because What this suggests to us is that Most of us are good Most of us want to be good And most of us feel shitty when we're not good. I think that like ninety five percent or ninety eight percent of us are good people who want to do the right thing And when we don't do the right thing, we feel bad about that. ninety eight percent of people like want to do the right thing and feel bad. That's good. those two percent mess things up for everybody else. So more regrets are if only I had done the right thing. And so if the person who's listening right now is feeling that wait, what's the first step to take in order to free themsel of this burden that they've been carrying around. So one thing as I've mentioned before, is to treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Treat yourself with compassion You are not the only person who has a moral regret, everyvery single human being has a moral regret. It doesn't mean that you're a shameful, terrible person. It means that you might have done a bad thing. And so it's also a kind of a moment in your life, a scene in your life rather than the full measure of your life. So there are different things that you can do. If you've hurt somebody, right, if you have cheated somebody, if you have harmed somebody in a way Go make amends How do you do that if the person isn't here? and you canannot. Forgive yourself, you Play it over, you hold on to the regret about what happened? First of all. you can Talk about your regrets. And the other thing, especially as we get older, we can instruct other people who are younger to live better than we did. So let's talk about we deal with the regret we haven't dealt with. Let's go through the process based on this research. So now that we know that we're dealing with whether it's a connection or foundation or boldness or a moral regret. R. Let's look at your research and unpack for a stand, how do we actually face a regret that we haven't? Okay. so I look at it as three stages. Okay. Inward, outward forward. Inward, outward forward. Right. So inward. inward is what inward is basically how you treat yourself And as I've mentioned We know the way we talk to ourselves in the face of screw ups is brutal and cruel If you were to implant in my head and like broadcast my self talk out there If I would do that in a workplace HR would be intervening immediately. I'd drive you to the seventh floor of Mass General Brigham right. Exact right. He's like, he's notuts get him out of here. is a mad manan, the way he's talking to other people. Yes. So so so don't do that, please. And here's the thing. it's not only because it's not nice because we have piles of evidence showing that that kind of horrifying, lacerating self criticism doesn't improve your performance. What does improve your performance is self compassion which is treating yourself with kindness rather than contempt, treating yourself the way you would treat a friend And and when we do that, okay, so that's inward Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Recognize that regrets are part of the human experience, i. e, you're not that special. Also and this is, I think super important is that It's a moment in your life. It's not the full measure of your life. And so when we do that, that opens the way to the second stage which is outward. I mean there is a very, very strong argument here for wrriting about and talking about our regrets. Why does writing about or talking about your regrets It does a few things First, it's an unburdening because we're carrying something And you sort of say, oh, I got this heavy back backack on. Let me just put on the table here. You're putting on the table, right moreore important than that, and I think this is the really interesting thing There's a guy at the University of Texas, Dany Pennebaker who hass done a lot of research on this If you write about a big regret you have for fifteen minutes a day for three days, you feel better about it. It's less Why do you think that works? Because what you're doing is you're taking something blobby, you're taking this like phantom that is like stalking you and you're saying, okay Come here. Sit down here, let's see what you're really made of. Oh Oh, oh, oh, oh andre you're converting this blobby thing into concrete words and that helps you make sense of it It makes it less menacine. We go from abstract to so much more concrete. So we start with the in word, which is you got to shift your self talk. and one of the ways to really leverage this research is to say, I'm not the only person who's done this. There No way. If I can really embrace that I did the best that I could at the time and I'm going to stop beating myself up The inward is how you talk to yourself. It's like dropping the sword against yourself Outward is get it out of your head. Exactly. and get it on paper or go talk to somebody about it and that I love the exercise of just three days in a row for fifteen minutes, write about it and suddenly based on the research, you're gonna have this shift where you're like, well Okay But what happens after you write about it? Okay, This is the key. So the third part is forward. You got to actually think hard and draw a lesson from it. and say what what is this lesson telling me? and what should I do next Interesting research about self talk where we're actually more clear headed when we talk to ourselves in the third person third person as crazy as it sounds. So instead of me saying, what should I do, what should Dan do use your own name. Yeah, use your name.. Mell, what should you do? Right. And so iot you should reach out if you it about. But also it also but on the lesson, it's like, okay, what lesson is this teaching Mel What lessons is teaching now? explain in a sentence And in most cases people, in most cases, people know becausecause none of this is, I don't think any of this is super complex. Okay, what should Mel do next What is this in a sense, what is this teaching Mel Jose, Fred, Maria, whoever, right? So use your name and it use your name. What lesson is this teaching? fill in the blank Okay. What should Fill the Blank do next? Okay? So let's go back to, I don't know, give me any kind of give give me any kind of regret. I am just flipping through a hundred plus pages marrying the man who left me and my kids in a terribleivorce. Okay. here's fine. I'll give you a couple more. liivving with so many limitations U Waiting for a better time to call my best friend. She passed away. I regret living away from my parents and siblings. notot trusting myself, not taking my small children to see my parents more feellll in love with a married man, thought he'd leave his wife. regret not working harder in my twenties. I'm reading through all of these regrets. So just so so let's take anyone. Okay. so let's take we all know they're not unique and you're not special. you're not the only let's take the I didn't call my friend then they passed away. Yeah. and here's yees,s absolutely. There's that one letting my best friend and I drift apart. Okay, here we go. let's take that one That's the easy one, all I love that. It dances like that's an easy one. You've been torturing yourself for a decade, but that's an easy. They' they're all they're all relatively They're all, they're not easy. They're simple. They're simple. but And here's the thing. it's much easier for me to look at it from the outside than it is for the person who's inhabiting that body and soul and heart to see that. And so one of the things you want to do is you want to kind of get outside of yourself This is why this is why the You know, the way we talk to ourselves is incredibly important. If somebody comes to me saying, Dan, I need adice. I don't know what I should do. I say, what would you tell your friend to do in that situation? You tell your friend, another friend. Pick up the phone, send a text, send an email. Well, you know, every time I go to a funeral when somebody dies unexpectedly or they die young I sit at their celebration of Life serervice and I think about how I wish I would have stayed in closer contact I think about how I wish I would have reached out more. And it was attending a number of funerals that made me start this habit where I just have a habit of texting a friend every day Just randomly. A great That's I mean, I think that is a I think that is a great strategy. Now here's the thing. I think it's great for your friends think is great for you Of course it is because I feel like even though I can't reach out to everybody every single day and I can't I'm not the greatest in getting back on text right away, but I feel like I'm the kind of person who. makes a effort to proactively reach out because connection and friendship matters to me. Have you always done that No, I've let work And I've let worries and I've let feelings of being like a bad person or beliefs that people maybe don't like me or whatever else keep me from doing that or I've let what allowed you to push past it? Sitting at funerals. There you go. And feeling like I wish I would have reached out more or like sitting, you know, even even things Dan like and it's weird because I don't know that I regret it. maybe actually, here's what I'm going to say. I don't regret it now because I've moved through it. When my career really began It was beginning kind of like a phoenix rising from the ashes of financial distress. I often joke that I'm not positively motivated. I need a negative motivation. likeike it's pretty amazing how talented you can be when you got problems to solve, like paying your bills putting food N neecessity as a mother. Yes, it is. I worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and worked because my highest value was safety and security And I basically missed out on our daughter's middle school and high school And at the time I regretted it And at the time, it was painful to see how much I was missing out on and all the games that I missed But I've really looked at that period of my life and said to myself, yes