Name: The Power of Regret
Rating: 4.6 (700 reviews)
Author: Daniel Pink

What’s in it for me? Learn about and harness the power of regret.

“No regrets.” Chances are, you’ve heard this phrase more times than you can count. But what if I were to tell you that this approach to life – the no-regrets worldview – is totally wrong?

We shouldn’t stigmatize regret. We should embrace it. Regret has existed for as long as we have. It’s a completely normal emotion, and it deserves a place in everyone’s life. When done properly, looking backward can propel us forward – increasing our productivity, helping us find purpose, and leading us toward a more meaningful future. And there’s nothing regrettable about that.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what famous historical figure used regret to turn his life around;
why Americans are more likely to feel regret than floss their teeth; and
how to successfully incorporate regret into your emotional portfolio.

Regret can change lives for the better – yours included.

On an April morning in 1888, Alfred Nobel woke up, opened the newspaper, and learned that he’d died. There it was in print – his obituary.

If that sounds confusing, just imagine how Alfred must have felt.

Of course, there’d been a mix-up. Turns out, Alfred’s older brother, Ludwig Nobel, was actually the one who had died – but the local press had mixed up the two siblings and published the wrong obituary. Because of this blunder, Alfred got the unique opportunity to see his legacy in print while he was still alive. And it wasn’t pretty.

“The Merchant of Death is dead,” blared the scathing headline. The obituary then proceeded to condemn Alfred for inventing dynamite and other explosives that are notorious for fueling worldwide destruction. It cast him as a money-hungry, immoral man who had accumulated a fortune at the expense of others – criticizing his greed and celebrating his (mistaken) death.

As you might imagine, Alfred didn’t like what he saw. All at once, he was overcome by a very human emotion: regret. But rather than casting this feeling aside, as many people do, Alfred confronted his regret head on and transformed it into something more meaningful. He used it as a catalyst for change – and his life was never the same from that moment forward.

Eight years later, when Alfred really did die, his legacy was completely different. People weren’t celebrating his death; they were celebrating his life. Rather than being remembered as a “merchant of death,” Alfred is now renowned as a philanthropist who bettered mankind.

If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s why. In Alfred’s will, he bequeathed 94 percent of his fortune to the creation of a now-famous series of prizes to be awarded to people who’d conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.

Chances are, when you hear the word “Nobel,” you think “Nobel Prize” – not dynamite and death. And that’s exactly what Alfred wanted.

On that fateful April morning in 1888, when a newspaper published the wrong obituary, regret made a middle-aged man rethink the life he was leading and alter his trajectory in the time he had left. It was his catalyst for change – his impetus to move forward with greater purpose than ever before. And it can be yours, too.

As time-traveling storytellers, humans easily get swept away by regret.

Of course, Alfred Nobel isn’t the only man to have ever felt regret. Regret is one of the most common human emotions in the world, and almost everyone feels it at some point or another. In fact, a survey of 4,489 people across the United States found that Americans are more likely to feel regret than they are to floss their teeth. (Apologies to any dentists who are listening).

All in all, only one percent of survey respondents said they never look back on their life and wish they had done things differently. Meanwhile, a whopping 82 percent of people said that feeling regretful is at least an occasional part of their lives – and 43 percent of people said they engage in regretful thinking “frequently” or “all the time.”

Regret has a rightful place in our emotional portfolios.

We’ve already seen how regret paid off as a force of positive change in Alfred Nobel’s life. Now it’s time to share some unfortunate news: we’re living in a “no regrets” era, and society has emphatically swept this powerful emotion under the rug.

Around the world, the phrase “no regrets” is featured in song lyrics, tattooed on bodies, and cited in conversation time after time. Even the US Library of Congress contains more than 50 books with the title “No Regrets.”

With the right steps, you can transform regret into a positive catalyst.

So, how should we go about healthily investing in regret? Turns out, there’s a handy three-step process for doing exactly that. Let’s take a look.

Step one is to undo it. This applies to scenarios where you did something and then regretted it. Perhaps you said something mean-spirited to your significant other. Well, then it’s the perfect opportunity to “undo” your hurtful action with a sincere apology. Or maybe you estranged yourself from a friend years ago – well, it’s never too late to reconnect.

Recognizing poor choices propels us toward more purposeful, productive futures.

It was 1988, and a 22-year-old American named Bruce sat on a train headed to Stockholm at the end of a year spent living abroad.

The train doors opened at a stop along the way, and on stepped a young Belgian woman named Sandra: an au pair working in Paris who was headed home for a short break. She sat next to Bruce, and the sparks began to fly.

Kernaussagen in The Power of Regret