My parents divorced, and I didn’t have much of a daddy growing up.
And the most common harm was bullying. Even decades later, hundreds of respondents deeply regretted mistreating their peers.
First, we can distance through space. The classic move is known, unsurprisingly, as the “fly-on-the-wall technique.
The second way to self-distance is through time. We can enlist the same capacity for time travel that gives birth to regret to analyze and strategize about learning from these regrets.
The third method of self-distancing, as Julius Caesar and Elmo teach us, is through language. Kross, Ayduk, and others have carried out some fascinating research concluding that “subtle shifts in the language people use to refer to themselves during introspection can influence their capacity to regulate how they think, feel, and behave under stress.
Perhaps you’re familiar with the First Law of Holes: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” And perhaps you’ve ignored this law.
The psychological concept is known as “escalation of commitment to a failing course of action.” It’s one of the many cognitive biases that can pollute our decisions.
We don’t always agree on the boundaries between those domains. But when we forsake what we believe is sacred for what we believe is profane, regret is the consequence.
Happiness is love. Full stop.
3. Study self-compassion.
If our lives are the stories we tell ourselves, regret reminds us that we have a dual role. We are both the authors and the actors. We can shape the plot but not fully. We can toss aside the script but not always. We live at the intersection of free will and circumstance.
Mentally subtract positive events. To take the hurt out of a regret, try a mental trick made famous in the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life. On Christmas Eve, George Bailey stands on the brink of suicide when he’s visited by Clarence, an angel who shows George what life in Bedford Falls would be like had he never been born. Clarence’s technique is called “mentally subtracting positive events.
If you have a broken heart, it means you have done something big enough and important enough and valuable enough to have broken your heart.
The Regret Optimization Framework holds that we should devote time and effort to anticipate the four core regrets: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. But anticipating regrets outside these four categories is usually not worthwhile.
The shocking death of a loved one isn’t a wailing thing. The real shudder comes from the world moving on as if nothing’s happened. Shops flip their Closed signs to Open, patrons gather at the theaters and soda shops, and people dare smile at things that make them happy, while those left in the ruins find joy in nothing.
No revolutionary cared so much how they were seen within the flawed world. They only cared for repairing it.
Working for one’s own benefit is not work at all.
June 1, 1921, idyllic, prosperous, exceptional Greenwood was looted and burned by white rioters. In a span of fewer than twenty-four hours, thirty-five city blocks were charred, over eight hundred people were treated for injuries, and historians have estimated that somewhere between one hundred and three hundred lives were lost.
A life of obligation and no opportunity is crimped. A life of opportunity and no obligation is hollow. A life that fuses opportunity and obligation is true.
Will I get run over tonight. Is tonight the night of magic.
No one can hate themselves into a version of themselves that they like.