The Astonishing Power of Emotional Regret

Despite what divides us as humans, we all share common, universal emotions. Emotions like fear, love, sadness, anxiety, envy and gratitude.

And, all humans, regardless of race, creed, color, political party or national origin share the universal emotion of regret. And, regret is a mental virus that can quietly rob us of joy.  

Regret is a cognitive or emotional state that involves blaming ourselves for a bad outcome. According to a 2018 study, regrets can fall into two buckets: action and inaction. While action can be more troubling in the near-term, inaction tends to be the most enduring of regrets. They tend to illustrate our failure to live up to our goals and aspirations.

A national survey about the common regrets of a typical American found 13 common sources for regret. They are, in order: romance, family, education, career, finance, parenting, health, other, friends, spirituality, community, leisure, and self.

What is your biggest regret? I bet you didn’t have to think too hard. Most of us can’t remember our own password. But our most cringeworthy regrets can instantly replay in high-def on that flat screen tucked in the back of our brains.

That internal flat screen can instantly recall technicolor memories from the major stages of your life. They replay like a trailer for the sequel to Titanic.

Like the time you broke your ankle doing a back flip on the trampoline and got your first cast.

Like the time you picked a fight in the fourth grade and learned that you are a lover, not a fighter. He beat you like a red headed stepchild.

Like the time you decided to change your hair during the pimple & perm years. You’re still trying to extinguish the last two remaining photos on planet earth.

Like the time in college when you decided Tequila was your drink of choice. You still can’t even sniff tequila without dry-heaving.

Yes, these moments can generate some genuinely cringeworthy memories (and photos).

Then there’s the dating stage. It’s often followed by the marriage stage, nesting stage, family stage, etc. You get the point. Each has it’s own set of regrets.

But, imagine if you could go back. No, seriously, I’m talking about taking your slightly overweight, out of shape “today” self back in time. Back to visit with your “yesterday” self in each of the major stages of life. What might those conversations look like? 

Well, I’m betting that your yesterday self would have a ton of questions for you; the older, wiser self. You’d wanna know how things will turn out for you guys. 

You’d likely want to educate yourself as much as possible about the big mistakes you’re gonna make. So as to avoid the downstream pain and regret that naturally follows bad decisions.

See, your today self holds the secret decoder ring. Today self knows how it all turns out-or at least most of it turns out. So you’d assure yourself that everything basically turns out okay.

• That the girlfriend cheats on you in college, but you later meet the love of your life and spawn 2.5 great kids.

• That your brother finally comes out of the closet and lives happily in Scottsdale with his life-partner Bruce.

• That you never get into law school, but you start a food pantry and feed thousands of homeless people each week.

• That smoking for all those years was cool, but turns out to be ridiculously hard to stop-and deadly. And you might wanna see a doctor about that nagging, dry cough at age 41, not age 44.  

See, regret is universal. We all feel it. It’s likely the most private feeling or emotion we own. Nobody really wants to air all of their dirty laundry, right? Deep down we’ve all got a lockbox full of those cringeworthy actions and inactions. Decisions that when recalled can stop us in our tracks.

Since it’s just you and me talking, I’ll go first. My lockbox is bursting with regrettable decisions. Like my butt-cut and, later, my inexplicable cardigan sweater phase. Ouch. No words.

The problem is that regret is a thief. It can literally rob your life of joy and happiness. Regret is also the enemy of imagination and creativity and, most importantly, contentment. You simply cannot be regretful and contented at the same time.

While some of your decisions are regrettable, don’t you think your life is richer as a result? I do.

Look, of course I wish I’d never majored in Home Economics in college. But, doggonnit, I can make a mean chocolate soufflé.

And, after all, our decisions shaped us into who we are. If we go back and reverse any of our regrettable decisions, we wouldn’t be the person that we are today.

We should always seek to make good decisions with the facts we have available. And, we should embrace our failures as key learning opportunities. It’s one of the key things that differentiate us from the animals.

But, regardless of how many mistakes you make, never second guess who you are or where you’re going.

Regret produces such strong emotions that it can become rocket fuel for artists. It’s the subject of countless tear-jerker movies. And, some of our greatest music.

In 1970, James Taylor recorded the timeless song, Fire & Rain. It’s a classic, American folk song. I bet you’re already humming the tune in your head.

Each verse of Fire and Rain deals with an adversity Taylor experienced in his formative years. 

The first verse deals with the sadness upon learning of the death of his friend, Suzanna Schnerr. She committed suicide while he was busy recording with The Beatles in England. His friends did not want to disturb him so they kept the news on the down-low for months. The second verse is about Taylor\’s addiction to Heroin. The third verse refers to a mental hospital and a band Taylor started called The Flying Machine. The band ended in “pieces on the ground”. I’m betting that failure had something to do with verse two.

But, regardless of those finer details, the writing of the song was a cathartic experience for Taylor; a relief.  As if writing these regrets down allowed him to gain a greater perspective on these life changing experiences. 

For me, I find that regret is often based on my own, inaccurate perspective. There’s a tendency for me to see the path I didnot choose as inherently better than the path I did choose. As if the path I chose was “the road less traveled” and that little walkabout didn’t turn out so hot.

The trouble is that it’s impossible to know how things would have turned out. Sure, law school would have set you on a different course. You’d likely have the Tesla Model S and the fancy corner office. But we cannot know for sure whether the Tesla and the sweet Mitch McDeere office would have made us any happier or more content, right?

We tend to forget the context of earlier decisions. Maybe a parent was sick, or we were flat broke, or the market for lawyers was overcrowded at the time. There were important variables in the decision that can’t be forgotten.

We also fail to appreciate the thousands and thousands of hours spent holed up in the conference rooms at Bendini, Lambert & Locke, preparing for trial. Those hours were simply a down payment on the Tesla. They were also a down payment on a failed marriage, a desk drawer full of gummies infused with the devil’s lettuce and the inability to make countless birthday parties and school plays. We can never know the regret swirling in the ether of success and the path not taken.

There is no way to know how things might have turned out. Replaying these decisions is Sisyphean. Like  being forced to continuously roll a boulder up a steep hill.

But just because one dream didn’t materialize doesn’t mean that all your dreams are dead. In the book Rewired, my friend Joel Landi writes:

See, life is not a piecaken. That magical confectionary combination of pie and cake designed for those who simply cannot live with the regret of choosing the wrong flavor of pie. Life is about making choices; hard choices. And then having the chutzpah to live authentically with the result

Then there’s Johnny Depp. In 1990, Depp got engaged to Winona Ryder. Afterwards, Depp visited a tattoo parlor and had “Winona Forever” permanently emblazoned on his arm. (You already know where this is headed, don’t you?) Three years later they broke up. He revisited the parlor. The tat now reads Wino Forever. Now that is regret.

But even if we memorialize our bad decisions with tattoo ink, no amount of regret change the past. And wallowing in regret certainly won’t improve your future.  

So perhaps the answer is to revisit the James Taylor anthology. Simply fast-forward 7 years to the cleaner, more existential Taylor. Turns out that the secret of life is not wallowing in fire & rain…..or in deep regret. 

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And that, my friends is where the story ends for this week.

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