Hala Taha: [00:00:00] Welcome back, young improfiters, to our latest YAF Classic episode. And as we step into this new year, it is totally natural to look back on the past 12 months and consider all the choices that we've made. Regrets can often weigh heavily on our hearts, reminding us of missed opportunities or paths not taken.

Hala Taha: But what if we could transform those feelings of regret into powerful catalysts for change? That's exactly what I spoke about with best selling author Daniel Pink in In episode 189, how to stop letting regret hold you back. So many entrepreneurs and executives have a no regrets mindset. And so many of us try to bury or ignore our own regrets as much as possible.

Hala Taha: But as Daniel Pink shared with me, when we approach regret thoughtfully, [00:01:00] it can serve as a very valuable resource. Regret highlights our values and priorities. It keeps us from making the same stupid mistakes, and it can even help us convert our past hardships into future strengths. So if you want to transform your regrets into actionable advice, you won't want to miss this interview with Daniel Pink. 

Hala Taha: So last time you were on the show, it was back in December of 2019. It was for episode number 50. It was called the science of perfect timing. And that episode was actually one of my all time favorite episodes on Yap.

Hala Taha (2): Everybody who listened to it, loved it. And I have a feeling this conversation is going to be equally as good because in my opinion, you are the epitome of what a great podcast guest is. You're so knowledgeable. There's no fluff when you talk, everything is backed up by science and research. And so you are the ideal Yap guest for that reason.

Hala Taha (2): And here at Yap, we love to go super deep on a specific topic. Today's focus is going to be on regret. You are the author of seven books and your latest book is called The Power of [00:02:00] Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. So let's jump right into this topic of regret. Last time you were on the show, we covered your career journey extensively.

Hala Taha (2): So anybody who's tuning in and interested in that can go back to episode number 50. I highly recommend that episode. And so Daniel, I'm pretty familiar with your work. And usually you write a book because you're very curious about the topic yourself. Thank you. And you start to research that topic. You call this MeSearch.

Hala Taha (2): So let's start there. What was the genesis of this book and what initially got you curious about this topic? 

Daniel Pink: Well, once again, I've fallen down the trap of MeSearch because that's what this is again. So here's what happened in 2019. I had one of those moments in life that you, you get to when you get to be my age, I'm in my fifties and I had a kid graduate from college.

Daniel Pink: So that's kind of a jarring experience because, you know, You wonder, like, how did that kid grow up so fast, and, and how am I possibly old enough to have a kid who's graduating from college? In, in the course of this college graduation, which was very long and lengthy, and my daughter's [00:03:00] last name starts with P, there was a lot of waiting around, you know, inevitably your mind wanders, and as my mind was wandering, my thoughts turned to my own college experience, and I started thinking about what I regretted.

Daniel Pink: I re, there were a lot of things I regretted. I wish I had worked harder. I, I wish I had been kinder. I wish I had been a little Gutsier, you know, taking more risks. So these thoughts were kind of tiptoeing through my head when I came back and I wanted to discuss them with other people, but I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regret because it's taboo.

Daniel Pink: So against my better judgment, I very, very, very, very, very sheepishly mentioned a few of these regrets to a few people, and I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about regret. That it was a kind of topic that there was this kind of. Damn breaking that people said, Oh my God, you have that regret. I have that regret too.

Daniel Pink: Like, you know, and they wanted to talk about it. And I think what's interesting from a writer's perspective is that sometimes I'll raise an idea or concept and people like, okay, that's nice. All right, whatever. Uh, you know, what are we having for [00:04:00] dinner? And that's, that happens a lot. And that's cool. But this is one where people like literally, and I mean this literally, they leaned in that is their bodies move forward and wanting to discuss this.

Daniel Pink: And that's a very good sign. And so that took me on this. Two and a half year journey to try to make sense of this emotion, which I think that we've misunderstood profoundly. And that also gives us. Hints about how to lead a better life. 

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. And I feel like I learned so much in this book. Like you said, regret is, is this like kind of misunderstood emotion.

Hala Taha (2): And to my surprise, it's very complex and it actually springs from an internal cognitive process. And so in the book, you talk about how humans are kind of like time travelers. Because our brains have the ability to revisit the past and invent these alternative narratives and scenarios. And so I thought that was really fascinating.

Hala Taha (2): Can you explain that to us? 

Daniel Pink: So when we think about what regret is, I mean, it's certainly an emotion, and it's an emotion that makes us feel bad. And we should kind of [00:05:00] be in awe of our ability to process regret. When you think about it cognitively, Let's use my example. So if only I had taken more risks when I was in college, okay, what I do is I go back in time to when I was in college.

Daniel Pink: All right. I negate what really happened, which was kind of being a little bit of a wimp. And I replaced that truth with a counterfactual. So let's say that I was. Doing something a little, uh, a little gutsy or like playing a club level sport rather than just wimp out. Alright, so you know what I'm going to do?

Daniel Pink: I'm going to actually try to become like a very skilled basketball player and risk the injuries and risk the feelings of stupidity and not being good enough and whatnot rather than just retreat. So I go back and negate that. So not only that, but I come back to the present. Now my present is reconfigured because I've changed the past.

Daniel Pink: And now suddenly, I don't know, I'm like coaching a basketball team or I'm, I'm a better leader because I had more experience with a team sport or something like that. And so [00:06:00] it's really this incredible process that we go through where we get in the time machine, we go backward. We negate what happened, we get back in our time machine, we go forward to the present and the present magically looks different because of what we've done in the past.

Daniel Pink: This is one reason why regret is a, it's a milestone in, in our development, that is little kids can't do this. Five year olds don't experience regret because they can't think counterfactually. It's also why people with certain kinds of brain damage and brain lesions can't reason counterfactually. The more I think about what our brains can do, the more I'm kind of in awe of this, Lump in our head and how powerful it is.

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. And I want to dig deeper on counterfactuals cause you brought it up and it was a term that I've never heard of until I started reading your book and it's super interesting. So, so talk to us about counterfactuals and the main ones and maybe give us some examples. 

Daniel Pink: So basically what it means is that our brains allow us to imagine a scenario that runs counter to the actual facts.

Daniel Pink: There are two kinds of counterfactuals here. Okay, so I know you guys [00:07:00] like to go deep. So there are two kinds of counterfactuals that are really important. One of them is what you can call a downward counterfactual. Okay, so you imagine how things could have been worse. So you say, Oh, I regret that I married Bob, but at least I have these two great kids.

Daniel Pink: Okay. So you find the silver lining. Okay. It could have been worse. I could have married Bob and not had any kids. So at least at, so at least make us feel better. Now there's another kind of counterfactual if only that's an upward counterfactual where you can imagine how things could have gotten better.

Daniel Pink: It could have been better. So you say, Oh, if only I had married Fred. Instead of Bob, I would be living in a nicer community. I would have a happy marriage. I would be financially secure, et cetera, et cetera. You imagine how things could have been better. Now, if onlys make us feel worse. But here's the dirty little secret.

Daniel Pink: If onlys make us feel worse, but they also help us do [00:08:00] better in the future. And they make us, help us do better in the future because they make us feel worse. 

Hala Taha (2): And regret is an if only feeling, right? 

Daniel Pink: Totally, you're right. Regret is the quintessential if only. It makes us feel worse. This is why it's paradoxical, Holly.

Daniel Pink: This is why people don't like it. This is why people like to proclaim, I don't have any regrets. I never look backward. I'm always positive. And the reason for that is that regret is unpleasant. But what we also know from, again, if you look at 50 or 60 years of research in neuroscience, in cognitive science, in developmental psychology, which I mentioned before, Social psychology, a lot of experiments in social psychology as well.

Daniel Pink: What it tells us is that regret is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. Everybody experiences regret. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have. I can't emphasize that enough. Everybody has regrets. If you don't have any [00:09:00] regrets, It's a warning. It's a bad sign. It means that you could be five years old, which I guess that's not a bad sign.

Daniel Pink: Like, you know, you gotta grow up. It could mean that you have brain damage or lesions on the orbital frontal cortex of your brain or early onset Huntington's or Parkinson's. It could mean that you're a sociopath. Those are truly the only people who don't have regrets. The rest of us have regrets. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have.

Daniel Pink: And this is sort of a puzzle, right? It's like you have this thing that is widespread, but it makes us feel crappy. So you have to ask the question, well, why does it exist then? 

Hala Taha (2): Exactly. So we obviously evolved to have regret for good reason, right? It's, it's kind of a survival instinct. I imagine it makes our lives better in the end.

Hala Taha (2): Talk to us about that. Why do we actually need regret? 

Daniel Pink: Exactly. That's the point. So we're not perfect organisms at all. We're not perfectly efficient. There are adaptations that we've had. So you have to figure like, why does something that make us feel bad, why is it everywhere? It must [00:10:00] do something. It must have some benefit to us, right?

Daniel Pink: And you got it exactly right. The benefit that it has, it helps that if we treat our regrets properly, it helps us do better. And not only a little bit, and not only on a few things. But a lot of bit on many things. And here's the key. If we reckon with our regrets properly, we don't ignore them. We don't put our, when we feel a regret, we don't put our fingers in our ears and say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I don't hear anything.

Daniel Pink: That's a bad idea. But also, and this is also important, Hala, we don't wallow in them. We don't ruminate on them. We don't stew over them. We confront them. We use them as signal, as information, as evidence, as data. When we do that, again, we have the research showing. That it can help us become better negotiators.

Daniel Pink: So there's a lot of experiments where you put somebody in a negotiating session, then they do their negotiation. They [00:11:00] come out, the experimenters say, okay, I want you to think about what do you regret doing or not doing in that negotiation? So they encourage people to invite this negative feeling. What happens next?

Daniel Pink: They do better in the next negotiation. It helps us become better problem solvers. It helps us avoid cognitive biases, like confirmation bias and escalation of commitment to a failing course of action. There's some interesting research among executives showing that executives who actually sort of embrace and acknowledge their regrets are better strategists than those who simply try to skate past them.

Daniel Pink: It helps us find greater meaning in life. And so what we have here, again, just to distill this, make it a little bit simpler, is this. Regret makes us human, and regret makes us better. Everybody has regrets, and the reason everybody has regrets is that if we treat them properly, they're incredibly useful.

Hala Taha (2): Yeah, I heard that one of the main reasons why you went on this journey is because you heard this like, no regrets kind of philosophy and culture that was going on. [00:12:00] How everybody just wanted to be positive, you're supposed to just accept your journey for what it is, and never look back about the mistakes you made, and just everything happens for a reason type.

Hala Taha (2): mentality. So let's talk about that before we go even deeper on regrets and how to like evaluate them right or wrong ways to do that. But let's talk about that first. What's wrong with the no regrets world view. 

Daniel Pink: Okay. There's a lot wrong with it, but I'm going to try to be kinder and gentler in, in how I bash it.

Daniel Pink: The problem is that it is a woefully Misguided philosophy for a life well lived. And the reason for that is this, I'll give you an example of it. So I have the people who I wrote about, you know, from the book, who get these tattoos that say no regrets. So they believe in this philosophy that you should always be positive, never be negative, always look forward, never look back.

Daniel Pink: They believe in this credo, this philosophy. So [00:13:00] ferociously, they have the message enshrined on their bodies. That's a commitment, man. All right. Like you got to believe in something to have a tattooed on your body. Right. But here's the thing. If you say no regrets, you say, I never look backward. You might as well get a tattoo that says no growth.

Daniel Pink: No learning, no progress. Nobody's getting tattoos like that. And so it's really, really misguided. The key here is what we do with our regrets. And this is, I think, a bigger problem that we have, which is this, and I think it's an American problem more than others. We Americans have a problem with negative emotions.

Daniel Pink: We don't know what to do with them. Here's the thing. Just go back to this again. Positive emotions are great. I want to have a lot of positive emotions. I want you to have a lot of positive emotions. I want all the YAP listeners to have lots of positive emotions. Okay, positive emotions are great.

Daniel Pink: Gratitude and joy and elation, they're [00:14:00] great, okay? They're part of what makes life worth living. But here's the thing, people shouldn't have Only positive emotions. That's not healthy. It goes back to what you were saying before. We have adapted to the world. Negative emotions are adaptations. So if you think about this, I'll give you an example.

Daniel Pink: Alright, let's take fear. Fear is a negative emotion. Do I want to go If somebody knocks on my office door, some weird person knocks on my office door and says, Hey, Dan, I'll give you a, an operation. Okay, we're going to open up your head, but it's going to be completely no pain. We're going to seal it back up perfectly.

Daniel Pink: And what we're going to do is we're going to do a little tweak in your brain to ensure that you never experienced fear again in your life. Do I want that operation? 

Hala Taha (2): Absolutely not. 

Daniel Pink: Of course not. Because when I'm in a burning building, I want to experience fear. So I get the hell out. It's helpful. Again, I don't want to be burdened by fear.

Daniel Pink: I don't want to experience fear all the time. That's debilitating. I don't want to experience [00:15:00] Think about an emotion like grief. The reason we experience grief is because we experience love. So I don't want to banish grief. I don't want to banish negative emotion. I want to actually reckon with them. I like what you said at the top of the show, Hala, is that there is evidence here, okay?

Daniel Pink: This is not some kind of philosophy of mine. We have 50 or 60 years of evidence telling us when you line up the emotions, alright? When you line up our negative emotions. We're going to do a little police lineup, fear, guilt, shame, you know, but that regret ends up being the most common and the most useful.

Daniel Pink: We treat it right. If we treat it right, and again, we haven't been treating it right because what's happened is we're totally overindexed on positivity. We think we have to be positive all the time. And when we're not, especially younger people, when they say. When they feel negative, they feel regret, they feel bad.

Daniel Pink: They say, wait a second, [00:16:00] I'm feeling regret. I'm feeling bad. That's terrible because not only is it make me, is it inherently like unpleasant, but I look around and everybody else is perfect. There must be something wrong with me. And they get brought down by that rather than saying, A negative emotion is a knock at the door, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.

Daniel Pink: Someone's trying to tell me something. Let me listen. Not drown it out, not get freaked out by it, but listen to it, learn from it and do better in the future. 

Hala Taha (2): Like you said, regret is so common and it's universal and it's normal, right? It's a normal feeling to have. It's just about how you manage it, how you process it and what you do with that information. Amen. 

Daniel Pink: Amen. 

Hala Taha (2): Yes. Okay. So in this book, you did a lot of research yourself, but there was also years of research prior to that about regrets and the common regrets that people have.

Hala Taha (2): So can you talk to us about the research that was [00:17:00] available before you started and then maybe why you ended up doing more research and what you found? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Daniel Pink: Yeah. So I was also curious about what people regretted. I was really curious about that. And the reason I was curious is that when you looked at the existing evidence, most of it in social psychology, initially researchers said, Oh, the big, this is American sample that Americans, Oh, they have education regrets.

Daniel Pink: Education is the biggest regret that Americans have. Scientists believe that for 20 years. And then somebody finally realized, like, wait a second, all these studies showing that education is the biggest regret were done on college campuses with college students. And so, you know, if you had done. All this research in hospitals, or maybe health would be the greatest regret if you had done it in banks, maybe, you know, whatever.

Daniel Pink: So it's like, huh, maybe there's not something there. And so in, so actually not that long ago, uh, 16, 17 years ago, researchers started doing more systematic looks at what people regretted, and they found The people regret a lot of stuff. It [00:18:00] was all over the place. They have career regrets. They have romance regrets.

Daniel Pink: They have finance regrets. They have health regrets. They have family regrets. It's all over the place. So that's the lay of the land. And so I said, I'm going to try to crack the code here. And so I did something called the American regret project, which is a largest public opinion survey of American attitudes about regret ever conducted.

Daniel Pink: We did a brilliant, gorgeous survey of. Over four, nearly 4, 500 Americans modeling the sample, sort of configuring the sample so that it reflected the glorious diversity of the United States of America. And so I asked these people, tell me one of your big regrets. And then I had them put it into those categories, career, finance, romance, whatever, because I said, I'm going to figure this out.

Daniel Pink: And I found after careful deliberation and data analysis that people regret a lot of stuff. It was all over the place. So now that's the bad news. The good news is that I also did another piece of my own [00:19:00] research, something called the World Regret Survey, where I simply set up a website, worldregretsurvey.

Daniel Pink: com, where I gathered regrets from around the globe. And we now have a database of over 21, 000 regrets from people in 109 countries. It's incredible. And once I looked at those, okay, just basically just people offering their regrets, but by the thousands. All over the world, and I didn't ask them to categorize it.

Daniel Pink: I just wanted to know their age, their gender identity and their location when I started reading through those regrets. I didn't read through all 21, 000, but I did read through the 1st 15, 000 of them. What I discovered. Is that there's something else going on that trying to understand what people regret by those and knit those categories that I initially had thought is not the way to look at it, that there's something bigger and more interesting going on beneath the surface.

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. So let's talk about that. You say that you discovered [00:20:00] regret has both a surface structure and a deep structure, right? So one is really easy to see, easy to describe, and the other one is not so, so easy. So talk to us about that. 

Daniel Pink: Okay, perfect. That's exact. You got it exactly right. So let me be less abstract.

Daniel Pink: Let me be concrete here. Okay. Here we go. 

Hala Taha (2): Okay. 

Daniel Pink: We're looking at these regrets that are coming in from all over the world. I'm reading them one by one, trying to make sense of them. It's fascinating to hear people all over the world disclose a big regret. So let me give you an example. So I have again, the volume here is helpful.

Daniel Pink: So I have lots of regrets. Of people who say, I mean, here's a weird one. It's like from American college graduates. I am stunned by the number of regrets that American college graduates have about not studying abroad when they were in college, I couldn't believe it. Like, even if you Google, if you not Google, but if you go into the database and search a phrase like study abroad, you get like hundreds of hits.

Daniel Pink: And I couldn't, it's crazy. Okay. So that's an education regret. Okay. People say, ah, I wish I had [00:21:00] studied abroad. I was a little bit too scared to go away. And you know, I thought I would miss people and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And now I wish I had taken that, you know, now I wish I had studied abroad.

Hala Taha (2): I've heard that so many times too, which is just so random that I've heard that regret before many times. 

Daniel Pink: But you know what? It's a big deal, man. I have to say, I was blown away by that. I actually think that there is a, and this is from a For the entrepreneurial yap listeners out there. I think there's a bit, there's a business, a travel agency serving.

Daniel Pink: Basically 30 somethings and 40 somethings, 20 somethings, 30 somethings, 40 somethings who wish they had studied abroad and didn't, and now have a little money in their pocket. I really think there's a, there's a viable business in there, but that's an education regret. Okay. So then I have a lot of regrets.

Daniel Pink: Okay. Let's go back to entrepreneurship. I got lots of regrets again, all over the world where they basically say this. I really regret staying in this lackluster job. I always wanted to start a business, but I never had the gumption to do it. Okay. That's a career regret. Then I have, and this is again, volume, volume, [00:22:00] volume, hundreds.

Daniel Pink: And I'm not kidding around hundreds. They basically go like this X years ago, there was a man slash woman who I really liked. I wanted to ask him or her out on a date, but I was too chicken to do that. And now I've regretted it 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later. Okay. That's a romance regret. So we got an education regret.

Daniel Pink: We've got a career regret. We've got a romance regret, but here's the point I'm making in this little diatribe here. Those are all the same regret. Those regrets on the surface, they're in different categories, but they're the same regret. You're at a juncture in your life, and you have a choice. You can play it safe, or you can take the chance.

Daniel Pink: And overwhelmingly, when people don't take the chance, they regret it. And that's what I call a boldness regret. So on the surface, it's career is different from romance, it's different from, um, Education, but one layer down, it's the same [00:23:00] regret. If only I'd taken the chance. And what I found is that that is one of all those regrets are one of four of these deep structure, core regrets that people all over the world seem to have.

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. And I feel like it makes sense to go through all four of them. And then I have some other questions about them individually. 

Daniel Pink: Yeah. Rock and roll. 

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. 

Daniel Pink: Cool. One category of what I call foundation regrets. Foundation regrets are if only, because remember regrets, as you said earlier, regrets are if only.

Daniel Pink: All right. So foundation regret is if only I'd done the work, if only I'd done the work. So these are regrets that people have. Okay. A lot of regrets about. I spent too much and saved too little, and now I don't have enough money, and now I'm broke. A surprising number of regrets about people who didn't work hard enough in school.

Daniel Pink: Oh, if only I'd listened to my parents and worked harder in school, I'd have a little bit more of a stable footing in the job market. A lot of regrets about, about health in this way too. If only I had eaten better, if only I'd exercised, I wouldn't be out of shape and unhealthy today. So it's small decisions early in life.

Daniel Pink: That accumulate to really nasty [00:24:00] consequences later in life. Again, these small decisions, like no single one is, is cataclysmic. It's like, Oh, I ate, you know, I ate a whole bag of Cheetos once. All right. That that's like, people don't regret that they regret eating unhealthily for a year, two years, five years, 10 years.

Daniel Pink: And it adds up and it's hard to undo. So foundation regrets. If only I'd done the work. Third category we got boldness to we got moral regrets moral regrets are if only I'd done the right thing again You're at a juncture. You can do the right thing. You can do the wrong thing when we do the wrong thing most of us Regret it because I think most of us Are good and want to be good.

Daniel Pink: And when we not good, we feel crappy about it. And so these are regrets that people have about, Oh my gosh, the two bigger ones here, marital infidelity. Woof. I had a lot of people like basically confessing on this world regret survey. It was like an online confessional. And then also a shocking number, shocking to me.

Daniel Pink: Number of people who regretted bullying other people when they [00:25:00] were younger. So bullying and marital infidelity, if only I'd done the right thing. Finally, fourth category, connection regrets. Connection regrets are about relationships, and not only romantic relationships, and really, not even mostly romantic relationships, just the full suite of relationships in our lives.

Daniel Pink: And what happens is that you have a relationship that was intact or should have been intact with a parent, with a sibling, with a relative, with friends, with colleagues. It was intact, and it comes apart. And, or should have been intact, was intact, and it comes apart. And I think what's interesting is that, again, if you read story after story, the way a lot of these relationships come apart is not dramatic at all.

Daniel Pink: There's no big fight, there's no screaming or yelling, it's just like this drift that takes place over time. And here's what happens. Somebody wants to reach out. Okay, so let's say, you know, like, man, I was such good friends with Hala ten years [00:26:00] ago, and I haven't talked to her for so long, I should really reach out to her.

Daniel Pink: And then I say, oh man, no, but If I just reach out to her now, it's going to be so awkward because I haven't talked to her for 10 years. It's going to be so awkward. I don't want to do that. And besides she won't care. So I don't do anything. And then two years from now, I say, Oh man, I was such good friends with Holly 12 years ago.

Daniel Pink: I really should reach out to her, but Oh my God, it's even more awkward now, and she's going to carry even less. And so we don't do anything. And the, and sometimes it's too late and that's a big mistake. Let me just double click on that for a moment. That's a huge mistake. We have piles of evidence showing that when people do reach out, it's way less awkward than they think.

Daniel Pink: We're completely over indexed on awkwardness. My view in general in life, reading the research, is that if you're feeling awkward about something, just frickin push through it. Don't let awkwardness, feelings of awkwardness be that barrier. Awkwardness is not a strong enough signal to stop you from doing something.

Daniel Pink: Second thing is that we save people, [00:27:00] uh, but how is not going to care? People almost always welcome it. We're completely wrong on both fronts. We think it's going to be awkward and they're not going to care. And when we do it, it's not awkward and they always care. So connection regrets are only I'd reached out.

Daniel Pink: So let me quickly summarize those. We've got confoundation regrets, if only I'd done the work. We've got boldness regrets, if only I'd taken the chance. We've got moral regrets, if only I'd done the right thing. And then we've got connection regrets, if only I'd reached out. And just remarkable universality all over the world.

Daniel Pink: These are what people regret. And it's that deep structure that really matters. That deep structure is really what matters. Universal. You see these every, in every country, at every age, at every gender identity. 

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. And if I remember correctly, connection requests are the most common regret. And I think especially in COVID, this is relevant.

Hala Taha (2): I think a lot of us weren't hanging out with our friends for a couple years. A lot of our friends moved away. I feel like [00:28:00] this is your sign, guys. If you're thinking of an old friend that you haven't talked to in a while, make sure you reach out to them. You know, don't have any regrets about that. We appreciate it.

Hala Taha (2): So I'd love to hear about inaction and action and what we need to know about that in terms of regret. 

Daniel Pink: Okay. Really important. I'll give you a little bit of insight in how the sausage is made. 

Hala Taha: Okay. 

Daniel Pink: So at one point I had a chapter called the rules of regret, where I was going to say, here's how regret works.

Daniel Pink: Like it works to basically pull up the hood. These are the rules of regret. This is how regret works. And I was like, okay, well, should there be five rules or seven rules or whatever? So I have this, like these giant bulging folders of research. And I was like, okay, I'm going to crack the code. I'm going to figure out the rules of regret.

Daniel Pink: And I started going through the research and I'm like, Oh, there's one rule. And the rule is there's a big difference between regrets of action and regrets of inaction. Everything comes back to that difference. And the architecture of regret, the difference between regrets of action. I regret what I did.

Daniel Pink: And regrets [00:29:00] of inaction. I regret what I didn't do is huge. And here. There is a distinct difference in age in my American regret project, which is the giant public opinion poll. I put together such a large sample in order to try to find demographic differences in what people regret it. So thinking that whites would have different regrets from people of color, people with lots of formal education would have different regrets from people with less education.

Daniel Pink: Men would have different regrets from women. But there were very few demographic differences. I was kind of shocked by that. But the one had to do with age, and it's this. People in their 20s. tended to have equal numbers of regrets of action and inaction, equal numbers of regrets about what they did and regrets about what they didn't do.

Daniel Pink: But by the time you hit basically your late 20s and certainly into your 30s, Forties and fifties and beyond, it's not even close by the time you get literally to your late twenties, the inaction regrets take over when you get to my age, okay? And I'm basically [00:30:00] like double the age of somebody in their mid to late twenties.

Daniel Pink: When you get to my age, it's like 3 to 1 inaction regrets over action regrets. Overwhelmingly over time. We regret what we didn't do. I regret that I didn't reach out. I regret that I didn't start that business. I regret that I didn't tell that person that I loved them. I regret that I didn't stand up to an injustice.

Daniel Pink: That's what we regret. Inaction over action as we get older. 

Hala Taha (2): And I'm curious to understand because you did all this research. You heard about so many different regrets. You really started to understand. The science behind it and why we have regrets. What were some of the big life lessons that you learned about it that aren't, may not really be scientific or anything, but just life lessons that you're going to carry through.

Daniel Pink: I'll tell you a few of them. I mean, you, you sort of, you hinted at one of them, um, just a few moments ago, Hala, which is that let's take these connection regrets. This is, this is my philosophy now. Okay. So let's say you're at a juncture. [00:31:00] And you're wondering, ah, should I reach out to this person or should I not reach out to this person?

Daniel Pink: If you have arrived at that juncture, you have the answer to the question. Reach out when in doubt, reach out. If you arrive at that juncture and you're wondering, the question is answered. Always reach out. I'm dead serious about that. I've heard too many stories where it didn't happen and then something horrible arises and ends up not being possible.

Daniel Pink: Somebody dies. I've so many stories like that. Always reach out. I'll give you another one. And let's go, let's go back to inaction and action. 

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. 

Daniel Pink: I think that there's a lot to be said for, in general, having a slight bias for action. That is for, so for, just like, For trying stuff. And again, it goes to the awkwardness.

Daniel Pink: So I think that awkwardness is a is a weak excuse. I think fear is a stronger excuse. I think feelings of awkwardness. Do what you can to push past those sort of a bias for action. I'm a happily married guy from [00:32:00] of 27 years, but I'll give everybody who's listening all the yap listeners some romantic advice.

Daniel Pink: Okay. Ask the person out. I'm dead serious. If you're wondering whether he, she, or they, you should ask him, him, her, or them out, do it. The worst thing that can happen is that the person says no. And you know what happens when the person says no? You're fine. Life goes on. You're exactly where you were before you were asked.

Daniel Pink: But here's the thing. Now you know. You've taken your shot. So I think if there's one takeaway here is that ask the person out. Just. Slight bias for action. Don't take awkwardness as a meaningful, as a meaningful signal. Always reach out. The other thing is, I'll give you one, I'll give you one more life lesson here too, is that I think there's a, there's something to be said for, um, when you're making a decision to consult your future self.

Daniel Pink: So if you're stuck, see if you can sort of send a text or make a phone call to the [00:33:00] you of 10 years from now. So think about, let's say that you're 28 years old, right? What does 38 year old you want you to do? 38 year old wants you to put a little bit more money in your 401k and spend a little less money at Applebee's.

Daniel Pink: That's what you're. That's what 38 year old you wants you to do. If you're at a juncture and you're saying, God, should I do this unethical thing, or should I not 98 percent of us, 38 year old, you want you to do the right thing that you have 10 years from now is really looking out for your best interest.

Daniel Pink: And here's the thing. Well, the other thing is also, we can make a pretty safe prediction about what the you have 10 years from now we'll care about, and it's not most things. The me of 10 years now isn't going to care what I have for dinner tonight. It isn't going to care what t shirt I wore today, but it is going to care.

Daniel Pink: Did I do the work and build a stable foundation for myself, for my family, for my team, it is going to care of, did I use my opportunity, this vanishingly short amount of time that I'm alive to [00:34:00] like learn and grow and do something and contribute, it's going to care if I. 10 years from now, if I do the wrong thing, I have to confront the me of 2032, who's going to be wagging his finger at me saying, shame on you.

Daniel Pink: Why'd you do the wrong thing? And it's going to care if I don't reach out and build relationships of love and connection and affinity and belonging. And again, it's not, it's not super complicated, but I think the cool thing is, is that. This emotion that we, that we often try to avoid is giving us this very, very clear window into what makes life worth living.

Hala Taha (2): I feel like for me, the big kind of takeaway that I'm getting from all this is having this bias for action. Because like you said, the biggest regret. is inaction. And most of the time, if we do something and we find out the answer, we're not looking back and saying, if only this, if only that, you just, that's what happened.

Hala Taha (2): And you just get over it and move on [00:35:00] and you don't ruminate and think about it forever. So speaking about ruminating, there's right ways and wrong ways to deal with regret. And Dealing with regret is critical for us, like moving in a positive way forward in our lives. So talk to us about the right way and the wrong way to deal with regret.

Daniel Pink: Okay, it's a great question. So I think that the wrong way is pretty obvious. The wrong way is to simply ignore it. That's a totally bad idea and it doesn't work over the long term. Another bad idea is to wallow in it, is to stew over it. So the right way to do it is to try to avoid especially that second path.

Daniel Pink: And the way I look at this process is. Inward, outward, forward, inward, outward, forward. For the first step is to, is to look inward. So let's say you have a regret or even more broadly, make it, you make a mistake in the face of regrets in the face of mistakes and screw ups. The way we talk to ourselves is incredibly harsh.

Daniel Pink: If you listen to like people's self talk, it's brutal. We listened to myself talk. You'd think I was a lunatic. The way I talk to myself is just, [00:36:00] is just cruel. I would never talk to anybody else that way. And what the science tells us is, don't do that! There's very little evidence that that's effective in enhancing your performance.

Daniel Pink: A better technique than self laceration is what's called self compassion, which is work pioneered by Kristen Neff at the University of Texas about 20 years ago. And the principle is pretty simple. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Don't treat yourself better than anybody else. There's no evidence.

Daniel Pink: Oh, I should treat myself special. I should, you know, that's not true. But don't treat yourself worse than anybody else. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Recognize that regrets are part of the human condition. Any app listener out there who has a regret. I'll find almost the identical regret in my database in 90 seconds.

Daniel Pink: Okay, like it's part of the human condition. And you also think I think it's really important is that a regret is A moment in your life. It's not the full measure of your life. We sometimes will make these, these broad assessments of our entirety. [00:37:00] Based on a single thing in a single moment, and that's unhealthy.

Daniel Pink: So that's inward. So you reframe inward. Second thing is outward. There's a strong argument to be made for disclosure. Disclosure is a form of unburdening. It's not accidental that 21, 000 people around the world told a complete stranger their big regret because I wanted to talk about it. It's just like what I was saying at the top of the show.

Daniel Pink: Holla. It's like I mentioned my regrets very sheepishly and suddenly like this. Sort of uncork this bottle where people want to talk about it 

Hala Taha (2): releasing it. Yeah, 

Daniel Pink: but the other thing I think is is actually really important is that Emotions by their very nature are abstract. They're vaporous. They're blobby.

Daniel Pink: That's what makes positive emotions feel good But it's what makes negative emotions feel bad And so when we talk about our negative emotions or even when we we don't have to even tell anybody else when you write about them privately We take this abstraction and make it concrete. We turn it from this blobby thing into concrete words, [00:38:00] which are less menacing.

Daniel Pink: It helps us begin the sense making process. So we reframe inward. We express outward. But we also have to move forward. And the way we do that is we have to extract a lesson from that regret. And we tend to be pretty bad at solving our own problems. We're good at solving other people's problems. Terrible at solving your, our own problems.

Daniel Pink: So a really good technique is essentially to, it's what's called self distancing is basically get some distance from yourself. So you can do things like talk to yourself in the second person. What should you do, or even better your third person? What should, what should Holly do? I got to say the single best decision making tool that I know of when you're stuck is to ask yourself.

Daniel Pink: What would I tell my best friend to do? I have people come to me saying, Dan, I shouldn't do this. Or should I do that? I'm just so torn. I don't know what to do. And I said, what would you tell your best friend to do? And they say, oh, well, I tell her bobbity bobbity bop. And it's like, all right, you kind of answered the question there.

Daniel Pink: So for the business [00:39:00] people in the, in your audience, Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel has a brilliant, had a brilliant technique where he said he was, when he was stuck on a business decision as an executive. He would say, okay, if I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do? And he always knew.

Daniel Pink: So again, so if we reframe inward, express outward, and then move forward by self distancing, we begin to sort of develop that as a habit and then. Instead of trying to bat away this negative emotion or getting brought down by it, we basically, you know, hop on it at like a surfboard and ride it, ride it into better health, higher productivity, more meaning in life and more effectiveness, especially at work.

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. I'm curious, why is it so much easier to give advice to other people and to like, kind of pretend that you're giving advice to your best friend? Like, why is it so hard to give advice to yourself? 

Daniel Pink: We're too caught up in the details of our life. At some level, we know [00:40:00] too much. And that blinds us from the big picture.

Daniel Pink: It's like trying to understand, okay, I want to study the ocean. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to become, I'm going to scuba dive to try to understand the ocean. And it's like, well, now I'm immersed in everything. If you really want to understand, like, what does the ocean look like? What are its boundaries?

Daniel Pink: How's it configured? You want to be an oceanographer. You want to get up like in a helicopter and go above there. And that's a better, often a better problem solving technique. We just know too much about ourselves. We're too caught up in the gory details where with other people, we see the big picture. We see what we see, what's really going on.

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. 

Daniel Pink: And I really think that's it. Now, we can bring those techniques to bear on our own problems, but we have to be deliberate and intentional about that by doing these kinds of sort of like Jedi mind tricks to self distance. Again, talking to yourself in the third person, even that thing that I suggested before about talking to yourself 10 years from now, that's a form of self distancing.

Daniel Pink: And again, I truly [00:41:00] two takeaways from this for your listeners. One, ask them out. Two, do it. If you're stuck on a decision, ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend to do and then do that? 

Hala Taha (2): Yeah, I think that's really good advice. And so regret is a very negative emotion. People don't like to feel that way.

Hala Taha (2): Sometimes they, they wallow in their regret and you talk about something called mental subtraction that can help us feel better in the moment when we're having a regret. Could you explain that to us? 

Daniel Pink: Sure. That's another really good point. It's a technique. Some good research on this called mental subtraction of mental subtraction of positive events.

Daniel Pink: It allows us to feel a greater sense of gratitude. It's also a way to reckon with regret. I give you an education regret of mine, which is that I regret having gone to law school in general and probably in gone to law school when I did. Okay, that's not like that's not a cataclysmic regret. It's not my biggest regret, but it's illustrative here.

Daniel Pink: But here's the thing. I met my wife in law school. So what I can do is I can say, well, I'm going to, let me [00:42:00] mentally subtract that event. Imagine a world where I didn't go to law school. That's a world where I never would have met my wife. I don't want to live in that world. With action regrets, we can find the silver lining.

Daniel Pink: We can at least them, we can see a benefit in them, which is why we can process them and make, and make sense of them. Some action regrets. We can also undo all those people who have bullying regrets, more regrets. It's an action. I bullied somebody. Many of them go back. 20 years later and apologize to the people they bullied.

Daniel Pink: And so they're trying to undo that kind of regret. I have a guy in the book who has a no regrets tattoo and he goes to get it removed. So with action regrets, we can mentally subtract certain positive elements of them. We can at least them, we can undo them and therefore we can tamp down that how much they bug us.

Daniel Pink: That's why over time action regrets proceed in action regrets. 

Hala Taha (2): This is so [00:43:00] interesting, Daniel. So let's wrap up the conversation. And I feel like a good way to round this out is to talk about the benefits of dealing with our regrets and the benefits of regrets in general. How can us doing what you just mentioned, you know, self distancing, analyzing, trying to change our behaviors based on our regrets.

Hala Taha (2): How can that actually help us in life? 

Daniel Pink: On a number of different dimensions. Number one is that we know from these four regrets, if we know what people regret the most, we know what they value the most. So regrets are a negative, a reverse image of a life well lived, of a good life. What people want out of life in general is they want a degree of stability.

Daniel Pink: A good life is not precarious. Boldness is about the chance to learn and grow and do something and not like waste your time here and just do something. Moral regrets are about goodness. Connection regrets are ultimately about love. And so, as you think through your decisions, you can anticipate your future regrets.

Daniel Pink: And the way to do that is to, is to really [00:44:00] maximize on things that, you know, if you're making a decision, it's like, is this going to build my foundation? Is this going to help me learn and grow? Is this the right thing to do? Is this going to help me build connections and affinity with people I care about?

Daniel Pink: Those kinds of things you should really like maximize on, but the other stuff, good enough is good enough. I know we're not supposed to say good enough is good enough, but good enough is good enough for a heck of a lot of things. So, again, let's go back to future you. Future you is not going to care this year whether you bought a blue car or a gray car.

Daniel Pink: Future me, as I said earlier, is not going to care whether I wore that blue shirt today or I wore a yellow shirt today. There's so many decisions that we make that we don't even remember, we don't even care about. But there's some that stick with us, and we have a sense of the things that matter most. And so if we really focus our efforts and our attention on these kinds of things, on building a solid foundation, on learning and growing, being good and moral and truthful and doing the right thing, and on building [00:45:00] relationships of love and belonging, I think that regret gives us this path to do things better.

Daniel Pink: I give you one other tip here that I think is useful, because again, less, less, less abstract and more practical. One of the, one of the most useful things to do is to do what I did a couple of years ago, which is that push past the awkwardness. And if you have a team that you work with or a group of friends, tell people about one regret that you have, tell them what you learned from it, tell them what you're going to do about it.

Daniel Pink: And I can almost guarantee that you will have one of the richest, most interesting conversations you've had this year, because I was wrong. I thought nobody wanted to talk about regret. And I discovered, as I said, at the very beginning of our conversation, that everybody wants to talk about regret.

Daniel Pink: Because as you said, it's normal. It's universal. It's part of the human being. 

Hala Taha (2): Yeah. And Young Improfiters, I loved his book, The Power of Regret. So make sure you guys go get that. There's lots of exercises that you can do to understand what your regrets are, how to deal with them. So I highly recommend that.

Hala Taha (2): I'll put [00:46:00] that in the show notes. Daniel, I always ask the same two questions at the end of the show for all of our guests, then we do something fun at the end of the year. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing that our young and profitors can do today to become more profiting tomorrow? 

Daniel Pink: Listen more and talk less.

Hala Taha (2): Oh, why? 

Daniel Pink: I feel like so much of the work that we do obviously involves groups and other people. And most of us are not very good listeners. We don't actually work hard at listening. We, no one has ever taught us how to listen. You know, when we're in elementary school, they teach us how to read and that, you know, they teach us how to write, but no one ever teaches how to listen.

Daniel Pink: They think because we have ears, we know how to listen. And most of us are not very good listeners. And so one way to listen better is seriously is to, is, um, I say this after an hour yapping. is to talk less and listen more. 

Hala Taha (2): I love that. And what is your secret to profiting in life and profiting does not need to be related to [00:47:00] finances.

Daniel Pink: It's going to sound strange, but I think it's to be generous, to help other people, to use a Boy Scout thing, to, to leave the, to leave the campsite better than you found it. I really think that that is the way to live a good life. It allows you to profit in all senses of the word. I think it has a professional benefit over time, certainly not in the short term, over time, it has a professional benefit, but more than anything else, it allows you to look at your life on a day on a week and say, I did something.

Daniel Pink: I contributed. I made the world a little bit better. 

Hala Taha (2): I love that. And where can our listeners go learn more about you and everything that you do? 

Daniel Pink: You can go to my website, which is Daniel pink. com. D a N I E L P I N K. com. I've got a free newsletter. I've got free resources. I got all kinds of groovy stuff.

Hala Taha (2): Amazing. We're going to link all that in the show notes. Dan, thank you again for coming on Young and Profiting Podcast.

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