The Art of Manliness - #620： How to Deal With Life's Regrets

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast we've all asked

00:00:11.400 what if questions about our life what if i'd majored in art instead of business what if i'd

00:00:15.320 let my best friend know i liked her as more than a friend or what if i'd taken that job offer in

00:00:19.560 colorado sometimes contemplating the imagined possibilities of these alternative histories

00:00:23.540 fills us with sharp pings of regret my guest today says that's not necessarily a bad thing

00:00:28.040 his name is neil roast and he's a professor of psychology and marketing and the author of if

00:00:31.640 only how to turn regret into opportunity neil and i begin our conversation by unpacking how asking

00:00:36.400 what if is to engage in something called counterfactual thinking and how you can create

00:00:40.420 downward counterfactuals in which you imagine how a decision could have turned out worse or an upward

00:00:44.700 counterfactual where you imagine how a decision could have turned out better neil then explains

00:00:48.340 why living without regret isn't actually that healthy and why even though regret is an unpleasant

00:00:52.520 feeling it can be an important spur towards greater improvement action and agency we then do get into

00:00:57.580 the circumstance of which regret become a negative force before turning to what neil's research says

00:01:01.980 are the most common regrets people have in life at the end of our conversation we pivoted talking

00:01:05.900 about how imagine your life could have turned out worse can actually make you feel happier after

00:01:09.900 the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is regret neil joins now via clearcast.io

00:01:15.100 neil roast welcome to the show hello it's good to be here so you are a professor of psychology

00:01:28.880 and you're a professor of psychology who has specialized in the psychology of regret and you

00:01:34.900 wrote a book about your your research in this topic called if only how to turn regret into opportunity

00:01:39.700 i'm curious how did you end up being a specializing in regret i've never met a regret psychologist

00:01:44.740 yeah that's a funny question it's certainly not the case that i woke up one day and decided i'd

00:01:50.440 become an expert on regret it's like many things in life you stumble your way into it but the deeper

00:01:55.540 point i think is that i've always been a person who likes to reflect on things to look at my own

00:02:01.140 life you might even say i'm a compulsive navel gazer and i remember when i was a small child

00:02:06.660 probably the first time i confronted a deep philosophical question was what would have

00:02:12.600 happened if my my parents had never met like what if my mother had met some other person

00:02:17.440 and and had a child would that child still be me or would i be sort of half me or some other person

00:02:25.080 and as i went down this rabbit hole and imagined well what if my father had met somebody else

00:02:29.960 and had a child would that still be me it awakened a kind of appreciation for the way in which human

00:02:36.440 beings can think through different parts of their life and dismantle take apart and then rebuild parts

00:02:44.480 of their life and then ask questions about what if and and if only and when i was a younger student

00:02:51.480 i thought that this was all just the realm of philosophy or just armchair speculation and when i became a

00:02:59.540 graduate student studying psychology in a serious way i was delighted to discover that there were actually

00:03:05.340 other people who were studying this in a more precise and systematic way you know using measurement

00:03:11.280 and actually asking people systematically about their thoughts of what might have been and i was lucky

00:03:18.700 enough to get my research going in the early part of a rising kind of effort to look at these kinds

00:03:26.460 of thought processes and so you might say i got in on the ground floor but i'm certainly not the only

00:03:31.600 researcher who's who's been asking these sorts of questions but my main research area is not so much

00:03:37.560 regret as it is the deeper capability of human beings to construct counterfactual insights and so

00:03:45.600 counterfactual thinking is where i got my start and the counterfactual means literally contrary to the

00:03:51.440 facts it's the way in which our brains come up with alternatives to what we know to be true and yet we know

00:03:58.060 they're false and and yet we play around with them and sometimes use the insights for other purposes

00:04:04.340 so once again i didn't really start out thinking about being a regret researcher i kind of stumbled

00:04:09.940 into it but my main research interest early on was counterfactual thinking well so yeah regret is a type

00:04:15.800 of counterfactual thinking what are some other types of counterfactual thinking that we take part in on a regular

00:04:21.320 basis well regret to me is is a great example of the emotional consequence or the emotional result

00:04:29.120 of a counterfactual thought and it's a particular kind of counterfactual thought that that focuses on

00:04:34.900 your own decisions okay so i decided this morning to have coffee but i could have had tea so i could focus

00:04:42.220 on that that decision but also as i construct an alternative i am emphasizing how things could have been

00:04:49.120 better as opposed to how things could have been worse or how things might have stayed exactly the

00:04:54.780 same so if i focus on how things could have been better i really am imagining a better state of

00:05:01.560 affairs something that i i perhaps yearn for or desire or dream about and regrets are really all about

00:05:08.780 how we could have made decisions for ourselves to have made a better current situation for ourselves so

00:05:14.360 whether i had coffee or tea at breakfast this morning is is rather unimportant you know maybe

00:05:20.780 if i had tea i'd be a little bit perkier right now that's hard to say but let's let's uh talk about a

00:05:26.160 bigger kind of fork in the road that you might have what what your choice of career might be

00:05:30.520 and so when i was younger i did briefly entertain the idea of being a dentist and so i can imagine what

00:05:37.780 would my life now be like if i were a dentist and you might say well it could be better in the sense

00:05:44.340 that maybe i'd be making more money but it's also worse in the sense that well i'd have my hands in

00:05:49.620 people's mouths all day i'm not sure if that's quite my cup of tea but if i can focus on mainly the better

00:05:57.040 side of things if i can think about the positives then that's what we call an upward counterfactual we're

00:06:02.960 thinking about how things might have been better but other times we might imagine how things could

00:06:07.220 have been worse and that's what psychologists call a downward counterfactual so downward

00:06:12.140 counterfactual is really all about let's say if i made this or that decision things could have been

00:06:17.180 a whole lot worse so perhaps if i had not gone to university i might have had a different sort of job

00:06:25.760 maybe it would have been a job that would be less fulfilling for me and i can imagine that that

00:06:30.060 alternative state of affairs and i think about what my life would be like now if i hadn't gone

00:06:34.540 to university and i can see well maybe it wouldn't have been as as pleasant maybe i would have had

00:06:39.280 greater frustrations and challenges so psychologists really see the upward versus downward counterfactual

00:06:45.960 distinction as a key demarcation point a key point of separation between our thought processes

00:06:51.760 because it really speaks to what we value what we see as good or bad in the world and our brains are

00:06:58.360 very very very quick to categorize the events that we see around us as either good or bad and in the

00:07:04.580 same way we're very quick to see how alternatives to the past might have been good or bad so that's a

00:07:11.380 fundamental distinction and overall i think you might say that people have a tendency to focus

00:07:17.420 more on upward than downward counterfactuals that is people are more often thinking about how the past

00:07:22.760 might have been better than how it might have been worse which i think is a reflection of just how

00:07:27.880 people tend to think about what are their goals what are their dreams what are their aspirations and

00:07:32.860 so counterfactual thoughts tend to mirror the things that we most want out of life so just to recap here

00:07:40.480 downward counterfactuals we think that something could have turned out worse which makes us feel

00:07:45.000 better and an upward counterfactuals where we think something could have turned out better

00:07:48.880 which makes us feel worse and regret is that negative feeling we have as a result of an upward

00:07:55.280 counterfactual so now as i was reading your book and thinking about this dynamic i was thinking you

00:08:01.680 know what i'm doing counterfactual thinking all the time like i'm constantly doing it not even thinking

00:08:06.780 about it sometimes have you found in your research that we do quite a bit of counterfactual thinking

00:08:12.100 throughout the day yes yes there's actually some research that i worked on with one of my

00:08:17.420 former students now a professor her name is amy somerville and one of the things that we tried to

00:08:21.740 do is to get a sense of how often counterfactual thoughts or comparisons especially those ones that

00:08:28.760 focus on our own actions how often they they happen in everyday life and we used a very unique

00:08:34.880 research method to tap into this we basically used electronic devices kind of like like you know

00:08:42.100 we all of us carry smartphones around with us and we have the basically computers in our pocket that

00:08:47.220 allow us to communicate with others obviously we're all on social media right now this research was done

00:08:52.060 more than 10 years ago so we we had more primitive devices to use but the idea is the same people are

00:08:57.660 carrying around electronic devices that randomly ping them during the day so it's a random ping

00:09:04.020 and then our research participants would would you know take out the device and answer a few

00:09:09.100 questions and what's great about this method is that it enables us to sample thoughts in a kind of

00:09:16.600 more representative way so it's a kind of a random sampling of the thoughts that happen to you

00:09:21.000 spontaneously as you live your life and so this is not a technique that we invented by any means lots of

00:09:27.380 researchers have used it but it's a very powerful technique for understanding the frequency

00:09:33.800 with which we have certain kinds of thoughts so using that kind of research approach we found that

00:09:38.840 counterfactual thoughts are pretty frequent i can't give you an exact number of how many per day

00:09:43.480 but the average person is certainly having explicitly or or consciously realized thoughts

00:09:49.140 dozens of times a day and what's interesting about comparing let's say our our consciously experienced

00:09:56.980 thoughts versus unconsciously held thoughts is we know that there are unconscious

00:10:00.820 counterfactuals that are kind of like swimming in the background giving us guidance to the things

00:10:05.660 we do so every action we take potentially has a set of alternatives that were considered prior to

00:10:11.820 that not consciously but you know there was an automatic process of setting up what are the different

00:10:17.900 options available to us and then after the fact there's a reconsideration or a re-evaluation so i would say

00:10:24.280 dozens of times a day each of us might have this or that counterfactual thought and it might be about

00:10:30.180 something extremely minor like i mentioned to you earlier should i have had tea instead of coffee

00:10:35.200 or you just realize oh man i i forgot to bring a book with me that i wanted to show a friend and you

00:10:41.700 think i should have brought the book it's any time really that you realize that you have not met a goal

00:10:49.180 or not accomplished something that you meant to accomplish almost spontaneously a counterfactual thought

00:10:55.180 swims into focus that is all about what you could have done to have met that goal or to realize

00:11:00.860 that particular objective so these thoughts are happening all the time sometimes without us even

00:11:06.820 realizing it well let's dig into the counterfactual thinking of regret because i think it's an emotion

00:11:12.900 that a lot of i think everyone feels on a regular basis and you know the typical sort of folk advice

00:11:18.760 out there about regret is like you know live a life without any regrets but you make this i think very

00:11:23.480 compelling case in your book that regret is actually it's often necessary a necessary part of for

00:11:28.700 improving ourselves so how how can regret be a spur to improve ourselves yes well it's really really

00:11:37.440 hard to live a life without regrets because i think that regrets are a signal to us of a particular goal

00:11:45.400 or particular aspiration that went unmet and so one way to live your life without regrets is to have

00:11:51.380 no goals to have no standards to have nothing that you're trying to get done and so if you have

00:11:57.680 nothing at all that you want to do ever then certainly you can live your life without regrets but

00:12:01.920 if you if you take this idea to heart now that regret is a signal to you of something that was

00:12:09.500 not quite achieved the way you had intended earlier then it's almost like a wake-up call it gives you a

00:12:15.320 sense of well now is the time to reassess now is the time to reconsider perhaps the strategy that i was

00:12:21.600 taking if it's a regret regarding a relationship let's say it's you know romantic relationship or

00:12:28.500 even the relationship with your mother you might say to yourself well can i do things differently is

00:12:33.480 there a different way i can conduct myself should i say some different things maybe i should be more

00:12:38.780 forthright maybe i should be more humorous maybe i should just be clear so people understand what i'm what

00:12:44.420 i'm trying to get across i think regret can be a powerful way of reconsidering what you're doing

00:12:50.240 and then it's a it's a tool for improvement and so some of the the research that that i've been

00:12:56.580 involved in and certainly others have been involved in as well has shown that regret if it is experienced

00:13:03.140 fully and if it is essentially listened to it can be a spur to action in other words regret can trigger

00:13:11.980 first of all a reflection process of reconsidering what you're doing and then it can trigger behavior

00:13:17.540 change and this is actually something that's been observed in children in fact we i can think of

00:13:23.480 several different research studies in which measuring the extent to which regret is experienced or felt

00:13:29.840 is then predictive or or it it's associated with later performance improvement in an academic setting so

00:13:37.460 some of these studies are done with adults some of them are done with with children under the age of 10

00:13:42.620 and we see a similar kind of pattern that regret is something that that goes along with performance

00:13:49.460 improvement for most people not not for everybody and and that's something perhaps you want to ask me

00:13:55.020 about like i mean yeah it's not always the case that regret is good for you there are cases where

00:13:59.860 it can be quite terrible for you so we'll get into that but before we do because i think this this

00:14:06.240 next question will flesh out and talk about some of the problems that regret can have but it sounds

00:14:11.180 like whenever we do counterfactual thinking we're doing regret the focus is typically it can increase

00:14:17.460 the sense of agency because you're typically thinking what could i have done differently i mean you

00:14:22.540 don't regret i mean it's hard to regret like when stuff just like happens like a you know hurricane i mean

00:14:27.120 hurricane hit your house you're typically well you know i didn't do anything about that there's

00:14:31.480 nothing i really could have done but it sounds like you know thinking about regret can increase

00:14:36.020 your capacity or your sense that you can do something about the problem that that's true so if you think

00:14:41.000 about what regret actually means the dictionary definition really is all about your own decisions but if we

00:14:48.840 step back a bit and we just ask about counterfactual thoughts in and of themselves let's say if we have

00:14:55.360 an intervention or or some kind of technique or tool that increases our tendency to have

00:15:02.720 counterfactual thoughts all else being equal those counterfactual thoughts tend to gravitate toward

00:15:08.840 our own decisions they tend to gravitate toward the things that we're we're most involved in and so

00:15:14.760 merely thinking about how you could have done something different it it reinforces your own sense of

00:15:22.520 agency and i think in the broader sense of things it increases your sense of mastery and the feeling

00:15:29.660 of being in control of your life there's that that old poem that goes something like i'm i'm the master

00:15:35.040 of my destiny i'm the captain of my soul you know sometimes we feel a little bit out of control we feel

00:15:41.020 like we're just billiard balls being knocked around but it is a powerful psychological feeling to feel like

00:15:47.780 we do have a little bit of control over the things that we do and that actually translates into a feeling

00:15:54.980 of psychological wellness we do feel better about ourselves we feel happier and more buoyant in the

00:16:00.760 morning if we feel like there's some thing we can do that can have an effect usually a positive effect

00:16:06.940 and especially in a positive effect on others but so what i'm talking about is this this idea that we

00:16:13.800 might deliberately push ourselves to think about how we might have done things differently in the past

00:16:19.540 which then feeds into a feeling of mastery and control which then has a kind of positive feedback

00:16:26.320 loop that that then guides us into more i don't know more positive action as we move forward right so

00:16:33.020 the example of this you know the kid studying for he didn't study first test gets a bad grade feels he's

00:16:38.500 like well if i if i studied i probably would have done better and then that will hopefully spur them

00:16:44.020 to study for the next test yeah but it's it's you know it's a delicate balance because what i don't

00:16:49.640 want to say is that it's appropriate for us to be blaming the victim or it is appropriate to always

00:16:56.400 say that whatever bad thing happens is always your fault it's not not not what i'm saying it's a more

00:17:01.900 nuanced judgment that even if you are the victim of a natural disaster even if you are if you

00:17:08.140 suffered a loss after a flood or a tornado there perhaps is something you could have done in terms

00:17:16.000 of prevention or just just greater preparedness and you could think through well there are always

00:17:22.760 going to be acts of god but what can i do to be more prepared and i think that feeling of preparedness

00:17:28.020 it's like a security blanket it makes us feel a bit better about our day-to-day lives and especially

00:17:33.740 as i'm talking to you today in the middle of a very turbulent time in our nation's history and i

00:17:39.560 you know and i'm probably sharing a lot of anxiety with a lot of your listeners right now i'm thinking

00:17:44.720 through what are some ways of being prepared and what are some things that we can do each of us

00:17:49.280 individually to benefit society and that helps to quell that feeling of anxiety we're gonna take a quick

00:17:56.440 break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show well let's talk about the so the dark

00:18:03.320 side of regret so regret can it because we feel it it stings it'll then we start thinking of alternatives

00:18:08.120 how we can behave and do things differently um but as you talk about in your book too it can go it can

00:18:14.220 run amok so when does that happen when does regret move from being useful to actually being a hindrance

00:18:22.700 right regret can be very very traumatic it can be problematic when it becomes associated with

00:18:32.760 depression and so many of your your listeners will know that depression is a very profound mental

00:18:38.620 illness that has deep biological roots but at the end of the day depression has a lot of thought

00:18:45.840 disorder as part of it a kind of disordered way of thinking about the events that befall us a

00:18:52.000 disordered way of attributing the cause of the events that take place and so one of the most

00:18:57.540 serious aspects of depression is is seeing that a negative event is not only caused by you yourself but

00:19:04.420 it reflects something fundamental or deep about your your character as a person so it's it's not just that

00:19:10.840 i messed up yesterday and it was a random event but it's something about my deeply flawed character

00:19:16.860 and so usually that's a kind of biased or or inaccurate or even unrealistic way of thinking

00:19:22.820 but it's it's a part of the the fundamental disorder that the depression is regret now when it

00:19:30.060 is connected to depression it's really all about thinking about how relentlessly how you could have done

00:19:37.260 things differently and then as the common theme underlying this relentless thought process is

00:19:43.860 this feeling that you as a character as a person are are somehow flawed or not worthy and so the word

00:19:50.540 that we often use to describe the particular syndrome of counterfactual thoughts involved in

00:19:55.660 depression is is rumination and i'm sure you've heard this word before rumination another way of

00:20:00.500 describing it is repetitive thought but it's this kind of spinning your wheels in the mud kind of thing

00:20:06.760 of over and over and over again focusing on the same themes or the same particular actions that you

00:20:12.700 might have taken differently i'll give an example in my own life i can remember when i was a teenager i

00:20:17.320 had the ability to drive myself around because my mother was kind enough to let me borrow her car from

00:20:22.740 time to time i got into a minor accident on on ice in the winter and it didn't involve another vehicle but

00:20:30.480 it did involve some some costly damage to the car and i relived that accident over and over and over

00:20:36.620 again and i thought of various actions that i could have taken to perhaps avoided the accident

00:20:43.200 some of them outlandish like what if i'd thrown the car into reverse and tried to drive backwards on

00:20:50.320 the ice as i'm moving forward i've tried that later in life and it doesn't work and so the the key idea

00:20:56.140 here is that if you are thinking over and over and over again ruminating on what you might have done

00:21:02.280 differently and you can't break out of that cycle it's not only a predictor of subsequent deeper

00:21:08.700 depression but it actually really is i think a fundamental example of what depression feels like

00:21:15.840 it's that repetitive thought about your own past actions and how they might have been different

00:21:21.680 and so i i don't know quite how it it starts but once it gets started you you get into a vicious

00:21:29.420 cycle where back and forth the negative thoughts the the regretful thoughts repeated over and over

00:21:35.840 again create more negative emotions and then those negative emotions lead you back to more more

00:21:41.900 regretful thoughts and they go back and forth and back and forth and it's it's really hard to break

00:21:47.780 out of that cycle right and that's where talk therapy would come in ideally you know you come in and

00:21:52.020 sort of challenge i mean the whole point is like it gets you out of that rumination yeah that's exactly

00:21:56.940 right and so talk therapy or sometimes people refer to this as cognitive behavioral therapy the the idea

00:22:03.400 is to try and latch on to those disordered thought processes and rework them and get into a kind of

00:22:09.620 rhythm or habit of of shutting down the repetitive thinking and then reworking the thoughts into something

00:22:19.080 that's more more realistic or perhaps more more present focused so you know one of the things that i've

00:22:25.680 i've been thinking about since i wrote that book it's been a while since i wrote the book but it's

00:22:30.660 it's really an interesting idea that resonates with a lot of zen thinking or the the mindfulness movement

00:22:37.820 or the meditation movement that's been increasing in the united states it's this idea of trying to focus

00:22:43.380 on the present moment thinking about what is happening right now my own sensations my own experiences in

00:22:51.540 the moment as opposed to reliving the past reliving the past seems to be just a negative pathway that

00:23:00.460 if you if you go down the path often enough it turns out to be something that's that's going to be bad

00:23:06.640 for your well-being so then the trick is and this is the tough part this is the trick it's if you feel

00:23:12.380 a regret and it pops into your head and you feel bad can you take a lesson out of it and take an insight

00:23:20.200 about what you might change about yourself and then let it go in other words feel the regret deeply in

00:23:27.000 the moment but then you know a few moments later let it go and let leave it behind and i think that's

00:23:33.380 the real trick that's the real tough thing that a lot of us i think need exercise and practice at to get

00:23:40.720 better at but you will you'll always be confronted by regrets the trick is to listen to it think about

00:23:47.300 what it means and then let it go don't get yourself stuck spinning your wheels over and over again

00:23:52.860 well another dark side of regret you mentioned earlier it can lead to or not regret but counterfactual

00:23:58.620 thinking lead to blaming the victim i mean so here's just an outlandish example because you highlight

00:24:03.380 research we tend to do this whenever we're doing counterfactuals about other people because we want

00:24:08.120 to assign agency to somebody and so like you know so some guy's house gets hit with a meteor you know

00:24:13.960 we think well shouldn't have built his house there should have put his house different but it's like

00:24:18.860 that doesn't make any sense but like our our brain naturally wants to do that because it's that's it

00:24:23.700 does counterfactual thinking very well yes yes that that's a really funny example yeah meteor could hit

00:24:30.400 anywhere and and i think it's a reflection of the way in which i think a lot of us just want to see

00:24:36.780 the world as predictable and understandable if we walk around thinking that the world is just

00:24:42.940 completely random and there's nothing we can understand about it it would be terrifying and so

00:24:48.640 we are we're definitely motivated to see order and sensibility in the world and so when something

00:24:55.320 like that does happen a meteor strike is yeah about as random as you get as to where exactly it will land

00:25:01.560 there is a tendency for us to try and ignore that random side and assign blame and and basically reach

00:25:09.400 a greater understanding so the reason why this happened is because so and so performed this action

00:25:16.960 so psychologists have noticed this for quite a long time a very natural organic tendency for us to

00:25:24.240 not not so much find fault in others but to find reasons for outcomes or for events inside other

00:25:32.800 people's intentions or other people's deliberate thought processes and so we we call that psychologists

00:25:39.780 call that the fundamental attribution error like a tendency to see things as being caused by other

00:25:45.400 people and that means an under appreciation for let's say machine-based causes natural causes just

00:25:52.380 random causes so we are at the end of the day we are all social beings and we live amongst other people

00:25:59.200 all the time even as we're isolating we're surrounded by others and so there's just this natural tendency

00:26:04.880 to look to other people and to assign blame and causation on the basis of other people's actions

00:26:10.260 when you've done the research on regret what have you there's surveys been done about this what about what

00:26:16.000 people regret the most what does that research shape what what do people regret the most whenever

00:26:20.980 they at the end of their life or at any point in their life yeah well there's there's been some

00:26:26.740 recurring internet memes about what people regret most at the end of their lives and it's a powerful

00:26:33.720 question because it gives us almost like a recipe for how best to live our lives so that we can feel

00:26:41.900 fulfilled and grateful at the end of our lives and so if we can listen to what older people tell us

00:26:46.920 that would be a very powerful thing of what what how we might conduct ourselves so i've been involved in

00:26:53.660 a couple of different research programs that have attempted to understand in a more systematic way

00:27:00.840 what it is that people regret most in their life and so we went about this by right first of all trying

00:27:06.760 to understand what are the big categories that people tend to think about and focus on and so big

00:27:11.500 categories might be regrets that might focus on your parenting or your financial decisions your

00:27:18.380 your spiritual growth your work life all kinds of things so we tried to use a systematic set of

00:27:25.260 categories or buckets into which life regrets might fall and then we we go about asking people ideally

00:27:32.260 using a sample of adult americans so that we can get a portrait of what the typical american is thinking

00:27:39.740 about and the result is that we see a lot of focus on two main categories work and love i would say work

00:27:49.100 and love and just unpacking that a little bit probably the top regret tends to focus on our our relationships

00:27:55.100 and so when i say relationships i'm thinking mainly romantic but also close relationships so our

00:28:03.500 our friendships and our sisters and brothers our parents but especially our romantic relationships

00:28:11.900 it's the people that we talk to the most the people that we're closest to and so the regrets tend to center

00:28:17.600 on maybe we had a fight maybe we had an argument maybe there's a lack of agreement maybe something was

00:28:24.720 said that you wish you could take back and so when we do this kind of research we often ask people to tell us

00:28:31.700 exactly what their regrets are so i've had the experience of reading through literally thousands

00:28:38.900 of people's life regrets and so i see a lot a lot of a common theme of wishing that you could have

00:28:47.620 made a romantic relationship better work harder at it or wishing that you had recognized that it was a

00:28:54.840 toxic relationship more quickly and then ended the relationship so that you could move on so i would say

00:29:01.220 that's that's probably those two kinds of things focusing on romantic relationships are the things

00:29:06.540 that people mention the most the other thing they'll mention is something about career or work or you know

00:29:13.220 your job life and usually those tend to center on your aspirations for what make what might make you

00:29:20.400 more fulfilled so did you have a job that allowed you to do what you're really good at is it something

00:29:26.580 that gave you satisfaction and pleasure or is it something that was just just a job that you had

00:29:32.220 to get done interestingly we don't see that many regrets we see some but not that many that focus on

00:29:38.460 wishing that you had made more money or that you had been able to invest more money regrets definitely

00:29:45.120 appear but they're not nearly as powerful as as love and work regrets that center on ways in which you could

00:29:53.280 find yourself feeling more fulfilled and so if you're thinking about what are the deathbed regrets

00:29:59.580 that people typically have they're usually going to be you know i wish i had a stronger connection with

00:30:05.700 my brother i wish i'd said more to my mother before she passed away or i wish that i had managed my

00:30:12.560 my uh my marriage a little bit better i wish i'd been in touch with my kids in a more frequent way

00:30:18.880 we are again i'm going to say that we are we are social animals and our our deepest inclination is

00:30:25.100 to make connections to other people and and the feeling of loneliness is probably the biggest

00:30:32.360 contributor to late life regret compared to all the other things that we might do so i think there's a

00:30:38.860 powerful lesson there for younger people i think that people in their 20s and 30s can get kind of

00:30:45.760 overly focused on work and there's a kind of trap of putting in too many hours to try and get ahead

00:30:51.700 to the relative neglect of of other relationships and usually young people in their 20s and 30s are

00:30:59.340 able to see that there's obviously great value and great excitement about pursuing a romantic

00:31:04.940 relationship but once people get into their 30s and especially if they have kids there's a tendency to

00:31:10.720 neglect their their friendships and friendships later in life will if if they're not maintained

00:31:18.520 and managed well that can bring about a lot of a lot of regret as you lose touch with people that

00:31:23.600 were previously meaningful to you well this idea of like the big regrets regretting that you didn't

00:31:29.280 pursue a romantic relationship or you didn't invest more in your family like what's hard about those

00:31:33.940 regrets is sometimes it's like too late to like actually make good on that that that specific

00:31:39.660 relationship that you regret but i mean it's but the regret could still be useful there because

00:31:44.920 okay well i can't salvage that relationship maybe you know like that's that love is gone forever but

00:31:50.780 i can do something different now with the other relationships i have moving forward yeah that that's

00:31:56.200 exactly right and and it speaks to something that our brains naturally do and if you if you watch for

00:32:03.040 it maybe you'll notice it on average when we recognize that a situation is is finished it's final there's

00:32:11.600 nothing we can do with it and so let's let's say a family member has passed away and you you have some

00:32:18.020 regrets about some things that took place many years ago for most people they they find a way to reach

00:32:25.160 closure and they can let it go because the event is done when an event is still open when there's still

00:32:33.520 a possibility for modification there's still something that can be done then regrets tend to be stronger they

00:32:40.520 tend to be more active and the counterfactual thoughts about things you might have done differently for that

00:32:46.480 particular outcome are are more active and so very naturally our brains tend to help us to rationalize

00:32:55.460 our negative feelings by by closing down or shutting down thoughts about things that are totally

00:33:01.240 closed off so that means that regrets are oftentimes a signal to us that there's still still something you

00:33:09.260 might do even though you might have had a bad relationship experience with somebody else

00:33:15.760 it might speak to a deeper pattern that you've had with your relationships that you might be able to

00:33:22.520 modify and therefore improve in another relationship that this idea of an open or closed situation

00:33:29.200 i think is is best captured by thinking about when you when you buy something so you can buy a shirt

00:33:36.860 for summer and let's say it looks pretty good on you but you're not sure whether you're going to keep it

00:33:44.400 two situations you could either return it for a full refund or you bought it on sale and you can't return

00:33:50.460 it so there you go you got this this clear separation between either you can undo it by returning it for

00:33:57.180 a refund or you can't undo it and you're stuck with it and so research especially in the consumer realm

00:34:03.980 shows that when you can't return it when you can't do anything about it you kind of start to like

00:34:10.800 look at it a little bit more you kind of reconcile yourself to the fact that you're you're stuck with

00:34:16.240 it but when you can still change things around it can actually make you miserable as you keep

00:34:21.680 thinking about well should i take it back should i keep it what should i do the opportunity is still

00:34:26.760 open there's a regret there that kind of is more active and because you've got that opportunity to

00:34:34.540 actually change things that the negative feelings are more active and so i guess i guess the lesson

00:34:40.040 there is go ahead and do something or close it down burn burn the bridges behind you and reach

00:34:46.340 that closure by making sure that there's nothing else that you actually can do no the research about

00:34:52.000 consumer choices consumer behavior that reminded me of that idea that's come out in the past 10 years

00:34:57.200 like fomo fear of missing out like that fear of missing out is basically counterfactual thinking

00:35:02.000 yeah yeah it is i should also mention you introduced me at the beginning as a professor of psychology

00:35:07.280 and i'm also a professor of marketing in the business school at the kellogg school of management

00:35:13.320 northwestern university and so i i actually teach courses on consumer behavior and brand management so

00:35:20.140 a lot of my day is spent thinking about how we can make better consumer decisions so as to be more

00:35:25.660 satisfied later on but yeah speaking about fomo you can talk about that in consumer terms or very general

00:35:32.600 terms it's it's an interesting observation of our current world that we can look to other people's

00:35:39.080 activities and then have this this worry that we might be missing out on it so it's for those

00:35:44.000 of you who have not heard this term fear of missing out literally that's fomo it's it's um it's

00:35:50.620 counterfactual thinking but it's it's more of the anticipated counterfactual side you could call it an

00:35:56.200 anticipated regret so you're thinking about a party that's going to take place this weekend and you're

00:36:03.080 thinking about the various obligations you have do do i have time to do this i'd like to go and hang out

00:36:08.320 with my friends i i don't want to drink too much but it's going to be a lot of fun and as you're moving

00:36:14.560 toward that event you're actually using the same part of your brain that that creates counterfactuals about

00:36:21.940 the past but now you're creating um simulations or alternative versions of the future and imagining

00:36:28.580 what might be the consequences and so fomo i think at the at its very core is an imagining of if you did

00:36:37.020 not do something that looks like it's going to be pretty good do you anticipate future regret that will

00:36:44.860 drive you up the wall and it's that in the moment you're thinking oh i might have regret i don't have the

00:36:50.360 regret yeah but i'm thinking i might have it and that makes me kind of crazy yes that's like

00:36:54.740 abstraction of abstraction like it's like two levels going on there uh yeah yeah it absolutely

00:37:00.260 is and so i think this is this is clearly something that that's been accelerated by by social media by

00:37:07.760 our ability to watch other people's lives unfold and so you know the funny thing is you can observe you

00:37:13.540 know what would have happened had you had gone there there's some photos and you see all these people

00:37:17.500 having a fun time you didn't go and now and now you have actual regret and if this happens enough

00:37:23.220 times then you know you start to anticipate it and you start to live in a kind of world of imagined

00:37:29.760 possibilities this this again suggests to me like the precursor the beginning stages of of a depressive

00:37:37.260 episode what one of the things you just don't want to do is spend your life living over and over again

00:37:42.460 in the future or in the past and so i don't know you've hit your hit a really troubling point about

00:37:50.420 our modern life which is what is our relationship with social media and is it making our lives better

00:37:55.840 how does it make you feel to look at other people's lives portrayed in photos and videos that are put

00:38:02.620 in very tiny well curated nuggets in our in our feed and social media does that make our lives better

00:38:11.300 by seeing other people's great cool wonderful experiences or does it make us feel worse about

00:38:16.860 ourselves because we're not doing that cool stuff we're not enjoying those fun times i don't know i

00:38:22.560 haven't figured this out yet myself except that i have myself uh stepped back a bit from social

00:38:28.740 media in the last couple of years and those days that i don't actually look at anything are days that

00:38:34.560 are a little bit more peaceful yeah right well so we've been talking about counterfactual thinking

00:38:40.400 doing upward comparisons so you're comparing how things could i mean how things could have been better

00:38:45.320 and that typically makes us feel bad and in the short term that can be good because it spurs us okay

00:38:50.100 i'm going to do things differently but if taken to an extreme it can lead to depression and just

00:38:54.540 you know us spinning the wheels and not making any progress but we haven't talked about sort of that

00:39:00.060 downward counterfactual thinking and i like that in the book you talk about it's a wonderful life

00:39:06.500 the great christmas classic with jimmy stewart is like a powerful example of downward counterfactual

00:39:13.600 thinking how so yes yes whenever i talk about it's a wonderful life i assume everybody's seen it but

00:39:20.020 there might be some people haven't seen it it's it's an old film in black and white and it and it

00:39:24.520 tells this powerful story about one individual george bailey who has just gone through a very

00:39:30.280 tragic experience in his work life and he's worried about going bankrupt and he's worried about not being

00:39:36.780 able to feed his kids and he's so despondent that he's actually pondering suicide and at this moment

00:39:44.300 there's an intervention by an angel who then shows him a very vivid almost like well a cinematic version

00:39:53.480 of what the world would be like if there had been no george bailey like what if his life and his

00:39:59.480 contributions were simply subtracted out of reality and i guess in george's head before that he was

00:40:07.420 thinking well my life hasn't made a difference nobody really cares whether i'm here or not or worse

00:40:12.940 i've been a negative force in the world and i've made things worse for a bunch of people

00:40:18.760 and so he sees his life as worthless but this is this counterfactual world that is now spun out

00:40:25.320 shows that actually the little town in which he lives in a little town in middle america

00:40:30.380 would be much worse without his presence and it shows itself in a number of ways in terms of

00:40:37.860 people close to him for example his wife turned it turns out with him without him around she never

00:40:44.740 marries and that means his kids never appear and she's not not living a very happy or fulfilled life

00:40:50.300 and then other people in the town other friends that you think they would have just lived their lives

00:40:56.520 in exactly the same way without george around but it turns out their lives aren't aren't as pleasant

00:41:02.520 either and so the entire fabric of this alternative vision is a negative one it's it's demonstrably

00:41:10.800 clearly worse than what actually is the case so as george sees this it actually unlocks an appreciation

00:41:18.180 for certain aspects of his life that went unappreciated it was like he took all this stuff

00:41:25.080 for granted and it's only when he started to see an alternative of how much worse things could have

00:41:31.560 been without him that he starts to appreciate all the little things that he's done so it's not just

00:41:36.860 the big things like okay he worked at a job that allows people to borrow money to buy homes it's more

00:41:44.100 like the little pleasantries that he exchanges with with friends that give them a burst of joy on a daily

00:41:50.940 basis so i think of it's a wonderful life is not the only it's perhaps the best known way in which a

00:41:59.040 downward counterfactual can make us recognize that there are things about our true life are the way our

00:42:06.160 lives have unfolded that are actually worth appreciating it's a wonderful life is is one

00:42:11.440 example that i think is family friendly it's it's easy to digest it's a beautifully constructed story

00:42:17.760 but there are many other such stories that are maybe a little bit darker but give us that same sense of

00:42:25.660 how the past might have gone differently one example that's been on television recently is a story

00:42:31.440 called the man in the high castle which is based on a philip k dick novel that was published in the

00:42:36.880 60s but it's one of many stories that ask us what if the second world war had turned out differently what

00:42:43.760 if nazi germany or imperial japan had been victorious what if america had lost the war what would things be

00:42:51.120 like and it's worse and so it's a kind of really nasty set of experiences in which nazi germany kind of

00:43:01.560 controls the united states in an alternative parallel universe but what it does for us i mean it's it's

00:43:08.700 drama it's fun to watch it's you know interesting but it's also thought-provoking in a way that makes us

00:43:14.240 perhaps appreciate aspects of our country of our society that are typically unregarded or

00:43:22.280 unappreciated it makes us see things differently so the way i think about downward counterfactuals is

00:43:27.840 that if if they are treated with respect and if they are treated with some some care and insight

00:43:35.460 it's a way to think about your life in a different way it it's a kind of weird mirror that allows us to

00:43:43.640 see our our current lives differently but perhaps to unlock appreciation that is not typically there

00:43:48.540 well i mean it sounds like counter what downward counterfactual thinking does it helps us provide

00:43:53.440 context and meaning for our life i mean you you were talking earlier you know when you were a kid

00:43:58.340 like what if my dad married someone else and they had a kid like would it be me it's like

00:44:03.400 you're like you were meaning making you're you're being an existentialist when you were eight years old

00:44:08.220 yes in fact i probably had those thoughts much much younger like for age four or five i was a weird

00:44:14.260 kid i should tell you that i had a lot of existential crises before the age of five but yeah it really is

00:44:22.160 about what do you understand to be the most meaningful parts of your life and i think again

00:44:27.660 that that idea that we take a lot for granted that we i should back up and tell you a key research

00:44:33.960 finding that helps to put this into context so i began this conversation telling you about

00:44:38.900 upward versus downward counterfactuals and you can see these as two sides of a coin it's basically

00:44:45.560 good or bad and you might think of them as pretty much equivalent like anytime i flip a coin there's

00:44:52.680 something i want there's something i don't want it could come up heads or tails it's it's like i can

00:44:57.140 think about how any event could have been worse or could have been better but it turns out that as we

00:45:02.560 measure counterfactual thoughts among the ordinary person in everyday life they tend to have a whole

00:45:10.640 lot more upward thoughts than downward thoughts right so downward counterfactual thoughts are rather rare

00:45:17.360 so going back to that study i mentioned in which we're trying to track people's thoughts

00:45:21.600 using using a random sampling of thought probes during the day or any number of questionnaire studies

00:45:29.060 that we've done we see that upward thoughts are occurring at a rate of something like 90 percent

00:45:34.780 and then only 10 percent are our downward thoughts and i think there's something very very meaningful

00:45:41.420 about that which is it tells us that most of the time our thoughts are focused on the things we want

00:45:47.000 the things we desire the things we're trying to get and so if we don't get those things then what

00:45:52.200 immediately pops into our head is what could we have done in order to have gotten what we want

00:45:56.780 but when we do get what we want we don't think about it like you know this morning i wanted a piece

00:46:05.340 of bread that was baked my by my friend brent and he just gave it to me yesterday it's a he made some

00:46:12.200 sourdough bread at home and it was really delicious i had it and it was just as good as i expected it

00:46:17.860 would be and so i take i took it for granted or took it at face value and i did not think about

00:46:22.960 anything else right i did not spontaneously think well it's a good thing i didn't have

00:46:28.480 a stale hot dog bun that was in my fridge instead that never came to mind i just kind of took the good

00:46:35.160 thing and ran with it by contrast when something fails to meet our expectations that's when our brains

00:46:40.760 start to assess and think through and try to find ways that we could have achieved a better outcome so

00:46:47.660 overall we we have a whole lot of upward counterfactual thoughts we tend to have very

00:46:52.400 few downward counterfactual thoughts and what that means is that on on an everyday basis we tend not to

00:46:59.060 get any of those benefits that come from thinking of downward counterfactual thoughts that help to

00:47:05.460 put our lives into a greater perspective or more importantly help us to see and appreciate those

00:47:11.580 positive things that we have and so it's it's one of those reasons we tend to take things for granted

00:47:16.820 and not appreciate the things that we're blessed with well neil where can people go to learn more

00:47:22.860 about your work that you're doing now yes well a couple of different things you can certainly

00:47:27.460 google my name and my work website at the kellogg school of management has a number of of publications

00:47:36.100 and i've got a mix of scholarly papers which are or are tough to read for for people who are not

00:47:43.020 experts in the area but i've written a bunch of other pieces that are aimed at a large audience

00:47:47.420 several of them have appeared in the harvard business review recently and they tend to be in

00:47:52.700 more of the business audience and i would say yeah just look look for the pieces in the harvard

00:47:58.160 business review fantastic well neil thanks for your time it's been a pleasure yeah thank you so much

00:48:02.380 i've had a lot of fun today thank you my guest today was neil rose he's the author of the book

00:48:06.280 if only it's available on amazon.com you can check out our show notes at aom.is slash regret

00:48:10.640 where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:48:13.140 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#620： How to Deal With Life's Regrets

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