Regrets, You've Had a Few

The answer to "Will I regret this?" might be "Do other people?"

For instance, people on their deathbeds almost never say they wish they spent more time at work, which would indicate that my fears of career regret are overblown.

Most articles on regret are listicles of platitudes about spending time with the people you love. 🤮 Thankfully, Psychology Today has some numbers:

A nationally representative study, which asked 270 Americans to describe a significant life regret, found the most commonly reported regrets involved romance (19.3%), family (16.9%), education (14.0%), career (13.8%), finance (9.9%), and parenting (9.0%). 

(Morrison & Roese, 2011)

The variety of regret is significant in itself. Indeed, there are at least 12 life domains in which people report regrets, making balancing them all difficult.

Regret is regulatory, according to prominent theories (Zeelenberg and Pieters, 2007). That is, it invites us to correct past mistakes and avoid future ones. However, if ruminated upon excessively, it can be harmful (Roese et al., 2009).

Furthermore ,obsessing about fixing or avoiding failures in one domain of life could blind you to potential regrets lurking in others. 

Not to brag, but I'm currently only bugged by one life domain: career, and in that case I'm more disappointed with the outcome rather than regretful of a decision.

However, steering a wayward career back on track would jeopardise romance, family, and finances, as an absent, preoccupied, egotistical me gambles on retraining. 

So, what if you consciously reject the corrective that regret invites you towards?

For good reasons, regret is not changing my behaviour, but is getting on my nerves. What can I do?

Beike, Markman, and Karadogan, (2009) observed:

Individuals regret lost opportunities the most. In their view, the feeling of closure (taking a more ‘‘distanced’’ perspective on a past event) minimizes regrets, but past (rather than future) action that remains cognitively open (i.e., absence of closure) exacerbates regret.(Morrison and Roese, 2011)

Closure is not as it sounds, an absolute, but a maintained distance at which regret is scar rather than wound. 

In the absence or undesirability of remedy, distancing and closure are therefore a continuous activity, not permanent fix.

Whatever I do to keep debilitating rumination away, whether ...

• Being understanding of my circumstances at the time I made my decisions;
• Reminding myself why I don't indulge in a fix;
• Appreciating the things that I would have missed but for that regretful decision, or
• Other mental techniques,

... I'll have to keep doing for the foreseeable future.

Sounds tiring, but if regret is part of being human then so too would be managing that regret.

Is regret management just narcissistic obstinacy?

We all know that person who keeps insisting that they did everyone a favour with their objectively regrettable behaviour. They pride themselves on their ability to 'not live in the past' and to 'move on', hinting that we should follow.

While denial is a management strategy, it's not a great one. Continuous effort is the only thing that denial has in common with honest reflection.

Even the showboat anthem 'My Way' admits,

Regrets, I've had a few...

(before dismissing them as being too few to mention.)

Regret can be acknowledged without needing to be acted upon or spun into heroism, a skill-set combining honesty and discretion that may need to be continuously applied.

We can take into broader consideration all life domains where regrets commonly occur, and be comforted or cautioned.

Finally, we could be mindful that having a few regrets does not mean we should hastily invite a few more.

Notes

Survey data is not very reliable, and so results are volatile and often can't be replicated. For example, Morrison & Roese 2011 refutes earlier data; that in fact:

• people regret what they did (action) and what they didn't (inaction) in equal measure, and
• we are more likely to regret what we can no longer rectify than what we can easily fix (as noted above).