When experiencing regret, use it as a signal by treating yourself with compassion, talking or writing about the regret, and then explicitly extracting a lesson from it to carry forward.
When facing regret or a mistake, treat yourself with kindness instead of contempt, recognizing that regrets are a universal human experience and self-compassion can improve performance.
To extract lessons from regrets, use self-distancing techniques like shifting self-talk from first to second person, asking what you’d advise a best friend, or imagining what your future self or a successor would do.
Integrate self-compassion (mindfulness, common humanity, kind self-talk) with self-distancing (using your own name in self-talk) to more effectively process difficult emotions and extract lessons from regrets.
Talk or write about your regrets, such as journaling for 15 minutes a day for three days, to unburden yourself and make amorphous negative emotions more concrete and less menacing.
List five significant failures, setbacks, or screw-ups, then identify the specific lesson learned from each and a concrete action you will take based on that lesson.
For important projects, imagine it’s three years in the future and the project is a disaster; list everything that went wrong, then return to the present to avoid those anticipated pitfalls.
Focus on optimizing decisions to avoid the four core regrets (foundation, boldness, moral, connection) and ‘satisfice’ or accept ‘good enough’ for less impactful decisions to prevent decision fatigue.
Instead of avoiding or wallowing in regret, lean into it as a fruitful middle path to learn from past decisions and improve future performance.
Do not ignore or wallow in regrets; instead, view them as valuable information or data, which can be a transformative emotion when reckoned with properly.
For action regrets (things you did), try to ‘undo’ them by apologizing or making amends to the person you wronged, thereby making them whole.
For action regrets, employ ‘at leasting’ by considering how things could have turned out worse (downward counterfactuals) to make yourself feel better, even if it doesn’t help improve performance.
Gather friends to discuss individual regrets, fostering disclosure and solidarity, and leveraging the group’s collective wisdom to gain perspective and guidance on what actions to take.
Gather with friends to write and read your own obituary, a practice that encourages looking forward from the end of life to gain perspective on what truly matters and how to live in the present.
Counter the ‘arrival fallacy’ by focusing on the process and intrinsic value of activities rather than solely on instrumental ends or outcomes, which is psychologically healthy.
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