The most common form of regret is that related to the most common emotion, namely, love. Photo: File
Walk down the self-help aisle of any book store and you are bound to find numerous works telling you how to live a life without regrets. This sentiment is echoed in the line from My Way, sung by Frank Sinatra: “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.”
The attraction of life without regrets is obvious given that regret is a powerful and negative emotion that can, in certain cases, be incapacitating or life-altering, where there seems no way to remedy it.
Research shows that regret is the most common negative emotion we experience and, after love, the second most experienced emotion. Therefore, the search for the holy grail of a life without regrets seems to be to “dream the impossible dream”, to quote another song. In fact, the absence of regret is often associated with psychopathy and those with an incapacity for self-reflection or without a moral conscience.
The most common form of regret is that related to the most common emotion, namely, love. A simple example would be an unresolved conflict with a loved one, against the background of the death of that person.
Another could be the situation, not uncommon, where friends have drifted apart, and promise to get together, but neither makes the move to confirm an arrangement before one of them dies. Maybe more commonly, a child grows up, leaves home and a parent wonders — where did that childhood go, where was I? Possibly too busy, pursuing a career, navigating the complexities of adult relationships or caregiving for another?
Unfulfilled intentions, unresolved conflict — both are potential sources of regret arising from inactivity, not doing the necessary. There are circumstances of regret related to life choices rather than relationships such as career choices or opportunities deferred until it is too late to act on them. And then, of course, there are impulsive actions or words spoken hastily and without due consideration that, for a variety of reasons, cannot be retracted.
As much as one might want to live without regret, it is part of normal life. Therefore, instead of striving towards living without regret, the more useful pursuit is surely to learn how to deal with it as and when it arises.
In his book, Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, best-selling author Daniel Pink posits three steps to resolving feelings of regret.
First, Pink suggests that you show yourself the same compassion you would show a loved one or a friend suffering from feelings of regret. This so-called “self-compassion” is not designed to justify the actions leading to feelings of regret but rather to recognise that being imperfect and making mistakes is part of the shared human experience. The recognition that a life without regrets is not a realistic goal helps to move us forward.
Second, verbalising regrets by talking about them or writing them down serves to reduce their burden and forces us to convert uncontrolled thoughts into concrete language. Research shows that this approach substantially improves the well-being of people experiencing regret. Such disclosure need not be public and private verbalisation, for example writing a diary, has been found to have the same effect.
The final step is to regard your feelings of regret as an opportunity to learn a lesson rather than to wallow in self-pity. If you regret not visiting a relative or friend who has since died, resolve not to repeat the mistake should the same situation arise in the future. If you regret giving up a career opportunity because of fear of the unknown, deal with the next opportunity in a different manner.
One might say that regret is an inevitable consequence of living an “examined life” — something not to be feared but to be embraced as a point of growth and enrichment, to consider as a consequence of everything we say or do, and in so doing, to live more considered lives.
But we are human, and it is indeed human to err. The old, and maybe cliched, expression “no gain without pain” comes to mind. Growth can be a positive consequence of pain, if embraced in the context of true introspection and self-examination, and the pain of regret should be seen as no different in this respect.
Shaun Read is the founder and chief executive of Read Advisory Services. Christopher Paul Szabo is a psychiatrist and the former academic head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of the Witwatersrand.