Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Daniel Pink on Why the Power of Regret Can Transform Your Life EP 197

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. Positive emotions are awesome, right? Positive emotions make life more worth living, but you don't want to have only positive emotions. You want to have some negative emotions mixed in there because negative emotions are functional, and one of our most functional negative emotions is regret. So you don't want to extinguish it, you want to be able to harness it, and if you haven't been shown how to do that. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

Starting point is 00:00:42 If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews, the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 197 of Passion Struck.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Recently ranked as one of the top 50 most inspirational podcasts in the world in 2022. And thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly to listen and learn, had a live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. And if you would like to introduce this to a friend or family member, we now have episodes starter packs, both on Spotify, as well as the PassionStruck website. These are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics to give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything we do here on the show. Just go to PassionStruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And in case you missed my episodes from last week, they featured Harvard

Starting point is 00:01:48 professor Max Bayzerman and Haas Business School professor Don Moore. And we discuss their brand new book decision leadership. How you can help others make better choices. I also had on Dr. Jesse Wisdom who's the co-founder of HUMU. And we discuss how she is using behavior science to solve some of the biggest people issues and companies around the world. And lastly, my solo episode was on cognitive biases and six steps that you can take

Starting point is 00:02:15 to remove them from your life. I also wanted to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews. They go such a long way to helping us promote the popularity of the show and increasing our community as well. Now, let's talk about today's episode. Have you ever wondered why regret is largely about

Starting point is 00:02:31 opportunity and missed opportunities? Of course, some people have more opportunities than others. Does that affect the amount of regret that they feel? Do people with more opportunities have more regrets? Should we use our regret more wisely or have less of it? How do we take advantage of regret without getting trapped in remination? And why instead of running away from negative emotions, we should engage with them and learn to use them? Our guest, Daniel Pink, answers all those questions and many more. Daniel Pink is the author of The New York Times Best Sellers, a whole new mind,

Starting point is 00:03:05 drive to sell is human and when. His books have sold millions of copies and translated into 42 languages, as well as winning multiple awards. Dan Partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Kane, and Adam Grant to curate the next big idea book club. They donate all their proceeds to child literacy programs. And today we discuss his new book, which also made the New York Times best-selling list a power of regrets. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck

Starting point is 00:03:32 and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so thrilled to welcome Daniel Pink to the Passion Stark podcast. Welcome, Dan. Hey, John. Thanks for having me. Today we're talking about your incredible new book, The Power of Regret, which I'm going to show here, and on YouTube, we'll make an even bigger splash about it.

Starting point is 00:04:03 But before we dive into that, I wanted to discuss something I'm really passionate about and I know you are as well. And that's the next big idea of book club that you curate with Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, who I had on the show as well, and Adam Grant. And I wanted to ask, what is your selection criteria and how does a book find its way to you guys? Selection criteria is just big ideas well presented

Starting point is 00:04:27 that can make a difference in people's lives. And so that's both a simple standard, but also one that many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many works don't mean. The way that we hear a lot from publishers, there's a team of people at the next big idea club who receive all kinds of inquiries. They're out looking at catalogues, they're out looking at reviews, they're out pounding

Starting point is 00:04:50 the pavement to see what ideas and what books are coming out there. And so we start with like a massive trove of books and then it gets whittled and whittled and whittled and whittled and whittled. There's a preference at least. I'll sit say my preference. My preference is not to, is to go with people who are authors who are perhaps less well-known, who could probably, there's so many books that come out each year, hundreds, thousands. I want to give a little extra boost to people who might need it rather than established folks who don't need the extra boost. I love some of the titles that I've

Starting point is 00:05:24 seen on there and you're definitely doing great work. some of the titles that I've seen on there and you're definitely doing great work. Some of the titles I've seen are definitely people who maybe it's their first book or they're not a well-known author, so that's great. I like to get the audience a chance to get to know you better. And so I understand earlier in your career, you were a speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore.

Starting point is 00:05:43 And I was hoping you could enlighten us a bit on what that experience was like. And perhaps maybe your favorite speech that you ever wrote for him. Interesting. Okay, so two very different things. I don't know if I had a favorite speech. I think one of the ones I liked the most was a speech that we did at the U.S. Naval Academy where he did the commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy. This must have been 1997. I think it was. And I don't know if you can see here, John, over here on my mantle, you can see right up there, there's a hat.

Starting point is 00:06:17 You can see that hat that's sort of over my, over this shoulder up like, forget about I'm disappointed about which way I need to point. It's an edge in the cat. There you go. Right. Exactly. At the Naval Academy graduation, as some of your listeners might know, the marker of moving from being in the academy to being an officer is throw up your hat upon graduation and then people rush on to the field to grab a hat. And I was one of those crazy people who rush on to the field to grab a hat and I've had that hat in my office since 1997.

Starting point is 00:06:45 It turns out to belong to, it's unusual. It's a woman's hat. So there are more men and women at the US Naval Academy. Also inside of it is a sticker that shows that it's actually from someone who was a Marine, so there are more people in the Navy than the Marines at the Naval Academy, many more. And it's actually a hat that belonged to a former Naval academy student named Amy McGrath, who went on to become one of the first female fighter pilots. I think maybe the first, one of the first marine fighter pilots, and also ran for office in Kentucky a few times. Yeah, I actually know Amy. I graduated from the naval academy. Oh, I didn't realize that. Okay, cool. Yep. What year did you graduate? Somehow, I don't know why I was not informed. I was a class of 93 and Senator John McCain did our commencement speech.

Starting point is 00:07:31 Here's a little known tidbit about me. President Bill Clinton actually came to the Naval Academy and for whatever reason, I was on the honor toward at that point and they asked me if I would do the tour. I had a very interesting hour or so with the president. So that was a great experience. Yeah, yeah, the Naval Academy is a fascinating place and the reason I meant I single that one out was not to pander to you, although I believe me I'm willing to pander but because I was able to do some interesting research ahead of time where I went up with one of my colleagues who was in Naval Academy grad. No, he was actually not. He was not in Naval Academy. He was an officer, but he didn't go to the

Starting point is 00:08:08 Naval Academy. He was in the Naval officer who was on the National Security staff. We went up and we got a tour of the Naval Academy. I heard a lot about the history. I actually read as preparation that that McCain speech in 93 where some of which was about all the crazy stuff that he did when he was at the Naval Academy and how he wasn't that great of a student, how he sort of like a screw up, but somehow the overall ethos of the Naval Academy, of which his family had a long legacy somehow seeped into his bones and shaved the rest of his life. So it was a fascinating place. I have to tell you, you never know how it's going to end up. My two second class that were my direct supervisors are both now two-star admirals. And one of them, I would have

Starting point is 00:08:47 told you from the moment I met him was destined to be an admiral. He just had that air about him. Yeah. And the other gentleman I played rugby with for a few years and he would have been one of the least likely I would have told you who have gone mostly because he was such a fun party guy. Most of us just thought he would get out. And what's even more interesting is one of them is a seal and one of them leads the EOD community. So both of them special forces leaders.

Starting point is 00:09:18 So interesting tidbit there as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is really interesting. I think to go back when we're young, you were between 18 and 22 probably when you were at the academy and to see how often are projections of what people will do are accurate and how often they're widely inaccurate. They're people who I knew when I was younger, who I thought they're going to be machines. They're going to be so incredibly accomplished.

Starting point is 00:09:45 And they haven't been. And there are other people who are like, what? How did that guy become a billionaire? How did that guy or that woman become the CEO of a company? It's kind of a fascinating thing about life. It sure is. And I think that's a great way to view that and your high school graduates as well.

Starting point is 00:10:02 Yeah. Well, one last tidbit I found out doing some research about you is you like this acronym and I was wondering if you could tell the audience why it's significant to you. You mean, how? Who? Yeah, wow. You have really scoured the archives for that.

Starting point is 00:10:19 That is an acronym that much of this you grin of my children I used throughout their childhood. It was originally designed because we did a fair amount of traveling as a family. And we traveled with little kids. It's pain. So what I was trying to do was coach my kids into becoming better travelers.

Starting point is 00:10:37 And my method for doing that was an acronym, HAHU, which stands for hustle, anticipate, heads up. So when you travel, you have to hustle, all right, we're gonna move quickly. We're gonna hustle from place to place, especially when we're in airports, anticipate. You gotta think ahead and figure out what I got this is my kids who live in a house

Starting point is 00:10:56 had spent very little time in elevators, and they always seem surprised when an elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened, and they just waited. Like, no, you got to anticipate that when the door opens, you got to move out of there and then heads up as just being aware of your surroundings, they hated it. I persisted with it because I thought there was a broader life lesson there. So I try to live my life by hustling and dissipating and being heads up. I think it's really good. Here's the thing. I'm playing the long game

Starting point is 00:11:22 here, all right, with that. So even though my kids sort of rolled their eyes and now pretty much fundamentally ignore me on this, at some point in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, they're going to come to me and say, Dad, you were right. And I'm telling my own kids, and that will be my vindication as a parent and as a human being. Well, what will be interesting is when they have kids, do they implement it as well? That would be better. Or I'm gonna cut them out of my will.

Starting point is 00:11:50 No, that's... Well, I found another interesting fact is I was studying up on you, and that is when you wrote the power of regret, it wasn't the original book you were supposed to write, and you ended up going to your editor and telling them that you wanted to change the topic. How did that go and what led to you deciding on this interesting topic to cover? We'll be right back to my interview with Daniel

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Starting point is 00:13:25 for our listeners. Evertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Now back to my interview with Daniel Pink. I mean, how did it go is pretty clear since I was able to write the book. My editor is a fantastic human being, a very good editor, very smart guy, a lovely person too. And so he was willing to hear me out, was eventually persuaded. What got me there was actually sort of a moment over three years ago, now, three and a half, almost three and a half years ago,

Starting point is 00:13:53 where I was at my daughter's college graduation, and I started thinking about my own regrets, especially about college, things that I wish I had done in college, or wish I hadn't done in college. It was really kind of sticking in my head. It was really occupying a lot of mental real estate. I knew that nobody wanted to talk about it, but I wanted to talk about the regrets. But then when I very sheepishly mentioned

Starting point is 00:14:11 it to a few people, I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about it, and that I got this incredibly robust response. And that said, that made me think, the fact that I couldn't get this idea out of my head, it was an important sign, that I was sort of wondering, like, huh, what do I do with these regrets? And am I the only person who has these regrets? I know the regrets that I have different from other people's regrets. And I started doing a little bit of research or about a month worth of research just to see what the basic label of the land was in psychology, but then it ended up being in other fields too, like cognitive science and developmental psychology and neuroscience. I felt like this was booked at some level. This is a book I wanted to read, so I had to write it.

Starting point is 00:14:50 Well, I love that backdrop. And one thing I find really interesting when I read your books and I read Susan's, you both do a tremendous amount of research. And as I was asking her about bitter sweet, she basically said the same thing. It was just something that kept coming back to her is that people really wanted to talk about emotions and melancholy and those types of things. But before we deep dive into the book, I did want to ask

Starting point is 00:15:18 about this research. Can you explain the extent of the research that you initially did and then some of the additional initiatives that you took upon yourself to create, which I thought made the findings even more important for us to listen to here on the podcast today. Yeah, no, I'm happy to talk about that. Let's go back to one of your initial question about the next big idea club. How do you know a book is worth its time? How do you decide whether a book is worth your time or whether their idea is worth considering carefully?

Starting point is 00:15:50 So you hear the idea, but that's not enough. I think you have to respond to that idea with the question, how do you know? You're saying that the world is flat. You're saying that the moon is made of cheese. You're saying that jeans are the fundamental source of heredity. All right, how do you know? All right. And so what I'm saying in this book is we've gotten

Starting point is 00:16:09 rubric right wrong. We've profoundly misunderstood it. That regret is ubiquitous, that it makes us human. And that if we treat it right, it can make us better. So appropriately, you want to know, okay, how do you know? I love that question. I think it's really important. I think it's a question we all should ask. So number one, there is 50 plus years of research on this topic in the social sciences, in biological sciences too. So as I mentioned, there's a lot of research and social psychology about this. There is a really some very interesting research and developmental psychology, which is the psychology, how do people acquire cognition, how do they acquire emotions, how do their minds and brains develop. There's research because it goes to the psychology, how do people acquire cognition, how do they acquire emotions, how do their minds and brains develop.

Starting point is 00:16:46 There's research because it goes to the brain, there's research in neuroscience, there is research in cognitive science. So, a number of different fields have studied this emotion. And in fact, actually, the initial people who studied the emotion were kind of economists in game theorists. So, a lot of the initial research and regret began during the Cold War, where you make a wrong move in

Starting point is 00:17:05 the Cold War and you're really going to regret it because you might have blown up the planet. That's one component of it. Now, what I also wanted to do, because I saw some holes in the research was I did my two pieces of my own research. One of them was what I call the American Regret Project. And that is, was simply a very large public opinion survey. It is the largest public opinion survey of the US population, of US attitudes about regret ever conducted.

Starting point is 00:17:33 We did a massive sample of 4,489 Americans so that we were able to replicate what the United States looked like demographically, both in terms of race, gender identity, education level, education level, income level, geography, and so forth. And so I asked people a bunch of questions about what they regretted. I had them slot their regrets into certain categories. I asked them a whole array of other questions, too, about even things about interversion and extroversion, about belief in God, about their sense of free will, other kinds of things,

Starting point is 00:18:05 looking to see if there were demographic differences and propensity for regret and what people regretted. But wait, there's more, because I also did something called the World Regret Survey, which was a giant collection tool. Now, I did that in order to sort of broaden it beyond the United States, but also to get some qualitative research

Starting point is 00:18:24 and some material for storytelling. And that ended up being bigger than I expected. So it's still available to be your listeners, worldregrette survey.com. We now have a database of over 21,000 regrets from people in 109 countries. And I was able to draw some insights from that as well. So those are the sort of three legs on which this research stool stands. Yeah, and I would just like to tell the audience that throughout your book, you bring up many of those regrets in it as examples that you use to highlight each chapter. So I thought that was a

Starting point is 00:18:57 really nice addition. Yeah, you get to hear a lot of voices from people all over the world in multiple languages who are offering up their regrets. It's a pretty remarkable collection. Your listeners can go to worldrogrettsurvey.com. We have an interactive map so you can go on the map and click on a US state or Canadian province and see the most recent regrets that have come in from those places. You can go to countries where we've had, I think I don't remember the number, we have at least five regrets and you can click on Chile,

Starting point is 00:19:25 and find out what are the most recent regrets from Chile, or click on Switcher Linder, or click on Senegal, and look at the regrets from those parts of the world. Well, great. Well, thank you for sharing that, and I think a great way to open up this discussion about the book is in it, you give the story of Edith Piaf. I think it does a great job of setting up

Starting point is 00:19:44 the rest of what we're gonna talk about. Can you tell the story of Edith Piaf. I think it does a great job of setting up the rest of what we're going to talk about. Can you tell the listeners about that story and why you decided to use it? Edith Piaf has a song that for what she is well renowned. I mean, she became one of the most famous singers in the world because of this song and her legacy exists today. And it's a song that embodies a certain philosophy. The song is in French. J'en ai regrette rien.

Starting point is 00:20:04 J'en ai regrette rien. I regret nothing. And so it's a song about how she doesn't have any regrets. that embodies a certain philosophy. The song is in French. I regret nothing. And so it's a song about how she doesn't have any regrets. And this became an anthem in the 1960s. It's still used today. Today in the Super Bowl, there are ads with this song playing in the background. Of course, there's a little bit of hypocrisy there because she died. Full of regret. She died at a preposterously young age. She had addiction problems of both drugs and alcohol. One of her lovers died. She was, she saddled her second husband with a huge number of deaths.

Starting point is 00:20:37 She abandoned a child. She had huge numbers of regrets. And in fact, on her deathbed, she didn't say, I don't regret anything. She said, every damn thing in this life you have to pay for it. So she died with lots of regrets. And in fact, on her deathbed, she didn't say, I don't regret anything. She said, every damn thing in this life, you have to pay for it. So she died with lots of regrets. And so what I was using, that story, that song, to show that we have this prevailing philosophy, this ethos, this credo that says, I don't have any regrets. I'm never negative. I'm always positive. I always look forward, never look backward. And that is scientifically flawed and a dangerous recipe for living.

Starting point is 00:21:13 I liked in the book how you gave countless examples of people who put that tattoo on themselves. And then many regretted later on, which is pretty interesting. Right. I mean, the point there was to show you how much this philosophy has taken whole. I mean, you got a French song from the 1960s that's being used in Super Bowl ads. That's pretty good.

Starting point is 00:21:33 Like that's pretty sticky. You've got people who believe in a philosophy so deeply that they don't just put a bumper sticker on their car or yard sign in their lawn, but they enshrine that philosophy ink on their bodies. That's a pretty strong commitment. And I was trying to do a show how much this no regrets philosophy has taken hold, but also, again, going back to the point earlier, using science to say, wait a second, let's stop and think about this. This is not accurate. What we know, as I said before, is that everybody has regrets. Regrets are one of the most common emotions that human beings have. It's ubiquitous in the human experience. Everybody has regrets. And that if we treat our regrets properly, not ignoring them like E.D. P.F. not while

Starting point is 00:22:14 allowing them, but actually thinking about them, confronting them, processing them, they can be actually a powerful engine for transformation progress. I agree. I can tell you from my own life, I look back sometimes, and one of the things I have liked to have done in the past is I do something called a reverse bucket list where I look back upon my life, upon the things that have accomplished. And I almost do something that you bring up in the book, which is kind of the reverse of your resume. And I look at where were the successes, but I try to look at both in my career and in my life, where are moments where looking back when I've made the same decision. And if not, what can I have learned from it? So I think that's a great thing for us to really ponder. Why do you think our culture has such a hard time dealing with this concept?

Starting point is 00:23:11 Yeah. That's a good question. I think it's a few things. Number one is that no one ever teaches us how to deal with negative emotions on pleasant emotions. So we don't know what to do. It's very easy when we're getting signals that we don't want to hear to put our fingers in our ears and try to bat them away.

Starting point is 00:23:25 We've also been in some level sold to build goods that we should be positive all the time, which is absolutely not true. Here's the thing, it's like, it's too much of a good thing. Positive emotions are awesome, right? Positive emotions make life worth living, but you don't want to have only positive emotions. You want to have some negative emotions mixed in there because negative emotions are functional and one of our most functional negative emotions is regret. So you don't want to extinguish it. You want to be able to harness it. We haven't been showing how to do that. It's intuitively sensible, right? And makes sense in our gut to say, oh, you should be positive. But what we haven't done is given people a way to deal with the negative. And again, there's a

Starting point is 00:24:02 middle ground. We don't want to ignore our regrets, we don't want to wallen our regrets, we want to think about our regrets, we want to do what you're doing, we want to use them as data, as information, as signals, as material we can use to improve our lives. And so that third way between ignoring and wallowing is where there's incredible growth and progress. Well, one of the things I think the listeners are really going to be interested in is when I was reading the book you covered this section and from your research you initially got a list of things that on the surface people regret the most. Yeah. And then as you did a more diverse sample, those findings changed. Can you explain what

Starting point is 00:24:48 you found at first and then when you looked deeper how it changed? I'm glad that you asked that question. It goes to like the research and the process by which one comes to these conclusions. And so it's easy to bypass that. And I don't like bypassing. And I like talking about it. So here's what we know. So when scholars have looked at this question, which I was curious about, what do people regret? Surprisingly, they didn't explore that question in any depth until rather recently, until this century. There was some research in the 70s, 80s and 90s asking people what they regretted. And the consensus, the overwhelming consensus was that people had more education regrets than any other domain. So we think about the domain of life.

Starting point is 00:25:25 Career regrets, education regrets, romance regrets, family regrets, health regrets, whatever. Education always came out on top in these studies. And then someone, again, this is the way science works. Someone said, wait a second. All these studies, the participants were university students, a university staff, and every single one of them was done in an education institution. Huh, no wonder education was the top regret. If we had done it in hospitals,

Starting point is 00:25:54 with doctors and nurses and patients, maybe health would have been the biggest. So then these two researchers did a very good, overall sample of the US population, using, again, for giving me forgetting in the methodological weeds here, but did what's called random digit dialing, which was a waning a little bit now. It's basically a way to get a reprint in a sample in a poll of the

Starting point is 00:26:14 US population. They did that and they discovered that people regret a lot of stuff that the regrets were all over the place. They were in all different categories. Some people had career regrets. Some people did have education regrets. Some people had career regrets. Some people did have education regrets. Some people had romance regrets. Some people had finance regrets. All right, it's all over the place. So it's kind of unzaddest fun. So I said, okay, you know what I'm gonna do?

Starting point is 00:26:34 I'm gonna do a better version of this. I'm gonna do the biggest public opinion survey ever conducted on this topic. And we did it with working with quadrux of big data analytics survey company. We did a really, really, really good public opinion. I mean, I'm very proud of what we did it with working with quadrux of big data analytics survey company. We did a really really really good public opinion. I mean, I'm very proud of what we did We did a first rate public opinion survey of American attitudes of regret where we sample people We had them listed regret and then we had them put them into the categories career education, etc etc. And I discovered once I crunched the numbers that

Starting point is 00:27:04 People regret a lot of stuff. It was crunched the numbers, that people were going to lot of stuff. It was all over the place. So that's kind of frustrating because I spent this time and treasured on this big survey looking for demographic differences of which there were not many and trying to crack the code of what people regretted and didn't do that. Qualitative piece of research came in.

Starting point is 00:27:20 So let me indulge me with this explanation here. So what I discovered is when you have people slot them into these existing categories, they are all over the place. But those existing categories are less revealing than something else going on beneath the surface. And that is what you get from the qualitative stuff. That's what you get from reading people's regrets over

Starting point is 00:27:42 and over and over again. I read the first 15,000 of these of these regrets. Let me be specific and concrete here. The best example of what is this? So I've got people who regret not a lot of regrets about not traveling. I had a chance to study a broad when I was in college, but I didn't do it. I had a chance to go in this adventure with my friends, but I didn't do it. So people who regret not traveling, let's say, let's say not studying abroad. I'm pretty specific one. So that's obviously an education regret. Then you have people who, and I got a lot of these people who regret not asking somebody out on a date.

Starting point is 00:28:18 X years ago, there was a person who I was really interested in romantically. I wanted to ask them out on a date, but I was too chicken and I've regretted it ever since I got a lot of those I got a lot of those from around the world. That's a romance regret, right? So then I've got also a Huge number from around the world are basically hey, I stayed in this lackluster job I wanted to start a business. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't have the guts to go out and do it I wanted to start a business. I wanted to launch my new and enterprise, but I Didn't do it and I didn't have the guts. Okay, so that's a career regret. But in my view, and I think it's pretty clear, those three regrets are all the same. They're a regret

Starting point is 00:28:55 about being at a juncture and having a choice of either playing it safe or taking a chance, playing it safe and taking a chance. And what I found from these 21,000 regrets is that in most cases, people regret not taking the chance, not in all cases, but in most cases, people regret not taking the chance, not going on that trip, not speaking up, not asking out that person, not starting that business. And that's what I call a boldness regret. And what I found is that around the world, when you just go one layer beneath those domains of career education, health, finance, whatever,

Starting point is 00:29:33 those were the regrets that were persistent for them, including boldness regrets. Yeah, well, that's where I was gonna go next. So you have foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. And you just talked about boldness. Can you just do a short overview of foundation, moral, and connection?

Starting point is 00:29:53 Foundation regrets are, if only I'd done the work. These are regrets that people have about regrets about spending too much and saving too little. A lot of regrets about eating poorly and not exercising. More regrets than I expected about not working hard enough in school, not being conscientious enough in school or university. So small decisions early that accumulate to bad consequences later. That's a foundation regret.

Starting point is 00:30:12 And what they do is they unsettle, they cause instability in your life, whether it's financial or health or whatever. It's about bad decisions that accumulate and give your foundation, make your foundation wobbly. Boldness regrets, if only I'd taken the chance. Moral regrets, very interesting category. If only I'd done the right thing.

Starting point is 00:30:29 So you're at a juncture, you can do the right thing, you can do the wrong thing, you can do the wrong thing. Almost all of us, not all, I mean, really, almost all of us regret it. Not everybody, not every single person, but a lot of us have these moral regrets, regrets about bullying, regrets about cheating on our spouse, regrets about being dishonest, regrets about shoplifting as a kid, all kinds of things like that.

Starting point is 00:30:50 And then finally, number four, our connection regrets, which are only I reached out. And these are about the relationships in our lives, not only romantic relationships, but the whole, all of the relationships in our lives. When they come apart and they usually come apart in slow ways, we want to reach out, but we feel awkward. We want to reach out, but we think the other side is not going to care. So we don't reach out. And the drift widens and widens and widens and sometimes it's too late. So connection regrets are, it's only I've reached out. I think what's interesting and a little bit of a surprise is how universal these regrets are. So that if I were to show you this database and lock out where

Starting point is 00:31:26 the regrets are coming from, I don't think you'd be able to distinguish a Polish regret from a Missouri regret from a Guatemalan regret from a regret from British Columbia. Well, since you brought up that world view, maybe you could tell the story of Bruce and Sandra who came from two different countries is a way to highlight this. Well, this is a good example of a bulldozer grad. This is about a guy who filled out the World Regret Survey, and then I ended up interviewing him afterwards. So in the World Regret Survey, it was anonymous. So all I wanted to know was people's gender. I wanted to know where they're from, and I wanted to know their age, and then obviously I wanted to know where they're from and I wanted to know their age and then obviously I wanted to know their regret. If they wanted to, they could leave their email address to be contacted for a follow-up interview. So of the tens of thousands of people who submitted, I was able to interview about 100 in, I can't remember, that number, 170 of them or so. And one of them was this lovely man named Bruce, a very, very nice guy who lives in the state of all Washington. And he had a story where he just graduated from university in the

Starting point is 00:32:29 States. He was working in Europe. And he was on a train. And he was riding that train, traveling around Europe. And then one night a young woman sat down next to him. The train stopped in France. A young woman sat down next to him. Obviously didn't know her. She was Belgian. She was working in France. A young woman sat down next to him. Obviously, he didn't know her. She used Belgium, she was working in France as an opair. They start talking, they start laughing, they start holding hands. It's like something out of a movie. It's the greatest day of Bruce's life. He's just, it's like this kind of stuff doesn't happen. And so he's sort of in this kind of dream world with this woman. It's a very touching story. But the train gets to a stop in Belgium. The woman says, this is my stop. I have to get off. And Bruce says, I'll go with you. And she says, no, no, no, no, my father will kill me. You can't

Starting point is 00:33:10 do that. And he doesn't know what to do. Again, this is 40 years ago. So there's no mobile phones. There's no Wi-Fi or anything like that. So he writes his mother's mailing address on a piece of paper, he hands it to her. The kiss, she gets off the train. And then 40 years later, he said, I always wish I'd stepped off the train and then 40 years later, he said, I always wish I'd stepped off that train. And so this is a, some ways of really pointing and powerful bonus regret. Yeah, well, thank you for telling that story. I did want to ask one more question before we leave these because it just caught my eye. What are the five regretted sins on the topic of moral regrets? I'm glad you're getting into these issues here. We have a sense around the world.

Starting point is 00:33:48 So let's talk about we're talking about universality. We have a sense around the world and within the United States of what constitutes boldness It's bolder to start a business than it is to stick with a job It's bolder to ask somebody out than to stay silent. Okay, so we don't have much of a disagreement about that But what does it mean to be moral? It's a little trickier because we don't have full, we have a consensus about some aspects of that, but not entirely. And there's a great book called The Righteous Mind by John Height that really lays this out. He's done incredible work on what it's called Moral Foundations theory that suggests that morality isn't one thing, it's

Starting point is 00:34:20 multiple things. We do have a pretty good consensus about that, you know, we shouldn't hurt people, we shouldn't harm people, we should care for people in general, right? And we shouldn't cheat people. But on other kinds of things, there is less of a consensus. So if you look at something like, I'll give you an example, let's go back to the military. I got people in this sample who say, I regret that I didn't serve in the military. And it wasn't because they wanted the adventure. It was because they said, I had a duty to my country and I didn't fulfill it and I feel bad about that. Now, there are some people in America who will say, that's not a moral regret. You didn't have a duty.

Starting point is 00:34:54 And to which I say, shut up. I mean, it's not for you to say, you know, if you, if somebody who feels that, that, that sense of duty, now again, we don't have a consensus on that. We do have a consensus that shoplifting is a bad thing. Cheat and your spouse is a bad thing. Punching somebody in the face unnecessarily is a bad thing, right? Believe me, because I'm not talking about this.

Starting point is 00:35:14 There is not a consensus that someone who didn't serve in the military and regrets it has a moral regret, but to that, I don't care. To that person, that's a moral regret because there's a sense of duty. I didn't have a large enough sample in Asian countries and confusion cultures, but to that, I don't care, to that person, that's a moral regret because there's a sense of duty. I didn't have a large enough sample in Asian countries and Confucian cultures, but there are some things about a few regrets about like not honoring your parents. So things about authority, so duty, authority, sanctity, those kinds of things, there's not

Starting point is 00:35:39 a full, there's not a full consensus on that. So they're very few, they are relatively few Americans who would say, oh, I didn't honor my parents. I didn't respect my parents' authority. That's my big regret in life. It's just not something that you see very much in America. You see it more in Asian countries. And then there are things like sanctity of life

Starting point is 00:36:01 and things like that. It's interesting, because the moral regrets were the smallest category, but they were, in some ways, the most diverse, because we don't have a full consensus of what it means to be moral. And that's okay. That's okay. What we need to do, and again, I encourage everybody to read this book right just now, is that what we need to recognize is that people have different, we should abide by our own moral codes, but recognize that some people have slightly different moral codes than we do. and we should be respectful and honor those.

Starting point is 00:36:28 Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that. Another topic that has come up recently for me personally a lot is a study that you mentioned in the book called the Grant Study, and I was talking to a friend of mine who's a psychologist about it just the other day. But if someone doesn't know what it is, can you tell them? But more importantly, how did the world regret survey align or disalign with its findings? The biggest category of regrets are connection regrets out of those four. And I think what's important to understand about these regrets is that when people tell you what they regret the most, they're telling you what they value the most. So as we were talking about before,

Starting point is 00:37:07 when people have foundation regrets, what they're saying is that they value stability and it's missing from their lives. And so I think with connection regrets, the reverse image that regret offers, when people tell you what they regret the most, they're telling you what they value the most, people are telling you implicitly, sometimes explicitly, that they value love. Not only romantic love, but just the full notion of what love is, the love we have for other people. I think that boldness regrets are about learning and growth, and I think more regrets are about goodness.

Starting point is 00:37:35 So these regrets give us a sense of what people really want out of life. But again, the biggest category of where connection regrets which are about love. Now, to the grant study, The grant study is a famous study started at Harvard University, Harvard College, I think it was in 1930s, where they studied young men, white men at Harvard, and then followed them through their lives.

Starting point is 00:37:58 They measured everything. They gave them personality tests, they gave them IQ tests, they gave them physical tests. They were trying to figure out, crack the code of like, what contributed to human flourishing? Why did some people lead miserable lives? Why did some people lead happy lives? And it's so our people who made money

Starting point is 00:38:16 and happier than people who haven't made money, no. Are people who've achieved professional high professional achievement, are they happier than people who haven't achieved anything? No. So the looking at are people in great physical health happier than people who in terrible physical health? No.

Starting point is 00:38:31 What they found was that the single biggest perhaps by far factor in whether people flourished throughout their lives, where did they have close relationships with people who they cared about and who cared about them. The directors of this study, he was a director for I think 40 years, said, oh man, we've been doing women setting this for almost a century now, but I can summarize the findings in five words. He says, happiness is love, full stop. I think that there is some affinity between the prevalence of these connection regrets

Starting point is 00:39:07 and this thing that the grant study found, which is that happiness is love, full stop. Yeah, it's interesting. I did a solo episode last week on why loneliness is killing us. And some of the statistics are just alarming. ARP found that 45% of US adults are lonely. Another study that looked at it for over 20-year period found that 33% of all people in 113 countries are lonely. And I kind of answered it by saying that the biggest reason people are lonely is because we are kind of built to give love and receive

Starting point is 00:39:45 love. And if you're not doing that, it's going to cause that phenomenon. I think people whether it's social media or what have you or getting further and further isolated and not having that dialogue that really makes this whole. And as you might recall from the next big idea club, one of the books we picked about three years ago was Together, which is a book by he was at the time of former surgeon general. He's now back in the job as surgeon general of a Beck Murphy about the epidemic of loneliness and how loneliness in America is a public health issue. Well, I've been reading a book, one of the nice things about having a podcast like

Starting point is 00:40:24 this as you often get books before they're published. So this one is a book called Blind Spot by John Clifton, CEO of Gallup. And in it, he cites that their research shows that unhappiness has been unerized globally for a decade. From your research and the things that you got back from the regret survey, can you provide any insight that you might have found to why this is occurring? I'm not sure.

Starting point is 00:40:48 It's a good question. I think it's complex. It might go to some of these things about regret. I mean, if people are feeling lonely and isolated, that can contribute obviously to unhappiness. If people are feeling precarious about their lives, that they feel like they can't get ahead in the economy. That is obviously that's dangerous case and deepened called deaths of,

Starting point is 00:41:09 contributed deaths of despair. I mean, we had the data came out two days ago from the day that you and I are talking showing that life expectancy in the United States has decreased, which is an alarming phenomenon. That's not supposed to happen in a country as advanced as ours. So I think that some of it has to do with economic instability. I think some of it has to do with frayed social relations. I think that some of it has to do with people feeling isolated and lonely. I think some of it has to do with people feeling so polarized even from their neighbors. It's a complex stew of things, but the stew does not taste very good. Yeah, you're right.

Starting point is 00:41:48 I read a book earlier in the year by Katie Milkman called How You Change and in there. That's a great book book. That's another next big idea club book. Yeah, she cites, I think it's 40% of premature deaths are because of intentional choices people make and lifestyle choices that they make that could be reversed. So, it's a big one.

Starting point is 00:42:10 Well, we've talked now a lot about the different types of regrets. I want to take this in a little bit different direction, and now talk about what are the benefits of regret, and you outlined three of them in the book. Yeah, there are a bunch of benefits. Among the benefits are, again, if we treat it properly, if we confront our regrets, don't ignore them, don't wallow in them. There's evidence showing that it can help us become better negotiators.

Starting point is 00:42:34 There's evidence showing that it can help us become better strategists. There's evidence showing that it can help us become clearer thinkers of void cognitive biases. There's a lot of evidence showing it can help us become better problem solvers. There's evidence showing that it can help us find greater meaning in life. So there are an array of benefits to be found when we actually, at some level,

Starting point is 00:42:53 lean into our regrets. We don't, again, keep coming back to this. We don't ignore them. We don't ruminate on them. We simply examine them. We think about them. When we do that, there's some very, very good evidence that has fuel for moving forward. Yes.

Starting point is 00:43:08 And then the follow on question of that, we've laid this out, we've laid out the benefits, but what are some of the options that the audience could take for responding to regrets that they might have? Yeah. I think one of the first things is how you frame the regret in yourself. So a lot of times when we make a mistake, when a lot of times when we screw up or have a regret, our self-talk, the way we talk to ourselves is harsh. It's very harsh. It's sometimes brutal. And there's a whole line of research on what's called self-compassion that says,

Starting point is 00:43:35 don't do that. Instead, treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. When we have a hard time doing this, when other people screw up, we're often kind, not always, but we're often kind. We often don't excoriate them the way we excoriate ourselves. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Don't treat yourself better than anybody else, but don't treat yourself worse. There's no evidence that's effective. Recognize that your mistakes are part of the human condition and also recognize that any mistake you make is a moment in your life. There's tiny moment in your life, not the full measure of your life.

Starting point is 00:44:02 And when we do that, that can offer people something akin to psychological safety to begin making sense of these regrets. Another important step is, I think, to write about or talk about your regrets, disclosure is a form of unburdening, but even writing about it privately or talking about it privately with a friend converts this negative abstract emotion

Starting point is 00:44:22 into concrete words which are less menacing. Treat yourself with kind of driving them contempt. Talk about it or write about it to convert this blobby abstract negative feeling into concrete words. And then finally, you have to draw a lesson from it. All right, you have to think about it. You have to say, what did I learn from this? This is, then the military does.

Starting point is 00:44:41 This, the idea here is like, let's examine it and draw a lesson from it. The way to draw a lesson from it is to take a step back. Ask yourself, if my best friend came to me with this regret, what lesson would she learn from this? There's a great technique from Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, who said that when he was faced with a tough decision, he would always ask himself, if I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do? And so getting some distance. And so when we treat ourselves better, treat ourselves with self-compassion,

Starting point is 00:45:07 recognize that we're like everybody else. When we talk about our regret and write about our regret to defang it, and then when we explicitly, intentionally, draw a lesson from it, then it's very useful. It's very useful to us. It's not this debilitating emotion. It's a propulsive emotion. It's not something that sort of puts a break on our progress. It's something that actually helps us glide into even greater progress. Yes, if the listeners aren't familiar with your book drive, it's all about

Starting point is 00:45:40 motivation. And in this book, you talk about the theory of motivation by Columbia University psychologist, Tori Higgins. And I loved this comparison because he said, we have the actual self, the ideal self, and the ought self. Can you discuss that through the lens of regret? Our actual self is a person we see in the mirror. Our ought self is a person we think we should be. The ideal self is a person we think we could be. And his argument is that motivation is formed in that kind of synapse, that space between the actual and the ideal, or between the actual and the ought. I think that's part of what is propelling regret,

Starting point is 00:46:15 what makes people feel bad, going back to these, do you think about something like a bonus regret? It's like, wait a second. Why didn't I start a business? Like, maybe we could have done something big, I could have done something interesting. I could have done something interesting I could have contributed to the world. That's my ideal self and I fall in short of that that makes us feel bad But I think again in that gap between ideal and actual that gap between thought and actual

Starting point is 00:46:36 That makes us feel bad But Higgins is arguing that it can be a form of motivation and and I think he's right in the sense that if we have a systematic way to process that negative feeling we can be a form of motivation. And I think he's right in the sense that if we have a systematic way to process that negative feeling, we can enlist it and redirect it for good rather than to bring us down. Yeah, and I think a follow on to that is if we know what people regret the most, how can we reverse the images to reveal what they value the most? Yes, I mean, that's what I was saying before. We do know what people regret the most.

Starting point is 00:47:05 They regret not taking chances. So what does that tell us? That tells us that people want to like use the vanishingly short amount of time. They're alive to learn and grow and live a decent life. People regret not building a stable foundation. Why? Because they value stability. This is another reason why I think having this fresh look at regret is helpful.

Starting point is 00:47:24 It's helpful to the individual level in the sense that it normalizes regret because it's fundamentally normal. If we treat it properly, we can do better. But if we understand regret more broadly, we understand what makes life worth living. And so as you were saying before, it becomes another version at some level of the grand study saying, what do people, what actually makes a good life? When we think about our regrets, we are at some level thinking about what we want out of life, what makes life worth living.

Starting point is 00:47:49 Not to get more bit here, but I think that it is important. We acknowledge our mortality. I think a lot of these regrets are about mortality. That is, people will have moments in their life when they reckon with the fact that they're not going to be on the planet forever, that they're going to die. They want to be able to do the right thing. They want to be able to build a stable foundation for their family and their team. They want to be able to learn and grow and do something before it's all over.

Starting point is 00:48:14 And they want to, as the Grand Study told us, they want to lead lives enriched by love and close relationships. And I thought for the audience, we both could give a turn on as you were writing this and you thought about your own life. What were some of the biggest regrets that came up for you? I have a lot of regrets. I have regrets about I don't think I've been bold enough in a lot of respects I think that's a big part of it. I have some moral regrets that I don't really want to talk about publicly, but that have helped me become, reckoning with, have helped me become a better person. I have a lot of regrets about kindness, especially earlier in my life.

Starting point is 00:48:51 And so, for instance, I have a lot of regrets in the database about bullying. I have regrets that are, they're not bullying, but they're akin to that in the sense that I was in many situations where people were not being treated right. They weren't being treated fairly. They were being excluded. And when I was younger, much younger. And I knew it was wrong. I thought I knew it was wrong. I didn't do anything. And that has bugged me for a very long time. And so the question once again becomes, what do I do with that? So if I have something, in this case, an indecision in action that has bothered me for 10 years, 20 years,

Starting point is 00:49:20 30 years, that's a pretty strong signal, right? Like, I don't even remember what I had for lunch today. All right. So I made decisions today that I don't remember. But here are decisions or indecisions from 30 years ago that stick with me and make me feel bad. That's a strong signal. Okay. So you got to reckon with that. So what do you do with that? What that tells me at least is that Wait a second. You regret not being kind. I guess you must value kindness more than you might think. If you had said to me, what qualities do you admire, I don't know if kindness would have been at the top of the list. But if I look at my own inadequacies from earlier in my life, inadequacies of kindness really bug me.

Starting point is 00:49:57 So maybe I do value kindness. So regret clarifies what we value, but it also instructs us on how to do better. I don't want to feel that way. And I've changed my behavior in that regard. So I try to, when I see people not being treated right, to say something, to step in, to step up, because I want to try to avoid that feeling in the future. And I'll give my own turn. I think one of the biggest ones for me is I've, unfortunately, had a lot of trauma in my life, whether it's been combat or otherwise. And I try to internalize it instead of dealing with it. And I regret not dealing with it earlier

Starting point is 00:50:29 because the repercussions of not doing it magnified, long-term repercussions so much more. And so for me, what I'm trying to do, and in many ways, I do it on this podcast, and by reaching out to people, just to try to educate them on why you need to do it immediately and allow yourself to feel things so that you can heal and process it and get over it.

Starting point is 00:50:54 And the other one that's been really bothering me just recently is I dropped my youngest daughter off to college and I got divorced a number of years ago and as I look back upon her and her brother, I regret not having that half the time that I would have had them and had much more experiences with them. So just two things I wanted to point out. Those are two great, I mean, I don't say great regrets, but they're two very powerful regrets. I mean, one, the first one, which is a version of a foundation regret.

Starting point is 00:51:26 We have a lot of people whose regret is that they didn't deal with sort of the difficulties in their life earlier. That is, it's essentially a foundation regret through inaction. I knew I had a problem or I knew I had a deal with this, but I just kind of whistled past the graveyard and finally caught up with me. That's a big one. And then also just the connection regret. Now, here's the thing though. Here's the thing that's like, you're a young guy. You got plenty of with me. That's a big one. And then also just the connection regret. Now here's the thing though, you just think that's like,

Starting point is 00:51:46 you're a young guy. You got plenty of time left. You can look at those. So the question again, once again, it's like, okay, can you ignore those? No, that's a really bad idea. Bad idea, all right? Do you wallow in those?

Starting point is 00:51:56 That's a bad idea too. What do you do? You do exactly what you're doing. You think about that. You say, what is this telling me what I value? Telling me what I value actually, and the first one I think what it's telling is you value not only stability, but I value actually, and the first one I think what it's telling is that you value

Starting point is 00:52:05 not only stability, but you value sort of the intellectual honesty of dealing with things that really happen and you value compassion for others and for yourself. The other one is like, you're the grand study guy, like you value love. What gives your life meaning or in wholeness are the relationships you have with other people including your kids. And so both of those give you give us because I'm the same. I mean, I mean, we're both of those things give all of us you and me, but everybody listening, guide us on how to live the remainder of the lives. Okay, I'm going to end on this question because you bring it up at the beginning of the

Starting point is 00:52:37 book and you end the book with it. Why does regret make us human regret make us better? It makes us human because it's a ubiquitous emotion. It's one of the most common emotions that a human beings have. I can't tell you, everybody has regret. Our brains are pre-programmed for regret. It's part of being human. And the reason it's part of being human is that if we treat it properly, it can help us. And so what I want to do is just basically, once again, is just normalize regret because it's so normal and also give people the tools to process it effectively. And I think when we do that, and if we do that not only at an individual level,

Starting point is 00:53:09 we do that at the level of families, we do that at the level of organizations and teams, we do it even at the level of countries and nations, then I think we become better. I think we become better people. I think we accomplish more, we contribute more and we build a more just society. Okay, the last question for you is you're everywhere,

Starting point is 00:53:27 but if a listener wanted to know more about you, what's a great way that they could do it or connect with you? You can go to my website, which is dantpankdantpank.com. There's free news letter, other free resources, videos, information about the books, all kinds of stuff. Unicorns, prequelade, pony rides, everything. And I would also say you do great interviews that I've heard on the Big Idea Club. I think that's, yeah, I love the one you did with I Let Fish Back.

Starting point is 00:54:02 I used it as research. I also interviewed Katie Milkman about that book that you mentioned, how to change. I really like both of those books. They're two very good scientists too. Both of them. They are. They're great. Well, Dan, thank you so much for coming on this show. It's been an incredible honor. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Daniel Pink and wanted to thank him for the honor

Starting point is 00:54:24 of being a guest on the show. Links to all things Dan will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you buy any of the books from our featured guest on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show and making it free for our listeners. Videos are on YouTube at John Armiles where we now have over 400 of them. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. I'm at John Armiles, both on Twitter and Instagram, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. You're about to hear a preview of the passion struck podcast interview I did with Andreas Widmer, who has taught entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America's Bush School of Business since 2012.

Starting point is 00:55:07 He is the author of the new book, The Art of Principal Entrepreneurship, Creating and During Value. He is also the author of the best-selling book, The Pope and the CEO. What we need to do is to focus on actually what our business does. We do unfortunately too little of that,

Starting point is 00:55:24 and we only focus on the outcome of our businesses. So we focus on the profit and then what do we do with the profit? What we're forgetting is the work itself and the feeling and the culture of meaning inside the company. That has a result that two-thirds of our workforce is disengaged. So six out of ten employees in the United States can't wait to get home in the evening. They hate their jobs. Is that their fault? No, it's not their fault.

Starting point is 00:55:50 Remember, we rise by lifting others. So share this show with those that you love and care about. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice that we gave today. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live life passion struck. you

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Daniel Pink on Why the Power of Regret Can Transform Your Life EP 197

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